have been reading about how determinists have put us a lot of scientists under the spell where we believe that free will cannot possibly exist because all causation is bottom-up: billiard balls that bounce around at the atomic and subatomic level and determine chemistry, biology and ultimately behavior. i kind of held that erroneous view for the longest time, and then the compatibilists came along and kind of persuaded me otherwise, but this book has been the first to convincingly argue for the existence of top-down causation -- that system-level entities can have effects on their constituent parts. if you free your mind a bit, that thesis isn't really all that huge of a revelation, yet the watchmaker's world is such an alluring metaphor that i've managed to hold on to it through about 5 years of (independent, unguided) study on the topic. i suppose if dennett had been a little bit clearer in his books, i might have shed the idea sooner, but i sometimes find it hard to follow his logic.

in other news, it snowed another 2 feet, and everything was cancelled today.