Title: Free Will Exists and Is Measurable - The Atlantic
Headings: Reporter's Notebook
Reporter's Notebook
Free Will Exists and Is Measurable
There's No Such Thing as Free Will and Determinism

Content: In this, they are right: quantum indeterminacy implies that physical reality has an irreducibly probabilistic nature. Other readers have pointed out that even classical physics does not always allow us to accurately predict what will happen: According to chaos theory, any of an incalculably huge number of tiny differences in initial conditions can lead to radically different outcomes. ( At least, that’s the excuse weather forecasters use for getting it wrong.) This too is a fair point. Continue Reading
But neither quantum indeterminacy nor chaos theory give us free will in the sense of a special power to transcend the laws of nature. They introduce respectively randomness and unpredictability, but not free-floating minds that cause atoms to swerve, or neurons to fire, or people to act. So you could read instances of the term “determinism” in my article as meaning roughly “the belief that human action is the product of physical laws” and all the points would remain the same. The kind of free will that I do think exists is one that is actually entirely compatible with the laws of nature as we know them.