Free Agents cover art

Free Agents

How Evolution Gave Us Free Will

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Free Agents

By: Kevin J. Mitchell
Narrated by: Kevin J. Mitchell
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About this listen

This audiobook narrated by neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents an evolutionary case for the existence of free will.

Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior 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 emerged 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 this matters.

©2023 Kevin J. Mitchell (P)2023 Princeton University Press
Evolution Neuroscience & Neuropsychology Philosophy

Critic Reviews

“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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Flawed central argument

Author makes a deeply flawed argument. Makes important points, but ties them to false conclusions.

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