Article How life evolved the power to choose

[C C]

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

[Zinjanthropos]

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

Thats about how I figured it. Evolution is simply amazing. Besides if I'm in some sort of simulation research project then why would my path thru life be predetermined, pre-constructed?

[Magical Realist]

There is thus a way to surmount the metaphysical challenges to free will. Nature has already found it – evolution has led to the emergence of organisms that are capable of acting in the world, not just as collections of atoms, but as autonomous agents. By tracing that evolutionary trajectory, we can see how living organisms came to have causal power in their own right, without violating the laws of physics, and without the need for any mystical or supernatural forces at play.

I use this little heuristic to sum things up: What is happening to us now is nothing but the brain. What happens next, and how we react to this, is what we call our mind. Indeterminism is hardwired into our synapses. There is top down constraint steering the flow of bottom up currents. We lunge forward into the ensuing and undetermined future as partially free and self-directing agents. We are thrown into already being here.