Kevin J. Mitchell

Are we the authors of our own stories? Or is our apparent freedom of choice really an illusion? [...] We, in contrast, are causes of things in our own right. We have agency: We make our own choices and are in charge of our own actions. I am not willing to give up on free will so easily. In this book I argue that we really are agents. We make decisions, we choose, we act — we are causal forces in the universe. These are the fundamental truths of our existence and absolutely the most basic phenomenology of our lives. If science seems to be suggesting otherwise, the correct response is not to throw our hands up and say, “Well, I guess everything we thought about our own existence is a laughable delusion.” It is to accept instead that there is a deep mystery to be solved and to realize that we may need to question the philosophical bedrock of our scientific approach if we are to reconcile the clear existence of choice with the apparent determinism of the physical universe. (2023) source Unverified