"Guy Hoelzer"  wrote in message
> It seems to me the notion that human cognition can override natural
> selection is a contemporary manifestation of the old Victorian view that
> humans somehow exist outside of nature.  When will we (educated
> human populations) finally embrace the only scientifically consistent
> position that we are trying to understand nature from the inside?
>
Humans make most decisions in an adaptive way. For instance, if you ask a
person to walk from one end of a field to the other, most people will choose
the shortest or easiest route, minimisng their time and energy expenditure.
However people will also insist that they had "free will" to walk along
three sides of the square if they so chose. We don't know if animals also
have a subjective feeling of free will or not, since they don't have
language and don't have a social convention that free will exists. Free will
is not something that we can ignore, but it is not something that we have
any good theories about either.
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