ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to address one limited aspect of the philosophical problem of free will. Already in his 1957 Gifford Lectures, philosophical theologian Austin Farrer stated the problem precisely:
Over the whole debate about ... freedom ... there hangs the shadow of physical determinism, a theory to which recent work on the brain has given a more definite outline. The functioning of the cerebral cortex is revealed as a system of electrical circuits; and apart from these (it is reasonable to suppose) no human thoughts are thought. Now the functioning of the circuits must presumably be understood physically or mechanically, that is to say, as exemplifying determined uniformities. How then - here is the difficulty - can it plausibly be maintained that an exercise of thought which has its being somehow in the functioning of a mechanical force, is really free? 1
