Sublime

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?

Where is the freedom in being perfectly satisfied with your thoughts, intentions, and subsequent actions when they are the product of prior events that you had absolutely no hand in creating?

(1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and (2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present.

volitional

the subjective experience of being a conscious agent—for a conceptual understanding of ourselves as persons.

Then comes Part II. Here I address the main paths that are open to us to take in our approach to truth. I take these to be science, reason, intuition and imagination. In each case I look at the strengths and limitations attendant on them; and bring to bear philosophical and psychological evidence and argument. I also look at what is contributed in

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

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.