Nov 4, 2023 03:11 AM
https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/how-li...-to-choose
EXCERPT: . . . That gets us quite far, but leaves the tricky problem of biological fatalism. Organisms may be causal entities in the world, but you might still say that the way they behave at any moment is determined by their current configuration. A common claim of free will skeptics is that we, ourselves, had no hand in determining what that configuration is. It is simply a product of our evolved human nature, our individual genetic make-up and neurodevelopmental history, and the accumulated effects of all our experiences. Note, however, that this views our experiences as events that have happened to us. It thus assumes the point it is trying to make – that we have no agency because we never have had any.
If, instead, we take a more active view of the way we interact with the world, we can see that many of our experiences were either directly chosen by us or indirectly result from the actions we ourselves have taken. Not only do we make choices about what to do at any moment, we manage our behaviour in sustained ways through time. We adopt long-term plans and commitments – goals that require sustained effort to attain and that thereby constrain behavior in the moment. We develop habits and heuristics based on past experience – efficiently offloading to subconscious processes decisions we’ve made dozens or hundreds of times before. And we devise policies and meta-policies – overarching principles that can guide behaviour in new situations. We thus absolutely do play an active role in the accumulation of the attitudes, dispositions, habits, projects, and policies that collectively comprise our character.
All of that may be seen as constraining our freedom at any moment, and that is true, but it is precisely the continuity of those constraints through time that constitutes our selves. What else would it mean to be you except continuing to be like you? (MORE - missing details)
BOOK (Kevin J, Mitchell): Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
EXCERPT: . . . That gets us quite far, but leaves the tricky problem of biological fatalism. Organisms may be causal entities in the world, but you might still say that the way they behave at any moment is determined by their current configuration. A common claim of free will skeptics is that we, ourselves, had no hand in determining what that configuration is. It is simply a product of our evolved human nature, our individual genetic make-up and neurodevelopmental history, and the accumulated effects of all our experiences. Note, however, that this views our experiences as events that have happened to us. It thus assumes the point it is trying to make – that we have no agency because we never have had any.
If, instead, we take a more active view of the way we interact with the world, we can see that many of our experiences were either directly chosen by us or indirectly result from the actions we ourselves have taken. Not only do we make choices about what to do at any moment, we manage our behaviour in sustained ways through time. We adopt long-term plans and commitments – goals that require sustained effort to attain and that thereby constrain behavior in the moment. We develop habits and heuristics based on past experience – efficiently offloading to subconscious processes decisions we’ve made dozens or hundreds of times before. And we devise policies and meta-policies – overarching principles that can guide behaviour in new situations. We thus absolutely do play an active role in the accumulation of the attitudes, dispositions, habits, projects, and policies that collectively comprise our character.
All of that may be seen as constraining our freedom at any moment, and that is true, but it is precisely the continuity of those constraints through time that constitutes our selves. What else would it mean to be you except continuing to be like you? (MORE - missing details)
BOOK (Kevin J, Mitchell): Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will