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Kevin Mitchell: How Did Evolution Give Us Free Will? Free Agents & Cognitive Realism

Mind-Body Solution

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The Importance of Free Will

I don't think in a deterministic world, you could have choices. It just doesn't make sense to think of choices. Why would life evolve? You know, why would this complexity evolve where macroscopic patterns are meaningful? There would be no scope for macroscopic complexity in my view. So I don't think free will is compatible with physical pre-determinism. Now the other sort of end of the spectrum is libertarianism, which is that we really do have this very absolutist kind of free will over our actions. That's not a view that I would hold because like I said earlier, I think that absolutists condition is incoherent.

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