\documentclass[letterpaper,twoside]{report}
% \usepackage[width=6in, height=10in, nohead, foot=12pt]{geometry}
\usepackage{graphicx} \usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{minutes} \minutesstyle{
  % columns = {1},
  header = {list}, %or {table},
  vote = {list}, %or {table},
  contents = {true}, %or {false}
} 
% \setcounter{secnumdepth}{4}
\usepackage{color}

\begin{document}
\begin{sffamily}

  \begin{Minutes}{ Lakeside Freethinkers }
    \selectlanguage{english}
    \participant{Chad Olson, Ron Napier, Henry Laxen,
       Hank Shriver,  Ron Barry, Stephen Seagall, Nancy Seagall,
       Philip Rylett, Sandy Rylett, John De Witt, Bill Cash, Janine
       Borgat, Rich Birkett, Bill Douglas
    }
    \minutesdate{Sep 16, 2015} \starttime{4:05pm}
    \endtime{6:00pm}
    \author{Henry Laxen}
    \maketitle
    \listofdecisions{}

    \topic{President's Remarks}

There were several new members present at the meeting so Chad asked
everyone to briefly introduce themselves.  He then asked Henry to
explain the option of converting our current mailing list distribution
system to google groups.

Henry outlined the advantages of google groups, namely the fact that
it is permanently archived and searchable.  As well as making it much
easier for the NSA and GCHQ to track us subversives.  Chad suggested
he get the current mailing list from Alvaro and convert it to google
groups.  Henry will investigate how to do this.


\textbf{Today's topic is Free Will, Does it exist or not? } Chad turned
the meeting over to our two speakers, 

\topic{Free Will}

\subtopic{Rich Birkett arguing for the existence of Free Will}

Rich Birkett for the existence of free will.
He passed around and recommended two books on the subject.  The first
was Free Will by Sam Harris\\
\url{http://www.samharris.org/free-will}
and the second was Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett\\
\url{http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Evolves-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0142003840/}
Rich also recommended the Wikipedia article on free will as a good
resource at\\
\url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will}

Rich used the Merrium-Webster  definition of free will:


\begin{enumerate}
\item voluntary choice or decision (I do this of my own free will)
\item  freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior
  causes or by divine intervention
\item the ability to make choices that are not controlled by fate or
  god.
\item autonomy, choice, self-determination, volition
\end{enumerate}


We need to make a distinction between influence and control.  Free
will is not a tangible object, but a concept.  There are other
concepts that are difficult to prove, such as numbers and infinity.
Free will is a pragmatically useful concept.  Differences between need
and free will.  Need food but have choices about what to
eat. Compatibilism: Compatibilists maintain that determinism is
compatible with free will.  Incompatibilism is the position that free
will and determinism are logically incompatible. He talks about
degrees of free will. Hard determinism is like fatalism, it doesn't
matter what you do, it won't change the outcome.  A soft determinist
is in some sense a compatiblist.  Next followed a brief description of
randomness.  Concludes that free will is a useful concept, and that he
believes there are degrees of free will.

\subtopic{Philip Rylett arguing for the lack of Free Will}
 
Next Phil spoke about the non-existence of free will.  He started by
claiming that the burden of proof lies with the believers in free
will, since they must actually prove that it exists, while he doesn't
really need to prove anything.  Like the idea that you're innocent
until proven guilty.  We all \textit{feel} that we have free
will. Phil's definition of free will is ``The ability to choose
between more than one viable option, in which the choice was up to the
chooser.  In other words, if we could have rolled back, we could have
made a different choice.'' He believes that free will is an
\textit{illusion, a feeling,} and that we should not trust our
feelings.  As an example, 90\% of people surveyed \textit{felt} that
they were better than average drivers.  Free will is logically
incoherent and physically doubtful, if not impossible, that it could
exist. How do we view reality? Is reality a series of causal events?
Reality is a series of events, and every event has a cause.  Even if
we don't know the cause, we assume it has one.  This applies as well
to our brain and our mind.  Every event has a cause.  In the past it
was thought that the mind was somehow separate from the brain, but
modern neuroscience has basically overturned this thinking.  Our brain
is a physical thing and it obeys physical laws.  It is so complex it
is hard for us to fathom how it works.  Our brain starts to be active
three weeks after conception.  A neuron fires and starts a chain of
other neurons firing, but there is no \textit{spontaneous} activity.
It there were, we would not be able to function.  The cause of any
neural activity is the one that preceded it, all the way down the
line.  You are a result of all of your past influences, and your
decision making is a result of this.  What appears to be spontaneous 
and personal is something that can be mapped objectively.  He
reference the experiments of Benjamin Levitt, that awareness of an
action occurs after the actual decision has been made.  

The other part of free will is the idea that we are the agents of our
own decisions.  There is a sense of agency.  This sense is hard to
locate in the brain.  Studies have shown that there is no locus of
thought.  There are 3 systems in the brain, that we share with all
mammals, that together control everything.  They are distributed
throughout the brain.  The identity that we are the agents of our own
decisions is an illusion.  It is an illusion that is caused by the
fact that we do something, we look for a cause for that event, and it
is very convenient that we find it in our sense of self.  But there is
no logical explanation of how this can work in nature.

His conclusion is that free will is an illusion, albeit a strong and
compelling one, and is contradictory to how the physical universe
works and contradictory to any neuroscientific evidence that has come
about.

After Phil's concluding remarks, there was a rebuttal from each side
and a discussion (sometimes intense) followed.

An audio file of the entire session is available at 
\url{http://nadineloveshenry.com/static/audio/freeWillDebate.mp3}

\topic{Conclusion}

An extensive summary of the mailing list discussion that preceded this
meeting was compiled by Ron Barry and made available to the group.  A
copy of it is available at:\\
\url{http://nadineloveshenry.com/chapala/ft/docs/freeWillFromRonBarry.pdf}


Chad ask if anyone would be interested in giving a presentation to the
group at the next meeting and the meeting was adjourned at 6pm.

\end{Minutes}

\end{sffamily}
\end{document}