Free Will

             Chapter six of Consilience speaks of the mind and explains how there is no true free will because everything inside our brains is mechanical. Although Wilson backs his argument with many good examples and facts, people do not like to be told that they have no free will because they cannot (usually) imagine a life without free choices. I think that Wilson is correct in the sense that everything is mechanical in our minds, but that people who read his book tend to think that from that one could one day actually predict exactly what people will do next. What they should understand is that free will in a sense will always exist because exact predictions could never be made, rather we could say that a certain person will have tendencies to do certain things.
             The Gods Are Anxious says that scientists discovered the gene of anxiety and goes on to attack that discovery with witty comments and claims that the discovery of these types of genes makes no difference from how things were before. This article proves my above point because the author interprets the fact that a "gene of anxiety" was discovered as a way for scientists to blame anxiety merely on a gene, when in fact that is not the case. He does not take into consideration the fact that there are other scientifically proved factors in a symptom like anxiety (such as environmental factors).
             The buck stops here and A biologist's thinking man are book review's of Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves". The first review praises the book under some aspects and says that it is a mistake for people to believe that all these discoveries about our brains in any way lessen our "free will". The second review emphasizes on this subject of free will, also agreeing with Dennett. The authors of these two articles understand better the meaning of scientific discoveries on genes, and do not misinterpret them like many others would. I specifically like the argument that even though we can figure out how the brain works we can never determine what a certain person will act like in the future because of the complexity of the system.