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5 unusual facts about Two-stage model of free will


Two-stage model of free will

The most recent thinker to describe a two-stage model is Martin Heisenberg (son of physicist Werner Heisenberg), chair of the University of Würzburg's BioZentrum genetics and neurobiology section.

David Sedley and Anthony Long speculated in their 1987 masterwork The Hellenistic Philosophers that Epicurus's swerve of the atoms might be limited to providing undetermined alternative possibilities for action, from which the mind's power of volition could choose in a way that reflects character and values, desires and feelings.

In his 1977 book with John Eccles, The Self and its Brain, Popper finally formulates the two-stage model in a temporal sequence, and makes the comparison with evolution and natural selection,

In 1995 Alfred Mele, clearly influenced by Daniel Dennett and Robert Kane, proposed his "Modest Libertarianism", a two-stage process that combines an incompatibilist early phase followed by a compatibilist control phase.

The mind's "two-stage" ability to be creative and free is likely evolved indirectly from Mayr's "two-step" process and then directly from the combination of random and lawlike behavior in the lower animals pointed out by Martin Heisenberg.



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