Robin Dunbar, Free Will? What’s complicated about social life?, Have societies evolved?, in his Evolution: What Everyone Needs to Know
Chapter 8
Evolution of Behavior
80. Doesn’t the theory of evolution imply that there is no such thing as free will?
Ah, the question that always comes up eventually and the one that reveals the bugbear that underlies most concerns about evolution. The short answer to this question is simply: no. As we saw in the previous question, the point of paying the enormous cost of having a big brain is to be able to make your own decisions about what to do in light of the particular circumstances you happen to encounter. It is worth having everything determined by your genes only if your circumstances and the decisions you need to make never change. That is probably ever true only for bacteria and viruses. For the rest, it helps if the organism has some control over its own destiny so that it can fine-tune its behavior to the circumstances of the moment.
Natural selection simply sets the ground rules that determine the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action. It usually does that by es…