[PDF/Kindle] Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J. Mitchell
Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J. Mitchell
- Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
- Kevin J. Mitchell
- Page: 352
- Format: pdf, ePub, mobi, fb2
- ISBN: 9780691226224
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (Links to an external site.)
Epub ebooks Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J. Mitchell (English Edition) 9780691226224
Overview
An evolutionary case for the existence of free will 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, 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.
More eBooks: AMIGOS, AMANTES Y AQUELLO TAN TERRIBLE by Matthew Perry on Ipad download pdf (Links to an external site.), DOWNLOADS The Polysecure Workbook: Healing Your Attachment and Creating Security in Loving Relationships by Jessica Fern download link (Links to an external site.), Download PDF Sin No More by Kimberla Lawson Roby here (Links to an external site.),