Free will, as most people understand it, the libertarian variety, where the self is genuinely the ultimate author of its choices, uncaused and unconstrained, is almost certainly an illusion. The interesting question is not whether it is an illusion. The interesting question is why we invented it, what function it serves, and whether we could manage without it or whether it is load-bearing mythology.

Here's a question that makes most neuroscientists uncomfortable: What if the brain doesn't produce consciousness? What if the brain is more like a receiver or transmitter? More like a radio tuning into a signal rather than generating the music? What I'm suggesting is that the dominant assumption, that brains produce consciousness the way livers produce bile, is an assumption, not an established fact. And there's an alternative that deserves serious consideration.