'Trick Slattery's Blog

Rejoice, the holiday that all compatibilists “love” is upon us soon! It is the day that all non-existent things can be claimed to exist, in fact the very point of Semantic Shift Day is to re-define the nonexistent! I thought I would post this in the very beginning of the month rather than right on the day, that way people can mark their calendars if they want.

What is Semantic Shift Day?

Semantic Shift Day is a created holiday in which you redefine all things that do not ...

Starting  July 3rd, 2018 I’ll be going on Internet hiatus for about 4 months.

Due to this I likely will not be posting many if any blog articles, posting much on social media, debating on facebook, and so on – during that time-frame. I will still be around every now and again to check on my facebook friends and groups, but my interaction will be far less within the communities (more reading than typing).

For this blog I will be turning off commenting until I am back as I will be unable to mod...

At one point I received the below as a (unapproved) comment on a post I had written criticising Daniel Dennett’s free will compatibilism. I was curious about the person who wrote the original so I copied and pasted a part of it into google, and noticed this has been copied and pasted in various locations on the web where Dennett has been criticized – but did not find the original author of it.  Of course the entire comment is used to throw insults around like they are confetti and it is a dee...

Found this cartoon by Zack Weinersmith of the smbc-comics.com website and requested / was granted permission to post it here (note: always request permission before you post another person’s artwork or words).

See the original post here: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/compatibilism.

If you are not clear about the idea of the cartoon, scene 1 is (for the important points) analogous to scene 2. Scene 2 expresses what compatibilists like Daniel Dennett (notice the guy in the cartoon seems to...

I came across a post the other day by an atheist who seems to be a public speaker, and who runs a blog on ChicagoNow. This post was about the “free will” topic and how he holds a belief in free will. To be fair I suspect that the blogger is unfamiliar with much of the nuance of the free will debate from our little chat we had in the comment section, and he seems like a swell guy. I thought it might be good to respond to his post as some of the things in it are those rudimentary mistakes that...

Hi, I’m August 31st ‘Trick and I proclaim that free will does indeed exist.  You may find it strange that I’m saying this given that this is the “Breaking the Free WIll Illusion” website, but the reality is that posts on this website explaining why free will does not exist and what it means are not written by August 31st ‘Trick but rather from a different day of the year ‘Trick, for example, August 30th ‘Trick.  I, August 31st ‘Trick say that free will for sure exists, and am what is called a...

If you frequent this blog you know that I pick on compatibilism a lot, and I do so as a point of contention about definitions, focus, and problems inherent when one uses a term in a way that causes a bypass of some serious issues of concern. And though I’m very critical of compatibilism, especially when the compatibilist is not blatantly clear to the reader about what their position is in regards to “just desert moral responsibility” or what I’ll refer to as “strong responsibility” (and does...

Just poking a little fun. Turn on closed captioning (cc) if it is not on by default!

The post Hitler Reacts to Free Will Skepticism appeared first on .

Found by a reader of whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com in the UK who saw this poster in a waiting room:

“I was in my GP’s waiting room this morning & my eyes were drawn to a poster on the noticeboard similar to the one below.  Your free will posts have so thoroughly meme-iated my head that it took me a few seconds to figure out the intended meaning.“

Too funny! Finally, a “Free Will” that is truly worth wanting (as Dennett would say).

The post The Only Free Will Worth Wanting … appeared first...

There is a common complaint that I’ve heard by more than one free will believer: when asked to think about “if all events are caused (deterministic) and if we could bring back time to some point before a decision was made, could the person have decided differently?”, some people complain that “well we can’t do this”. They note that it is impossible to rewind time or to travel in time to before the decision. They note that we “cannot test this”.

This response, however, is one that misses the p...