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Abstract
Freedom is an unsolved problem in philosophy. Those belonging to the determinist school deny the possibility of free choice due to the deterministic nature of the supposedly free agents. The libertarians allege that there is a grain of indeterminism in free agents. The compatibilists argue that freedom and determinism can coexist and try to dissolve the contradiction between them. However, common compatibilist accounts do not explain how free choice develops in biological agents. In this dissertation I argue that describing freedom conceptually is impossible without explaining how it can exist in the world. Therefore, I develop an account of freedoms instantiation in living entities and suggest several prerequisites that are necessary for its exercise. I argue that freedom is linked to the form of life and distinguish between choice in non-verbal animals and human freedom, where the latter is enabled by the development of language and thus a distinct character. The descriptive account is followed by an exploration of freedoms evolutionary history that explains how it developed in the course of the evolution of species.