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Free Agents

How Evolution Gave Us Free Will

Kevin J. Mitchell

$49.99

Hardback

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English
Princeton University Press
03 October 2023
An evolutionary case for the existence of free will.

Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behaviour and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency — or free will — is an illusion. In Free Agents, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose.

Traversing billions of years of evolution, Mitchell tells the remarkable story of how living beings capable of choice arose from lifeless matter. He explains how the emergence of nervous systems provided a means to learn about the world, granting sentient animals the capacity to model, predict, and simulate. Mitchell reveals how these faculties reached their peak in humans with our abilities to imagine and to be introspective, to reason in the moment, and to shape our possible futures through the exercise of our individual agency. Mitchell’s argument has important implications — for how we understand decision making, for how our individual agency can be enhanced or infringed, for how we think about collective agency in the face of global crises, and for how we consider the limitations and future of artificial intelligence.

An astonishing journey of discovery, Free Agents offers a new framework for understanding how, across a billion years of Earth history, life evolved the power to choose, and why it matters.

By:  
Imprint:   Princeton University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 235mm,  Width: 156mm, 
ISBN:   9780691226231
ISBN 10:   0691226237
Pages:   352
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General/trade ,  Primary ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Kevin J. Mitchell is associate professor of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are (Princeton) and runs a popular blog, Wiring the Brain. His work has appeared in publications such as Scientific American, the Guardian, and Psychology Today.

Reviews for Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will

"""Mitchell's compelling and absorbing book acts both as a synthesizing primer about evolution and a powerful argument for free will. Its importance and quality are undeniable. A bold, brilliant must-read that should reach a large audience."" * Kirkus Reviews, starred review * ""Provocative."" * Publishers Weekly * ""Mitchell’s naturalization of free will shows that it need not be some mysterious non-physical force, but instead a cognitive phenomenon in which all manner of influences. . .are integrated into decisions to act, formulated with varying degrees of conscious awareness (of genuine will, you might say). “You” don’t generate free will; rather, the mental processes of deliberation are a part of what makes you.""---Philip Ball, Times Literary Supplement ""A highly original and very persuasive book. . . .Carefully argued and fair-minded but forceful in its conclusions, Free Agents is interdisciplinary research at its best.""---Joe Humphreys, Irish Times ""Mitchell persuasively develops a more modest conception of free will that entails the evolved ability to make real choices in the service of our goals—that is, to act for our own reasons. This carefully argued, information-dense book will put a dent in any intellectual predilection toward determinism that some readers may have. It certainly did mine.""---Ronald Bailey, Reason"


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