Free Will

We need only acknowledge that efforts matter and that people can change.

You would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need to have complete control over those factors. But there is a paradox here that vitiates the very notion of freedom—for what would influence the influences? More influences?

feel that we freely author our own thoughts and actions (however difficult it may be to make sense of this in logical or scientific terms).

As we will see, this distinction can be preserved—and with it, our most important moral and legal concerns—while banishing the idea of free will once and for all.

Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

Clearly, we can respond intelligently to the threat posed by dangerous people without lying to ourselves about the ultimate origins of human behavior.

The great worry, of course, is that an honest discussion of the underlying causes of human behavior appears to leave no room for moral responsibility.

People feel (or presume) an authorship of their thoughts and actions that is illusory.

But from a deeper perspective (speaking both objectively and subjectively), thoughts simply arise unauthored and yet author our actions.