On Human Action and the Laws of Physics

My summary of Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind, chapter 3, The Will): 

Denying freedom on the grounds of causality is like denying that the chessboard is an arena for surprise, innovation, purposiveness, aimlessness, attentiveness, inattentiveness, alertness, dullness, mindfulness, unmindfulness, determination, fecklessness, creativity, brilliance, foolishness, and stupidity because it is strictly "governed" by internal rules as well as the laws of physics. Those rules and laws "govern" the game but do not "ordain" the moves.

If this is true of the chessboard, one can readily see that it is also true of the proverbial billiard table.

Ryle's project was not to establish that the features I've listed exist; everyone knows them when they see them. He did not, he said, "intend to increase what we know about minds, but to rectify the logical geography of the knowledge which we already possess." In other words, the source of those things is not the brain and it is not the soul ("the ghost in the machine"). It's the acting person--the character sadly omitted from the play jointly written by scientists, theologians, and even some philosophers.

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