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"""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 *"

"""A New Statesman Best Book of the Academic Presses"" ""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 * ""Provocative."" * Publishers Weekly * ""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 ""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 ""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 ""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 *"

"""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 * ""Provocative."" * Publishers Weekly * ""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 ""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 ""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"

Author Information

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.

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