Dr. Michael D. Silberstein
The Jerusalem Post article Think Again: Free will and its deniers said
Philosophy professor Michael Silberstein points out that all physical systems that have been investigated turn out to be either deterministic or random. Either alternative is inconsistent with free will.
Nor can the workings of the mind be reduced to the rules of the physical universe, or the mind conflated with the electrical impulses of the brain. The laws of the physical universe, of which Prof. Silberstein speaks, allow us to predict future events. There can be no parallel charting of a human life. What, for instance, would be the parallel in the laws of the physical universe to the phenomenon of the ba’al teshuva — someone who has chosen a life at odds with his entire education and upbringing?
Michael D. Silberstein, Ph.D. is
Adjunct Professor, Department of Philosophy at the
University of Maryland and
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy at
Elizabethtown College.
His areas of specialization are Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of
Mind,
Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Film.
Michael coedited
The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science,
coauthored
Uniform Spaces in the Pregeometric Modeling of Quantum
Non-Separability,
The Search for Ontological Emergence,
For Whom the Bell Arguments Toll,
Reversing the Arrow of Explanation in the Relational Blockworld: Why
Temporal becoming, the Dynamical Brain, and the External World are in
the Mind,
and authored
Converging on emergence. Consciousness, causation and
explanation.
He is a Referee/Consultant for the John Templeton Foundation,
Mind Science Institute,
Philosophical Quarterly,
Journal of Consciousness Studies,
Mind and Matter,
Foundations of Physics, the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada, and
Synthese.
Michael earned a BA (Honors) in Philosophy at University of Oklahoma in
1984, a B.S. (Honors) in Molecular Biology
with minors in Asian Studies and International Relations
at University of Oklahoma in
1986, and a
Ph.D. in Philosophy at University of Oklahoma in 1994.
Read the New York Times article
Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t.