Timothy Stanley

On Free Will

May 29, 2015 timothywstanley@me.com

Commitment, public or private, to human dignity should not entail perpetuating fictions about free will, even if we need to ward off the counter-mythology of mechanical models of agency. And behind all these discussions stands the need to remind ourselves to go on being surprised, puzzled and prompted by what we take for granted about action itself – initiating events in the world – and language: speech that makes things different. No philosophy, politics or sociology worth the name will survive without that surprise; without at least a faint taste of Golding’s potatoes.

Rowan Williams, "Can We Ever Be in Charge of Our Own Lives," - http://www.newstatesman.com/node/227255

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