(Murray, 2024)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Cronin-Walker Assembly Theory and the Anti-Reductionist Turn
3. Physics is Not Causally Closed: Nicolas Gisin’s Anti-Mechanism
4. Barbara Drossel’s Anti-Reductionism
5. Donald Hoffman’s Case Against Reality: There are No Brains
8. Kevin Mitchell’s Free Agents: A Biological Case Against Mechanistic Determinism
9. Conclusion
The essay below has been published in six installments; this, the six and final one, contains sections 8 and 9.
But you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of the essay, including the REFERENCES, by scrolling down to the bottom of this post and clicking on the Download tab.
8. Kevin Mitchell’s Free Agents: A Biological Case Against Mechanistic Determinism
When we first looked at Kevin Mitchell’s Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (2023) for the purposes of this essay, we were skeptical. As a neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, Mitchell’s diving into the free will debate—a topic philosophers have wrestled with forever—seemed overly ambitious. But his arguments are impressive. He doesn’t just say free will exists; he shows how it’s baked into biology, evolving over millions of years. This fits into the anti-reductionist spirit of this paper, challenging the mechanistic idea that we’re all just cogs in a deterministic machine. Mitchell’s case is that life, from tiny cells to human brains, is built to make real choices, and that’s a direct jab at the clockwork universe of mechanism.
The Core Idea: Agency is Life’s Secret Sauce
Mitchell’s big claim is that agency—the ability to act with purpose—isn’t some lofty philosophical idea; it’s a core feature of living things. Even bacteria don’t just drift around like automatons. They swim toward nutrients, dodge toxins, and adapt to their world, making what look like basic decisions. This isn’t about defying physics, but about how life creates systems that can weigh options and act. It’s a theme we see across this paper—whether it’s Cronin and Walker’s Assembly Theory or Gisin’s open physics—where complexity and choice break free from reductionist shackles.
What’s truly interesting, however, is how Mitchell ties this to evolution. If everything was set in stone, why would nature bother crafting brains that can plan, predict, and choose? The fact that life keeps doubling down on these abilities suggests the world isn’t fully determined, echoing Gisin’s arguments about causal gaps and Nagel’s teleological leanings.
Agency at Every Level of Life
Mitchell breaks down how choice-making shows up everywhere in biology, as follows.
Cells Getting Smart: Even a single cell isn’t just a chemical blob. It “decides” when to flip genes on or off, tweak its metabolism, or respond to signals. It’s like a tiny problem-solver, using intricate networks to make sense of its environment. This mirrors Drossel’s point about emergent properties in complex systems—cells aren’t reducible to their parts any more than a superconductor is.
Organisms as Teams: Scale up to a whole creature, and you’ve got billions of cells working together like a well-rehearsed band. This coordination isn’t mechanical; it’s a dynamic system processing information to survive or reproduce, much like Cronin and Walker’s focus on assembly pathways.
Brains Stepping Up: Nervous systems are where things get even more interesting. They’re built to take in data, weigh options, and act—like a lizard dodging a hawk or a crow picking the best food. It’s not just reflexes; it’s purposeful action, aligning with Gisin’s idea of systems with room for novelty.
Humans and Consciousness: Then you get to us. Our brains don’t just react; they let us ponder “what if,” wrestle with moral choices, and plan decades ahead. Consciousness is like a superpower, letting us reason abstractly and tap into cultural wisdom. It’s hard not to see parallels with Nagel’s psychophysical nexus laws, where mind and matter intertwine in ways mechanism can’t explain.
Evolution’s Case for Free Will
Here’s where Mitchell’s critique of mechanism really has bite. He asks: if the universe is just a deterministic machine, then why did evolution pour so much energy into building decision-making systems? If the future’s already written, what’s the point of brains that can predict outcomes, learn from mistakes, or weigh trade-offs? It’s a question that resonates with Hoffman’s Fitness-Beats-Truth theorem—evolution favors what works, not what’s “true” in a mechanistic sense. The fact that life keeps inventing better ways to choose suggests there’s real wiggle room in how things unfold.
Mitchell calls this an evolutionary “arms race.” Organisms kept upping their game to survive tougher challenges:
- Better Senses: sharper eyes or ears mean better info, leading to smarter moves.
- Memory Tricks: Remembering what worked before helps avoid repeating dumb mistakes.
- Future-Proofing: Complex brains can guess what’s coming, picking actions with the best shot at success.
- Prioritizing Values: Systems that weigh what’s worth pursuing—like safety over a quick snack—give an edge.
In human animals, this gets to be sophisticated. We can imagine alternate realities, debate ethics, or learn from centuries-old ideas. It’s not just biology; it’s a system built for freedom, much like McGinn’s structural realism hints at deeper layers of reality we can’t fully grasp.
Knocking Down Hard Determinism
Mitchell doesn’t just cheer for free will; he takes a sledgehammer to hard determinism, the mechanistic idea that everything’s pre-set by physical laws. He calls out a few flaws that align with our broader critique of mechanism, as follows.
The Levels Trap: Determinists often assume that if neurons follow physical rules, our choices must be robotic too. Mitchell says this is a “fallacy of levels”—higher-level systems, like consciousness, have properties you can’t predict from lower-level parts. It’s like saying you can’t understand water by staring at hydrogen atoms. Drossel’s work on condensed matter physics makes a similar point about emergent properties.
Misreading Brain Science: Those famous experiments, like Libet’s, claiming your brain “decides” before you do? Mitchell says they’re overhyped. They test trivial button-pushes, not the big choices—like standing up for a cause—where free will matters most. This echoes Gisin’s skepticism about overinterpreting physics to deny agency.
Causation Confusion: Determinists think if something’s caused, it’s not free. But Mitchell argues free choices are caused by us—our reasoning, values, and goals. It’s not about being uncaused; it’s about the cause coming from within. This fits Nagel’s push for a naturalism that includes mental causation.
As for quantum randomness, some say it could “save” free will, but Mitchell is not convinced. Randomness isn’t agency; it’s just chaos. Still, he thinks quantum effects might add enough unpredictability to keep neural processes from being fully locked in, creating space for choice. This dovetails with Gisin’s quantum arguments about causal gaps.
How Brains Pull It Off
Mitchell gets into the nitty-gritty of how brains make agency possible. The prefrontal cortex acts like a boss, overriding gut reactions to focus on long-term goals. Working memory lets us juggle options, while predictive systems let us play out “what if” scenarios. Our brains also assign values—deciding what’s worth chasing—based on immediate needs and bigger-picture priorities.
The real magic happens when the brain weaves together sensory data, memories, predictions, values, and even social norms, into a single decision. It’s not a mechanical process but a dynamic one, much like Cronin and Walker’s assembly pathways, where history and process matter. Plus, our brains aren’t static—they adapt through neural plasticity, learning from experience to make us better at choosing over time. This adaptability screams anti-reductionism: you can’t boil it down to just neurons firing.
Fitting Free Will into Physics
One of the toughest nuts to crack is how free will fits with physical laws. Mitchell’s answer is: agency doesn’t break physics; it emerges from it. Complex systems like brains create higher-level properties—like beliefs or intentions—that can influence lower-level stuff (like neurons) through feedback loops. This “downward causation” is a lot like Drossel’s constraint-based causation, where higher-level structures shape what happens below without defying science.
Mitchell also points out that living things are all about processing meaning, not just physical forces. We take in info about what’s good, bad, or possible and use it to make choices. This focus on information aligns with Cronin and Walker’s view of life as an information-material hybrid, challenging mechanism’s obsession with reducing everything to matter and energy.
What It Means for Us
If Mitchell is really onto something, it changes how we see ourselves. Free will means we’re responsible for our actions—not just because society says so, but because we’re genuinely calling the shots when we reason and choose. Things like addiction or mental illness can limit that freedom, but when we’re clear-headed, we own our decisions. This resonates with Nagel’s defense of objective moral truths—our choices have real ontological and normative weight.
It also shifts how we think about growth. Agency isn’t fixed; it develops, like children learning to think for themselves. We can boost it through education, therapy, or even technology that helps us reason better. This practical angle feels like a natural extension of Drossel’s ideas about designing systems with emergent properties.
Why It Works (and Where It Falls Short)
Mitchell’s argument is a breath of fresh air because it’s rooted in biology, not just abstract debates. Like Gisin’s physics or Cronin and Walker’s assembly focus, it shows how science itself undermines mechanism. By tying free will to evolution, Mitchell makes it feel like a natural part of life, not some mystical extra.
Still, Mitchell doesn’t solve the “hard problem” of consciousness—how brains create subjective experience. Some might say that weakens his case, but we are with him on the epistemic humility front: consciousness is a puzzle we’re stuck with, and it doesn’t negate his point about agency. As McGinn might put it, some mysteries are just part of reality’s structure.
Wrapping It Up
Mitchell’s Free Agents is a game-changer in the fight against deterministic mechanism. By showing how agency evolves—from cells to human minds—he gives us a science-backed way to see ourselves as active players, not puppets. It’s a powerful addition to the anti-reductionist case we’re building here, alongside Gisin’s open physics, Drossel’s emergent systems, and Nagel’s teleological vision. Free will isn’t just possible—it’s what life’s been working toward all along.
9. Conclusion
This paper has surveyed a diverse array of critiques that individually and collectively challenge the mechanistic and reductionist paradigms that dominate contemporary scientific unificationism. From Gisin’s arguments for the causal non-closure of physics, rooted in quantum indeterminacy and finite precision, to Drossel’s case for strong emergence and top-down causation in complex systems, these perspectives reveal fundamental limitations in the mechanistic worldview. Cronin’s and Walker’s Assembly Theory reframes complexity as an irreducible historical process, emphasizing construction pathways over mere compositional analysis. Hoffman’s Interface Theory of Perception and Fitness-Beats-Truth theorem question the veridicality of our perceptions, undermining the scientific realism that mechanism assumes. Nagel’s teleological naturalism posits that consciousness and reason demand a rethinking of nature’s fundamental principles, as does McGinn, while Mitchell’s biologically grounded defense of free will highlights agency as an evolved feature of life, incompatible with deterministic reductionism. Although these critiques are not always mutually consistent—occasionally differing in their metaphysical commitments and explanatory priorities—taken as a single package, they demonstrate that rational, naturalistic alternatives to reductionist mechanism exist. These alternatives, grounded in rigorous scientific and philosophical analysis, suggest that science must embrace pluralistic and non-reductive frameworks to fully account for the complexity of reality, from quantum systems to conscious agency. Our survey in this essay double-underlines the fact that the reductionist project of mechanism is not the only path forward, thereby opening the door to richer, more inclusive understandings of nature that are fully anti-mechanistic.
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