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Academic & Professional Books  Organismal to Molecular Biology  Neurobiology

Free Agents How Evolution Gave Us Free Will

Popular Science Coming Soon
By: Kevin J Mitchell(Author)
333 pages, 44 b/w illustrations
NHBS
An evolutionary case for the existence of free will that provides thought-provoking ideas that are relevant far beyond this debate.
Free Agents
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  • Free Agents ISBN: 9780691226231 Hardback Oct 2023 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £24.99
    #262134
  • Free Agents ISBN: 9780691226217 Paperback Mar 2025 Available for pre-order
    £14.99
    #265978
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About this book

Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behaviour 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.

Customer Reviews (1)

  • A tightly argued and compelling case in favour of free will
    By Leon (NHBS Catalogue Editor) 23 Jan 2024 Written for Hardback


    Despite millennia of arguments back and forth, the question of whether we have free will or not remains unresolved. I just reviewed Robert Sapolsky's Determined which presented a case against. Though successfully showing that we have less of it than we think, I remain unconvinced by his total rejection of free will. Here I turn to Kevin J. Mitchell's Free Agents which, also starting from neurobiology, presents a tightly argued and compelling case in favour.

    Free Agents might test the patience of some readers as Mitchell only confronts the question of free will head-on in the last chapter. However, the book-length argument building up to it is very worthwhile, so I entreat you to stick with it. The first half of the book examines the history of life and the major transitions in evolution through the lens of neurobiology. This is followed by several chapters that further flesh out his argument and tackle metaphysical issues that supposedly negate free will.

    Mitchell's retelling of life's history turns out to be a fascinating exercise with relevance far beyond the free will debate. In essence, he gives one possible answer to the question of what life is. Though I can only scratch the surface here, every chapter lobbed little intellectual firecrackers my way that went off in my head most satisfyingly. One example: single-celled organisms are insulated from the outside world and have to work constantly, through the process of metabolism, against entropy to maintain their internal organization. What this means is that "life is not a state, it is a process [...] persisting through time" (p. 26). That in turn births value and meaning: things matter to organisms relative to the goal of survival. Another example: an animal learns from its past by reinforcing neuronal connections that resulted in choices with good outcomes. Memories and habits are thus not stored elsewhere and consulted separately, they are "baked right into the decision-making machinery itself" (p. 141).

    More intellectual firework comes with Mitchell's attempt to naturalize agency, i.e. to explain it in biological terms. A particularly heady chapter 9 explores this in-depth and draws on his previous book Innate. Concepts such as purpose, value, and meaning sound vague and immaterial. Not so, Mitchell says, they are made out of, instantiated in, biological matter. So, out of the window goes dualism. The value of a signal, whether it attracts or repels, resides not in the signal but in the response, which depends on how the neurons in the brain are wired. But reducing the system to just its components also misses the point. That only tells you how an action happens, not why. A signal might trigger a behaviour, but "it is the particular configuration of the organism that causes that signal to cause that behavior" (p. 67). In other words, "meaning drives the mechanisms. Acting for a reason is what living systems are physically set up to do" (p. 281). Organisms are not passively driven by outside signals, they interpret them, they are "meeting the world halfway, as an active partner in a dance that lasts a lifetime" (p. 217). This is the kind of academic poetry that blows my mind.

    The parts of the book I found a bit iffy were chapters 7 and 8 where Mitchell discusses why he thinks the world is not fully deterministic. First, at the macro level of neural networks we find "general randomness and thermal fluctuations" (p. 189) that can generate useful random behaviours to e.g. break decision deadlocks or solve problems. Sapolsky will no doubt object that Mitchell confuses unpredictability and indeterminacy. Second, quantum mechanics. The upshot of these two effects would be that the universe is not predetermined which "opens the door for higher-level features to have some causal influence" (p. 164). How? If I understand Mitchell correctly, he envisions a form of top-down causation whereby the way the brain is organized constrains the lower-level components and influences how the system behaves.

    So, what does all of this have to do with free will? Mitchell admits that much of what he discusses highlights constraints to free will, while his picture of indeterminacy generates opportunities for random behaviour that, while having their use, are not free will (as Sapolsky also pointed out). Where Mitchell deviates from Sapolsky is in concluding that such (useful) constraints shape rather than determine your behaviour. However, he is not convinced the question itself even makes sense. He thinks Sapolsky's demand for a causeless cause is "an unattainable standard [...] that could only be met by supernatural means" (p. 16). Similarly, he argues that absolutist definitions make no sense when taken to their logical conclusion. Why? Because he considers memories, knowledge, motivation, goals, etc. prior causes too, causing you to prioritize one action over another. These traits characterize you. If you had to be free from those as well, you would stop being you. Ultimately, he thinks the question of free will is a red herring and takes a pragmatic view: "If free will is the capacity for conscious, rational control of our actions, then I am happy in saying we have it" (p. 282). Organisms have evolved to do things for reasons. We might not always be free to choose those reasons, but we do have the capacity to reflect on them and we do have a degree of self-control. Rather than all-or-none, we have degrees of freedom. What free will is not, is a nebulous property: "It is an evolved biological function that depends on the proper functioning of a distributed set of neural resources" (p. 282).

    So how do the two books compare and where do I now stand on the matter of free will? Ironically, both authors start from the same point, neurobiology, and show the same thing, behaviour is subject to prior constraints beyond our control. In my view, Sapolsky leaps from there to the incongruous conclusion that we have no free will at all, while Mitchell convincingly argues we do have some measure of control. I agree with Mitchell that much of the debate is rather frustrating, with participants not agreeing on definitions, going round in circles, and ultimately getting bogged down in semantics. Free Agents is a tightly argued and compelling case in favour of free will. Mitchell proves himself an able wordsmith who crams profound ideas in short sentences that benefit from reading and unpacking slowly. In its 299 sometimes dense and heady pages, it meanders less than Determined does. What made this book a spectacular read for me are the thought-provoking answers Mitchell provides to the question of what life actually is.
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Biography

Kevin J. Mitchell is associate professor of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are (Princeton) and runs a popular blog, Wiring the Brain. His work has appeared in publications such as Scientific American, the Guardian, and Psychology Today.

Popular Science Coming Soon
By: Kevin J Mitchell(Author)
333 pages, 44 b/w illustrations
NHBS
An evolutionary case for the existence of free will that provides thought-provoking ideas that are relevant far beyond this debate.
Media reviews

"A highly original and very persuasive book [...] Carefully argued and fair-minded but forceful in its conclusions, Free Agents is interdisciplinary research at its best."
– Joe Humphreys, Irish Times

"An eloquent defense of our common-sense understanding of the mind [...] [E]xcellent."
– Andrew Crumey, Wall Street Journal

"[Mitchell] makes a powerful case that history of life, in all its complex grandeur, cannot be appreciated until we understand the evolution of agency – and then, in creatures of sufficient complexity, the evolution of conscious free will [...] [Free Agents] builds an argument that is methodical and crisp, and it cuts through years of disputation like a knife through cotton candy."
– James Gleick, New York Review of Books

"Mitchell's naturalization of free will shows that it need not be some mysterious non-physical force, but instead a cognitive phenomenon in which all manner of influences [...] are integrated into decisions to act, formulated with varying degrees of conscious awareness (of genuine will, you might say). "You" don't generate free will; rather, the mental processes of deliberation are a part of what makes you."
– Philip Ball, Times Literary Supplement

"Humans are not, says Kevin Mitchell, the playthings of predestination. Millennia of evolution means that our nervous systems have given us the wherewithal both to imagine and to predict. Mitchell explains how this power came about and why it matters."
New Statesman

"Monumental."
– Saleem H. Ali, Forbes

"Provocative."
Publishers Weekly

"A masterly exposition."
– George Scialabba, Hedgehog Review

"Two popular books [...] have breathed new life into the ancient debate over whether we have free will. In Free Agents, Kevin Mitchell argues that we do, and in Determined, Robert Sapolsky argues that we don't. To be blunt, on the big issue at hand – Mitchell is right and Sapolsky is wrong [...] [H]ow can the information in our brains come together to form a coherent and causally potent self? Mitchell offers a strikingly lucid evolutionary story of how such a self emerged."
– Oliver Waters, Three Quarks Daily

"Mitchell's compelling and absorbing book acts both as a synthesizing primer about evolution and a powerful argument for free will. Its importance and quality are undeniable. A bold, brilliant must-read that should reach a large audience."
Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Mitchell persuasively develops a more modest conception of free will that entails the evolved ability to make real choices in the service of our goals – that is, to act for our own reasons. This carefully argued, information-dense book will put a dent in any intellectual predilection toward determinism that some readers may have. It certainly did mine."
– Ronald Bailey, Reason

"A challenge to neuro-reductionism [...] As Mitchell explains the growth of agency across 12 penetrating and fluent chapters, they read not like a series of academic lectures but rather a stimulating conversation where a reader's next question is anticipated and answered."
– Peter Sterling, Current Biology

"A sophisticated, scientific response to determinism [...] [A] provocative and special contribution to the discourse on free will."
– Stetson Thacker, Holodoxa

"Ground-breaking [...] A significant contribution to the free will debate."
Paradigm Explorer

"Intriguing."
Choice Reviews

"Not only is this a work of subtle philosophical enquiry and of groundbreaking insight, but it is also an elegantly written book, a work that achieves a rare balance of complexity coupled with clarity. Provocative, enlightening, hope filled, Free Agents deserves to be read and debated."
– Linda Hogan, Professor of Ecumenics, School of Religion, Trinity College Dublin

"Does free will exist or is it an illusion? This captivating book explores the science behind the existence of free will. Writing elegantly about the complexities of this area of research, Mitchell provides a deeper understanding of the concept of free will and its brain basis, and explores the implications for consciousness, moral responsibility, the law, and AI."
– Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, author of Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain

"Brilliant, powerfully argued, and important, Free Agents shakes up the age-old debate about free will by emphasizing what humans share with all organisms – all forms of life, even the simplest, make choices and have agency. Applying that insight and putting humans in an evolutionary context, Kevin Mitchell's innovative account is required reading for anyone interested in this fundamental question. Highly recommended!"
– Matthew Cobb, author of Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code

"At long last, a fresh approach to the free will question that is both sensible and scientifically plausible: no fudging, no hand-waving, no philosophical flimflam. Mitchell brilliantly delivers the goods, drawing on a deep understanding of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and physics. He has an uncanny knack for rendering a complex story easy to grasp without dumbing things down. A literary gem that is downright fun to read."
– Patricia S. Churchland, author of Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition

"Mitchell argues that the dictates of biology and evolution have resulted in a brain intrinsically capable of self-guided action, and he suggests mechanisms that allow and even impose increasing agency on thought and behavior. Sometimes whimsical, always brimming with knowledge, Free Agents is a lively and challenging defense of free will from a neuroscientist's viewpoint."
– Cori Bargmann, Rockefeller University

"Kevin Mitchell brings clear thinking and scientific rigor to a vital topic that leaves many people confused, caught between the preposterous alternatives that either humans are robots or that every time we make a decision, a miracle occurs."
– Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works

"If you believe that free will is an illusion, you will change your mind after reading this irresistible book. Mitchell tells the epic story of the evolution of life from its origins to the emergence of purposeful behavior as you have never heard it before. He forcefully counters reductionism and makes a compelling case for agency as the central condition of living beings."
– Uta Frith, coauthor of What Makes Us Social?

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