You are not in control of your mind—because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.15 You can do what you decide to do—but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.

And if certain of my behaviors are truly the result of chance, they should be surprising even to me.

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.

Becoming sensitive to the background causes of one’s thoughts and feelings can—paradoxically—allow for greater creative control over one’s

There is no question that (most, if not all) mental events are the product of physical events. The brain is a physical system, entirely beholden to the laws of nature—and there is every reason to believe that changes in its functional state and material structure entirely dictate our thoughts and actions.

Both determinism and libertarianism hold that if our behavior is fully determined by background causes, free will is an illusion.

But without it, the place for our blame suddenly vanishes, and even the most terrifying sociopaths begin to seem like victims themselves.

intentions themselves come from, and what determines their character in every instance, remains perfectly mysterious in subjective terms.

And to the extent that the law of cause and effect is subject to indeterminism—quantum or otherwise—we can take no credit for what happens. There