In March 2009 a British publishing house known for specialising in controversial non-fiction offered to publish the earliest draft of this manuscript, but subsequently withdrew that offer on concerns over the difficulty of marketing such a complex message (“highly sophisticated subject matter … too complicated in the current climate”). A complex message, and for many a deeply unwelcome one. In hindsight, though, this was an important move, as that version was long on outrage and polemic but rather short on fully formed logical analysis. So began the first of many rewrites. Over the period late 2009 to early 2011 an updated version was being used at Cornell University as a text for students on the course LAW 7652, Human Free Will and Criminal Law, and I would like to thank the course organiser, my friend Will Provine. I would also like to thank the other Cornell academics – philosophers, natural scientists and social scientists – who have, since 2009, provided me with kind words and feedback on my writing, particularly Derk Pereboom, Yervant Terzian and David Levitsky.
Originally called The Free Will Delusion, the working title changed back and forth a few times, particularly after Sam Harris used that title for a 2011 magazine article. The text has changed far more profoundly than the title has, though, and since 2011 my work has acquired a tendency to upset people more thoroughly. In the period 2011~2012 Florida State University funded two separate studies solely to try to undercut my writing on free will. It’s worth pointing out that FSU was recipient in 2010 of 4.4 million dollars from the billion-dollar Templeton Foundation; largesse intended to promote a better “accommodation” between religion and academia over the free will issue. The Foundation’s interest in free will, and the effect of the myth on the social order, goes back to well before 2010, and one world-renowned academic sitting on the Foundation’s board of trustees has called knowledge of the nonexistence of free will “one of the world’s most dangerous ideas”.
I would like to thank the journal editors who have carried my work or who have asked me to peer review others’ work on free will, and I would particularly like to thank Philip Laughlin at The MIT Press who in 2013 used me as a consultant on the arguments within the manuscript of one of the world’s leading free will philosophers. It was this approach from MIT Press that made me realise that I had moved sufficiently far from pure polemic such that I might once again think of getting a full manuscript published. There are a number of other academics I must single out for their kindness or words of encouragement, including the philosophers Robert Kane, Richard Double and Derek Parfit, but also the celebrated American biologist the late G. C. Williams. George Williams’s technical assistance to me on free will was necessarily somewhat less than his incredible assistance during my earlier years writing on selfish gene (“genic selection”) theory, the theory he is credited with developing in 1966, ten years before Richard Dawkins popularised his work. However, without the confidence George showed in my early work, and which culminated in his writing the Foreword to my 2004 book, I may not have had the courage, years later, to go straight after the biggest names in free will theory. And including, sadly, being forced to target one of the best-known propagandists of George’s work, the philosopher and evolutionary theorist Dan Dennett. It should go without saying that I have benefited both intellectually and in presentation from reading the works of many philosophers, but in particular I have been influenced by the writing of Bruce Waller, Derk Pereboom, Richard Double, Ted Honderich and Saul Smilansky. Any errors in this work are of course mine alone. I would also like to thank the non-academics who have shown interest in my work, including Tom Clark at Naturalism.Org, and the former Bishop of Edinburgh and bête noire of the British tabloids Richard Holloway. And I owe great thanks to Richard Oerton for his invaluable advice on publishing a popular tract on free will. Thanks to all at Matador and particularly my production controller Naomi Green, to my editor Joanne Harrington, and to Cameron Publicity & Marketing for taking up the challenge others thought too complicated in the current climate.
I would like to thank my brother, Dr Chris Miles at Queen Mary University of London, and my sister-in-law Sebnem Zorlu-Miles, for their always excellent advice on the format and for their suggestions for marketing a controversial work. Thanks to Dr Yorick Rahman and Rod Mackenzie for trying to come up with ideas for the cover. There are other friends and family members that I would love to acknowledge here, for their good humour and patience if nothing else, but as the subject matter of this book is likely to upset it is probably kinder to leave them unacknowledged. Richard Oerton recounts the hate mail one distinguished Oxford academic received in 1987 when he pointed out to The Times readers and the columnist Bernard Levin that free will was a delusion, and it would be a profound disservice if I dragged family and friends into a vicious intellectual and moral war that they did not ask to be part of.