ABSTRACT
We have seen that the claim to eliminate free will has many things wrong with it. But one striking thing it has in common with attempts to eliminate the self is, as I have been suggesting, that neither of them seems to be at all seriously meant. Rejecting free will normally makes no change in the rejecters' lives. They don't believe the denial that they profess. If, for instance, they lose an important document, they do not refuse to think where they left it, on the grounds that their mental efforts can never affect the world. Nor do they complain when it is assumed that the winners of Nobel prizes ought to work to deserve them, or that plagiarists ought not to steal other people's results.
