Thomas Pink

Every day we seem to make and act upon all kinds of free choices - but are these choices really free? Or are we compelled to act the way we do by factors beyond our control? This book looks at free will.

Free Will: A Very Short Introduction

Sophie Shrimpton

The only reason I didn't give it a lower score was because I thought that it touched on a variety of theorists and ideas and gave me direction as to where I should read next. If my score was going to be based on the strength of the author's arguments it would be much lower. His underlying argument seemed to be that free will existed because laypeople believes it exists, and everyone would have a crises if it did not exist. That is not proper logical justification for belief in free will. He would often have a seemingly strong logic chain that then relied on 'common-sense' at the core.

Also, what really annoyed me, is that he brought questions of epistemology in at the end. He didn't properly consider them or address throughout - in the last few pages he basically stated "we don't know what's real anyway so we might as believe in freedom since nothing can be proved".

I'm also frustrated that this book seems to advertise itself as a 'Introduction' to the topic, which you would expect to be unbiased and give an accurate account of each theory in a balanced manner. But no, he just uses this platform to impose his half-baked ideas about free will on laypeople. 

Okay, looks like I'm changing my review from a 3 to a 2. It's too shit.

Free Will: A Very Short Introduction

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