Chapter 22: Free Will (Genome)

•At the Sanger Centre, near Cambridge, the complete sequence of chromosome 22 is finished.

• There is a gene on chromosome 22 called HFW which endows human beings with free will.

• I am a free agent, equipped with free will because of this gene.

• According to many people, freedom equals the parts of our natures not determined by our genes.

• We can rise above our genetic determinism and grasp that mystic flower, freedom.

•It is surprising to read Huxley’s book and discover that there is virtually nothing about eugenics in it.

• Alphas and epsilons are bred artificially, through chemical adjustment in artificial wombs, followed by conditioning and brainwashing. They are then sustained in adulthood by drugs.

• This dystopia owes everything to nurture, not nature (i.e., it is an environmental hell, not a genetic one).

• Huxley’s genius was recognizing how horrible a world would be if nurture prevailed over nature.

• We know now that studies claiming parental influences shape our character are deeply flawed— often because they fail to control for heritability factors.

•Social determinism is more alarming than genetic determinism because it implies that conformity to a peer group can have a strong influence on personality.

• The equation of determinism with fatalism is a fallacy because it overlooks the possibility that an individual’s actions could cause their own outcomes.

• Biological determinism does not threaten the case for political freedom because freedom of personal self-determination is what we cherish political freedom for.

• Full responsibility for one’s actions is a necessary fiction without which the law would flounder, but it is still a fiction.

•God has given us free will to choose between living virtuously or in sin.

• Some evolutionary biologists believe that religious belief is an expression of a universal human instinct, hard-wired into our brains.

• However, others argue that morality is the codified expression of our instincts and that what is right is derived from what comes naturally.

• Free will may be an illusion caused by our inability to analyse our own motives.

• Chaos theory provides a better answer to LaPlace’s question about why we cannot predict the future if we know all the determining factors in a system. This is because different causes can interact with each other in complex ways, making precise predictions impossible even if broad outlines are predictable.

•A. J. Ayer argued that if somebody else compelled you to do something, you would not be acting freely.

• Lyndon Eaves has said that freedom is the ability to transcend the limitations of the environment, and natural selection has placed this capacity in us because it is adaptive.

• Part of our revulsion at cloning originates in the fear that what is uniquely ours could be shared by another.

• There is no single gene for free will, but instead there is something infinitely more uplifting and magnificent: a whole human nature, flexibly preordained in our chromosomes and idiosyncratic to each of us.

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Related posts:

1. Law 17: Seize the Historical Moment (The Laws of Human Nature)
2. Part 2: Isolate the Victim (The Art of Seduction)
3. The Veil of Ignorance
4. Chapter 17: Death (Genome)