New Books in Science

Kevin J. Mitchell, "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will" (Princeton UP, 2023)

Oct 1, 2023

Leading neuroscientist Kevin J. Mitchell discusses how evolution gave us free will and challenges the idea that agency is an illusion. He explores the emergence of nervous systems, the power of meaning in neural activity, and the role of genetics in shaping our individual nature. Mitchell's argument has important implications for decision making, individual and collective agency, and the future of artificial intelligence.

32:26

Episode guests

Kevin J. Mitchell

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Quick takeaways

Despite claims that free will is an illusion, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell argues that humans are agents with purpose, not mere machines responding to physical forces.

The development of control systems, natural selection, and causal knowledge accumulation enable organisms, including humans, to exert causal power in decision-making and action.

Deep dives

The Nature vs. Nurture Question and Free Will

The podcast explores the author's interest in how the brain gets wired and its connection to behavioral traits, personality, intelligence, and risk of psychiatric or neurological conditions. This leads to the question of whether individuals really have free will if their decision-making is influenced by genetics and predetermined by brain wiring.

Introduction

5min

Understanding Free Will and Its Relationship to Evolution

4min

Emergence of Life and the Development of Agents

5min

Choices, Determinism, and the Nervous System

7min

The Power of Meaning in Neural Activity

12min

Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior 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: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (Princeton UP, 2023), 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.

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