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Free Agents

Kevin J. Mitchell

How Evolution Gave Us Free Will

★ 4.1 (237 Ratings) ◷ 17 Minutes ☰ 7 Sections ◉ Text + audio

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About this content

Free Agents (2023) makes the case that we do have free will and are not just machines responding to physics. Tracing the evolutionary history of purposeful decision-making back billions of years, the book explores abilities like imagination, introspection, and causal reasoning that developed over time to allow us to predict outcomes, shape our futures based on our sense of identity, and exercise individual and collective agency over our lives.

About the author

Kevin Mitchell is a neurogeneticist and faculty member at Trinity College Dublin who studies connections between genetics, neuroscience, and psychology through his research and writing for the Wiring the Brain blog.