system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Existentialism in the contemporary times.



Do you think existentialism would hold up with the recent advancements in neuroscience and physics? 
I.E. Does the freedom of choice (or lack thereof) dictate the existentialist movement in the recent times? Or do Existentialists ignore the mechanisms of the brain and carry out their lives according to "Existence precedes Essence" and "We are condemned to be free"?
gpt
I don't think recent advancements in neuroscience and physics in general - is there some in particular you have in mind? - would pose much of any problem for existentialism. 

On the contrary to what a lot of people who haven't read much existentialist philosophy seem to assume about it, existentialism doesn't postulate that we have some *transcendental* free will which is beyond "mechanisms of the brain." To use the Heideggerian jargon that Sartre makes a lot of use of: the discoveries of neuroscience and physics, and much else, are part of one's facticity, or "throwness," which is the concrete background of which human freedom exists and is limited. These are only the facts of existence that precedes essence.