Susan Blackmore

I am talking about the kind of free will that suggests that ‘I’ can freely choose to do something that is independent of all other influences – memes, genes, environment and so on. In other words, ‘magical’ contra-causal free will. Someone like Daniel Dennett would say ‘nobody believes in that anyway’ – but they do! Give a lecture to a hundred people and ask them if they believe their conscious thoughts cause their actions, and they will say ‘yes’. That’s the kind of free will that I’m talking about. No – not if you mean that ‘I’ as a conscious being in charge of this body made the decision. I would say the choice was made because of multiple causes going back into the past. [...] I haven’t chosen to have that belief. [...] it was not ‘I’ who decided. (2017) source Unverified