This article is typical product of training in the natural sciences. Why would an article on free will begin with the grand narrative of science, that of the birth and demise of our world? The author takes his anthropology from his biology, namely evolution. For some reason he singles out the evolution of the individual as the peak product of evolution even though we know that man evolved in groups. What is missing here is the whole of community and it is as if the individual arises de novo, out of nothing but his own biological inheritance. But this owes more to John Locke than to evolutionary theory.

My despair at this article is that it purports to be the absolute truth simply because it is framed in terms of a scientific view of man. That is why we are treated to a high school version of biology and evolution. There is a more nuanced understanding of the making of modern man and that involves history, politics, theology, geography, art. philosophy. But this is too complicated for someone who wants to reduce mankind to the products of evolution.

There is a kind of theology going on here. One could easily substitute "God" with "Nature" and it would read like bad theology. Of course we are evolved beings but that is only the beginning of what we are. When we are so reduced life is flat and boring and loses any sign of transcendence. This is when we are really in trouble.

I really dislike the way the author treats superstition and religion as the same thing and dismisses them. This is very ignorant. Please visit an ancient university that still has a department of theology and take up a conversation.
Peter Sellick

Arguably, there is no such thing as a free will!? We don't get to pick our parents, our genetic advantages/disadvantages and or the circumstances we grow up in!
Or the environmental advantages or disadvantages that along with serendipity, block or prosper our pathway through our early development or life!
From where I sit, the universe seems to be throwing dice!?
Or, we are just infinitesimally small bugs under a mighty celestial microscope, or part of an interesting boredom breaking, what if, experiment?
Rhrosty.

...Well; the view of the cynic would conclude the subject of human autonomy and self control to be superfluous to nature entirely.

...Nature would view mankind as a very unsuccessful aberration to her finite past and to what remains of her future, (500 million years apparently), if she were cognoscente in the animal sense.

...Of course the perspective of the relevance to nature of humankind, is the paltry 5 million years of human existence : And even more dauntingly for mankind, the age of Anatomical Modernity set at 200 thousand years.

...And the final humiliation to his ego, that of acknowledgment of his closest ancestor to be the chimpanzee, (Should we say Monkey)!

...These simple facts are a defining reason for the continuence of a need for spiritual belief systems, ones which subjugate man in terms of his (mans) delusional view of his own importance, to one of acknowledgement of his irrelevance to Nature.

its clear..you have no..idea,..how evolution..REALLY works
its clear your some academic/theorizing grossly as well as wrongly

there would be no..point in trying to educate you[your that wrong]

eg..google darwins pigeons..where darwin himself said..
no evolution..is possible..if 1000 pigeons were isolated for 1000years

your clearly no math genius either
what holds true..by the numbers..of humans?
is many fold for mankind..as much as darwins pigeons

at best..a return to wild type
[but i see by your blank look..you already got nothing]

nature/nurture/freewill is from our god
we ALL..created..in..his image..of his nurture/nature and will
but jumped up academic ignorants with your dumbed/down atheist clap trap..about concept's..of which you got no clue..

really..its so sad its pathetic

Rodney
An interesting view.
I think we do very little as a collective. We do most as individuals.
We and our free will are not so much the product of our society but we come to make choices (free ones) pretty much based on our individual knowledge and access to the knowledge and experience of individuals over the term of our total development.

To that end, what is our future when individuals, with a chip implanted in their brain, are given ready access and assessment of the entire knowledge and experience of every generation of the human race?

Interesting and engaging paper. Let's suppose that determinism is true, in the sense that any action that one takes, on the basis of a reasoned decision, is determined by the entirety of the preceding conditions. It remains true that the scope for reasoning and and consequential action are continually enlarged by increases in our knowledge, advances in our technology and enlargement of our moral consciousness. Consider, for example, a very modern moral dilemma: what response, if any, should one make to the apparent cruelty of live animal exports to other nations? The conception that this might be a moral dilemma is itself quite modern. In a similarly modern moral dilemma, many people fell bound to change the way that they live in response to the prospect of anthropogenic climate change. In this larger sense the scope and potential for reasoned choice is constantly increasing. Does it matter that, in some ultimate sense, each individual's choice is determined by imponderable necessities? Those necessities include the increases in knowledge, advances in technology and enlargements of moral consciousness that I mentioned a moment ago. We are, necessarily, choosing creatures in an evolving world that makes continuing demands on our best capacities.