Today, we continue “The New Biology” series with a non-reductive geneticist from Trinity College in Dublin. Kevin Mitchell is the author of Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will.The problem of free will has dogged philosophers and scientists as much as any question going back to the Greeks. Determinism, typically argued by physicists, usually goes something like: the laws of physics predict the future; therefore, there is no free will. In our lives, however, the experience of making choices is fundamental to our well being, to our culture and our morality. There would not be a legal system without free will. Or is the Supreme Court just an illusion, as determinists say about free will? Does the murderer always have an alibi?
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Geneticist Kevin Mitchell Attempts to…
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Today, we continue “The New Biology” series with a non-reductive geneticist from Trinity College in Dublin. Kevin Mitchell is the author of Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will.The problem of free will has dogged philosophers and scientists as much as any question going back to the Greeks. Determinism, typically argued by physicists, usually goes something like: the laws of physics predict the future; therefore, there is no free will. In our lives, however, the experience of making choices is fundamental to our well being, to our culture and our morality. There would not be a legal system without free will. Or is the Supreme Court just an illusion, as determinists say about free will? Does the murderer always have an alibi?