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The Neurodeterministic Challenge to Islamic Thought

Philosophical and Theological Responses

BY WALEED KADOUS

References

Benjamin Libet, “Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8, no. 4 (1985): 529–66.
Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (Penguin Press, 2023).
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Chun Siong Soon, Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, and John-Dylan Haynes, “Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain,” Nature Neuroscience 11, no. 5 (2008): 543–45.
It should be noted that not all physicists accept this reading. The De Broglie-Bohm theory proposes that particles do have definite positions at all times, guided by a “pilot wave,” but this theory requires a kind of instantaneous influence across the entire universe (extreme nonlocality) that most physicists find implausible. The Many-Worlds Interpretation avoids randomness by proposing that every quantum event splits the universe into parallel branches, one for each possible outcome, but this multiplies entities far beyond what Occam’s razor would allow. These alternatives remain logically possible but are minority positions, and the mainstream view remains that the randomness is real.
J. S. Bell, “On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox,” Physics 1, no. 3 (1964): 195–200.
Mark Tegmark, “Importance of Quantum Decoherence in Brain Processes,” Physical Review E 61, no. 4 (2000): 4194–206.
Neill Lambert et al., “Quantum Biology,” Nature Physics 9, no. 1 (2013): 10–18.
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Daniel C. Dennett, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (MIT Press, 1984); David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford University Press, 2000), sec. VIII.
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Sapolsky, Determined.
Christian List, Why Free Will Is Real (Harvard University Press, 2019); Jerry A. Fodor, “Special Sciences (or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis),” Synthese 28, no. 2 (1974): 97–115; Hilary Putnam, “Psychological Predicates,” in Art, Mind, and Religion, ed. W. H. Capitan and D. D. Merrill (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967).
M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell Publishing, 2003).
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge University Press, 1998); Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (Oxford University Press, 1997); Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford University Press, 2011).
J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Papers (Chatto & Windus, 1927), 209.
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Bruce Greyson, After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2021).
Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Qur’an 81:28–29.
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Uṣūl al-sunna, ed. Muḥammad al-Qaḥṭānī (Dār al-Minhāj, 2005).
ِAbū Ḥāmid al-Ghazali, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (Dār al-Ḥadīth, 2004), 4:245; Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, Kitāb al-lumaʿ fī al-radd ’alā ahl al-zaygh wa-l-bidaʿ, ed. Richard McCarthy (Imprimerie Catholique, 1953).
Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Nasafī, al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafiyya (Dār al-Bashāʾir, 1993), 67; Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī, Kitāb al-tawḥīd, ed. Fathalla Kholeif (Dār al-Mashriq, 1970).
Pierre-Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, trans. F. W. Truscott and F. L. Emory (Dover Publications, 1951).
Qur’an 17:81.
About the Author

Dr. Mohammed Waleed Kadous is the founder the Islamic Alliance for Safe, Ethical, and Responsible AI (iaser.ai) and built Ansari (askansari.ai), an AI assistant trained on classical Islamic sources. He writes, teaches and speaks about how the Islamic tradition can inform and guide the way Muslims engage with modern life and technology, and works on preparing the Ummah for the challenges to come.

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