Ken G,

" In other words, it is a decision based on choice, and just how "free" it is requires looking at the circumstances leading up to that choice, not the process of making the choice (the latter being what you might apply cognitive science to learn about). It really gets to the question of, can we ever understand human biology well enough that we could recover a complete understanding of that person just by looking at a current snapshot of their physical state, or do the inherent limitations in analyzing a "current physical state" require that we will always get more knowledge by considering the history of the creation of that person's mind? For example, will we better predict which candidate they would vote for based on an MRI of their brain (hard science), or based on their answers to a personality questionnaire (soft science)? Could either ever be 100% reliable, even in principle?"

Funny you mention it:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...the-genes.html

I havent read the whole thing but i think it just suggests a predisposition towards ideology and they are'nt actually saying genes will predict whether one votes for a particular political party. That would be kind of strange. Like that film "Boys from Brazil" where they try to clone a bunch of Hitlers.

But anyways i agree that even if we can get really close to nailing down all the deterministic rules whether in physics or biology there will likely always be some uncertainty.