Free will, personal identity, the mind-body problem, issues of epistemology, metaphysics, ontology, meta-ethics and other similar issues are discussed in this category.
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According to Sean Carroll (now of Johns Hopkins), in a recent interview by Michael Shermer, Robert Sapolsky’s concept of free will is inconsistent with quantum field theory. As a biologist I think the philosopher’s focus on internal suppression of free will is too narrow. The external suppression by biological agents, like parasites (from prions to roundworms), and non-living agents, like solar flares, help define environmental pressures that drive natural selection. The victim of all these “competitors” is not just free will but freedom itself; which is just an illusion. As each successive pandemic releases a better killer that will kill off more and more of its globally-connected and science ignorant human population, we will be forced to react more and more forcibly to avoid extinction. If we are somehow saved from such a scenario, it will probably be as a result of realizing that societies run practically, i.e. by sticking to what works according to scientific empiricism, rather than by the certainty of some sweeping ideology (that defines the perfect way to achieve free will, freedom, happiness, civility, etc.).