Highly mis-educated science worshipper (I don't know if he actually practices it) thinks free will is an illusion.
His current hypothesis is that what man thinks is free will is actually determined by his environment, which is an argument as old as philosophy itself. But, he reaches this conclusion by way off the phenomenon of captives cooperating with their captors, the so-called "Stockholm syndrome".
Yet their behaviour is more understandable when you consider that they suffered solitary confinement and the threat of long imprisonment or even execution. What?s clear is that the Iranian authorities knew very well the power of environment over individual behaviour and used it effectively. Armies the world over do the same. So do terrorist groups. So, in a different context, do marketing companies, political parties and religious cults.
How do you think you would behave in such a situation? The truth is, none of us knows. Or do you disagree?
Never mind the flawed concept of causality operating behind his murky assumptions. (More reason to take philosophy classes outside of critical theory....) What I find remarkable is that he ignores basic falsifiability. (As Karl Popper would say, if there is a white swan, then the statement "all swans are black" is false.) Has he never heard of John McCain? Or the French Resistance? Has he even seen Rambo II? We've made icons out of people who have successfully defied the "power of environment over individual behavior". That alone debunks his chain of causation. Free will cannot be an illusion if there are people who do exercise their free will.*
What is frightening is that morons like these will soon be in charge of making laws and policies for us.
As for the cheap rheotrical question in the end, the answer is, no, we cannot tell what we will do in the same situation. But we can choose.
*This is giving consideration to their very limited notion that free will is only evident when exercised against a predictable course of action.
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