WHAT IS FREE will? Can a being whose brain is made up of physical stuff actually make undetermined choices?
In , the Trinity College Dublin neuroscientist Kevin J. Mitchell argues that evolution has shaped living creatures such that we can push back when the physical world impinges upon us. The motions of nonliving things—air, rocks, planets, stars—are entirely governed by physical forces; they move where they are pushed. Our ability to push back, Mitchell argues, allows increasingly complex creatures to function as agents that can make real choices, not “choices” that are predetermined by the flux of atoms.
