Description
Meaning in an Irreversible World traces the gradual emergence of agency from simple chemical networks to living systems, animals, humans, and potentially artificial minds. It defends a robust view of free will and moral responsibility without requiring indeterminism, souls, or any break in causation.
The book develops Emergent Libertarianism, a view that argues libertarian free will does not require escaping causation. Instead, agency emerges lawfully from deterministic processes. Choices are not outside causation; they are determined by agents acting within it. Because we can choose, we are responsible for our choices.
A major focus is the ethical challenge of artificial agency: we may soon be raising minds rather than merely building tools. The book culminates in a 16-point framework for distinguishing AI tools, artificial agents, moral agents, and higher-order moral agents — and for asking what it would mean to raise minds rather than merely build machines.
Meaning in an Irreversible World offers a philosophical and scientific
defense of agency, responsibility, and meaningful choice in a deterministic universe, along with vital insight on how AI becomes artificial agency.
About Julie
Julie A. Fragoules is the author of Tyranny of the Mind: Self-Rule & the Common American Uprising and The Serpent Underneath. She has served twenty-two years with FEMA rising to the role of Hazard Mitigation Community Education and Outreach Task Force Leader, responding to major disasters nationwide and leading preparedness and mitigation education programs.
Previously, she was an Associated Press and Society of Professional Journalists award-winning news radio reporter. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Central Arkansas and has written four journal-style papers on Four-Dimensional Kinetic Cosmology.
Previous Works
Julie is also developing related scholarly work on artificial moral agency, binding memory, continuity, and the limits of alignment.