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Freedom Evolves
Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments—drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy—that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally. In Freedom Evolves, Dennett seeks to place ethics on the foundation it deserves: a realistic, naturalistic, potentially unified vision of our place in nature.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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4506 people want to read
About the author
Daniel C. Dennett
65books3,018followersDaniel Clement Dennett III was a prominent philosopher whose research centered on philosophy of mind, science, and biology, particularly as they relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He was the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Dennett was a noted atheist, avid sailor, and advocate of the Brights movement.
Dennett received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W.V.O. Quine. In 1965, he received his D.Phil. from Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied under the ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle.
Dennett gave the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. In 2001 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize, giving the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts University, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. He was a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Dennett received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W.V.O. Quine. In 1965, he received his D.Phil. from Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied under the ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle.
Dennett gave the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. In 2001 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize, giving the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts University, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. He was a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 138 reviews
July 2, 2013
100 pages into this book and I became utterly bored. I find it hard to digest holistic overview approaches when used by a philosopher to prove his point. Let me say at the outset that I never studied philosophy (although I did study mathematical logic) and I haven't read much in the field either, and that my criticism is that of a writer and an enthusiastic reader who's always curious. The few classic philosophy texts that I've read in the past held me from start to finish, like a good novel does, and cajoled me into understanding where the philosopher is coming from and what it is he's trying to achieve. What I like about that is that the philosophy is argued within the realm of philosophy - logical thought arguments. More modern approaches seem to be overly scientific in that they actually need to site latest developments or discoveries from the hard sciences such as physics or neurobiology to...well, to sort of validate themselves. Like arguing for the sake of arguing within the parameters of the available knowledge in their field is.. pointless. I don't know if this is true, or a general shift in the field of modern philosophy, but reading it in these bestseller-type books is exceptionally boring to me. Besides, the eastern civilizations have, for centuries, approached the 'big questions' holistically - and they've done a brilliant job at explaining the universe without the scientific method or modern technology. So if philosophers and scientists have an itch in their pants to need to tackle these grand cosmic questions using their western tools, at least write about it bearing in mind that I'm a pea brain who likes digestible chunks of information without repetition, over explanation, mathematics, references... I mean, seriously, either stick to your academic papers or take a damn writing workshop if you insist on tormenting me with your rhetoric, you just might publish something worth reading outside academia.
July 8, 2010
I tend to defer to authors when reading a book by someone, you know, smarter than me, but I'm fairly certain that this is one of the worst books I've ever read. If you read and liked this book, email me or message me on this website or something. I never bother to write reviews, but I've trudged through this book for a month now, and I hated it, so I feel compelled to write my feelings somewhere, and I'd love to hear from someone who tells me I misunderstood.
Here's the book's central concern, and it's one of those things that I used to think about and worry about and then just stopped caring about because it's an insoluble waste of time: we all make decisions, or whatever, but who is "we?" I am a product of genes and environment and I have nothing to do with those, and even those have nothing to do with themselves, and in fact the circumstances which allow a situation to happen are unbelievably complicated and may have nothing at all to do with "us." In fact maybe when you know like when whatever subatomic particles collided all the way back when, the future was already determined; they rebounded according to whatever path physical laws forced them to, and then we decided on chicken for dinner tonight. But we didn't decide. The decision was made the second the universe started. Our consciousness is an illusion.
I don't care to retype a lot of passages from Dennett's book, but here's what I think are a couple of key ones. From "Will the Future be like the Past?" in ch. 3 (p. 94 in my edition), in response to a straw-man critic insisting (as I assume many people will, since I did over and over again throughout the margins) that Dennett is not answering the question we picked up the books for:
"...Very well, if you insist. Maybe there is a sense of possible in which Austin could not possibly have made that very putt, if determinism is true. Now why on earth should we care about your question?"
Why wouldn't people care about this question? I mean, I long since threw up my hands because who cares, but -- after reading, in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, an account of Dennett's interesting "skyhook v. crane" argument re: something from nothing and the idea of God -- I thought this book could interestingly consider another spiraling, hope-nobody-mentions-it-when-you're-high-or-you're-all-going-to-freak-the-fuck-out philosophical riddle. The reason people wonder about all that is because people like to envision that we all know what good and bad is and that we make the choices ourselves, that we can blame Osama bin Laden for September 11 in a way we couldn't blame a comet falling through both towers. Your insistence that you could answer is why I, and presumably anyone, picked up this book.
Here is a piece of his conclusion (from "'Thanks, I needed that'" in the last chapter, on p. 302 in my edition):
"Yes, luck figures heavily in our lives, all the time, but since we know this, we take the precautions we deem appropriate to minimize the untoward effects of luck, and then take responsibility for whatever happens... [guy who did something bad:] can...face the much more demanding task of constructing a future self that has this terrible act of omission in its biography... This is indeed an opportunity for a Self-Forming Action of the sort Kane draws to our attention, and we human beings are the only species that is capable of making them, but there is no need for them to be undetermined."
Why, Dennett, is this a self-forming action? If someone wants to pick themselves up by the bootstraps, whence that? Was it not in their genes, maybe roused in them by inspiring speeches from their father or encouraging notes from a teacher? Would they not likely have turned out differently if they'd been starved in a basement and beaten all their lives?
I just don't get it. So many things he wrote seemed so obtuse that I wondered if I was simply stupid to not understand them. The whole "Life World" thing? I mean, just because it appears to us, in taking a large-scale view, that things are happening differently on this large scale, does not mean that it isn't simply happening according to the laws we impose, in the same way that us feeling consciousness does not mean we are somehow disobeying the law of physics.
And then there's the whole quantum indeterminacy thing. I can't say anything about this, but neither, it seems to me, does Dennett. Dennett doesn't ally with the libertarians who just use this as a way to say "see we're totally free because scientists can't pinpoint electrons" but it still hangs there as his only possible exception to physical laws governing the universe.
I guess I could go on, but it'd just be a random jumble of thoughts on the various claims he makes throughout the book. Perhaps you can claim that my random jumble shows I didn't understand the book, but I'd say my thoughts are like that because the book's in such disarray.
Seriously, if anyone out there really liked this book or wishes to tell me how I'm wrong, I'd be eager to hear from you.
(I gave the book two stars because Dennett is obviously deeply intelligent and widely-read and thoughtful and it's not a useless read like an awful novel; though I disliked like the book itself, I don't think it was a complete waste of time, per se.)
Here's the book's central concern, and it's one of those things that I used to think about and worry about and then just stopped caring about because it's an insoluble waste of time: we all make decisions, or whatever, but who is "we?" I am a product of genes and environment and I have nothing to do with those, and even those have nothing to do with themselves, and in fact the circumstances which allow a situation to happen are unbelievably complicated and may have nothing at all to do with "us." In fact maybe when you know like when whatever subatomic particles collided all the way back when, the future was already determined; they rebounded according to whatever path physical laws forced them to, and then we decided on chicken for dinner tonight. But we didn't decide. The decision was made the second the universe started. Our consciousness is an illusion.
I don't care to retype a lot of passages from Dennett's book, but here's what I think are a couple of key ones. From "Will the Future be like the Past?" in ch. 3 (p. 94 in my edition), in response to a straw-man critic insisting (as I assume many people will, since I did over and over again throughout the margins) that Dennett is not answering the question we picked up the books for:
"...Very well, if you insist. Maybe there is a sense of possible in which Austin could not possibly have made that very putt, if determinism is true. Now why on earth should we care about your question?"
Why wouldn't people care about this question? I mean, I long since threw up my hands because who cares, but -- after reading, in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, an account of Dennett's interesting "skyhook v. crane" argument re: something from nothing and the idea of God -- I thought this book could interestingly consider another spiraling, hope-nobody-mentions-it-when-you're-high-or-you're-all-going-to-freak-the-fuck-out philosophical riddle. The reason people wonder about all that is because people like to envision that we all know what good and bad is and that we make the choices ourselves, that we can blame Osama bin Laden for September 11 in a way we couldn't blame a comet falling through both towers. Your insistence that you could answer is why I, and presumably anyone, picked up this book.
Here is a piece of his conclusion (from "'Thanks, I needed that'" in the last chapter, on p. 302 in my edition):
"Yes, luck figures heavily in our lives, all the time, but since we know this, we take the precautions we deem appropriate to minimize the untoward effects of luck, and then take responsibility for whatever happens... [guy who did something bad:] can...face the much more demanding task of constructing a future self that has this terrible act of omission in its biography... This is indeed an opportunity for a Self-Forming Action of the sort Kane draws to our attention, and we human beings are the only species that is capable of making them, but there is no need for them to be undetermined."
Why, Dennett, is this a self-forming action? If someone wants to pick themselves up by the bootstraps, whence that? Was it not in their genes, maybe roused in them by inspiring speeches from their father or encouraging notes from a teacher? Would they not likely have turned out differently if they'd been starved in a basement and beaten all their lives?
I just don't get it. So many things he wrote seemed so obtuse that I wondered if I was simply stupid to not understand them. The whole "Life World" thing? I mean, just because it appears to us, in taking a large-scale view, that things are happening differently on this large scale, does not mean that it isn't simply happening according to the laws we impose, in the same way that us feeling consciousness does not mean we are somehow disobeying the law of physics.
And then there's the whole quantum indeterminacy thing. I can't say anything about this, but neither, it seems to me, does Dennett. Dennett doesn't ally with the libertarians who just use this as a way to say "see we're totally free because scientists can't pinpoint electrons" but it still hangs there as his only possible exception to physical laws governing the universe.
I guess I could go on, but it'd just be a random jumble of thoughts on the various claims he makes throughout the book. Perhaps you can claim that my random jumble shows I didn't understand the book, but I'd say my thoughts are like that because the book's in such disarray.
Seriously, if anyone out there really liked this book or wishes to tell me how I'm wrong, I'd be eager to hear from you.
(I gave the book two stars because Dennett is obviously deeply intelligent and widely-read and thoughtful and it's not a useless read like an awful novel; though I disliked like the book itself, I don't think it was a complete waste of time, per se.)
January 17, 2015
Dennett cuts through the baggage wrought by naval-gazing philosophers of the past and gets to the heart of the issue of free will. He shows that determinism is no enemy of free will. He disproves quantum consciousness. He justifies using the intentional stance in a deterministic universe, then uses this handy tool to explain when and how free will arises as an human adaptation.
He also defends the morality of investigating the scientific validity of free will. He also investigates some of the moral consequences that arise when we apply the tools of science to the problem of free will.
He also defends the morality of investigating the scientific validity of free will. He also investigates some of the moral consequences that arise when we apply the tools of science to the problem of free will.
September 19, 2023
Not much new here, which is truer and truer of Dennett's later works
The biggest problem, other than this book largely recycling "Elbow Room"?
Dennett refuses to take his ideas on free will to their logical conclusion, and stops at a brink.
That "logical brink" would be that, if there is no "Cartesian Meaner," no central controller of consciousness, then logically there is no "Cartesian Free Willer," no "central decider," either.
But, Dennett, as he did in Elbow Room (written before he fully formulated his ideas of consciousness vs. folk psychology) claims that there is a type of free will compatible with materialism and indeed, even worth saving.
Dennett rejects the philosophical label of "compatibilist" re his ideas on free will; nonetheless, any quibbles he has with the label are minor and ultimately, differences that make no difference. He claims that there are varieties of free will that do exist and are worth having. (I would say, instead, "worth believing in," as I don't believe his case is proven.)
Dennett uses more of his famous "intuition pumps" to elucidate his ideas on free will in a quasi-Socratic manner.
BUT, BUT, BUT, he never squares this -- he never even attempts to square this -- with his rejection of a "Cartesian Meaner" as stated in "Consciousness Explained."
Other modern cognitive philosophers DO go down this road and find there is no "central self" to have free will; Dennett's illogic must be held against any explication of free will he makes. (Daniel Wegner, among others, is a better read than Dennett.)
This book is a 2/3 star border for me, but, as I do occasionally here on older books with numerous other ratings, I adjust my rating to counter others, and so it gets bumped down.
The biggest problem, other than this book largely recycling "Elbow Room"?
Dennett refuses to take his ideas on free will to their logical conclusion, and stops at a brink.
That "logical brink" would be that, if there is no "Cartesian Meaner," no central controller of consciousness, then logically there is no "Cartesian Free Willer," no "central decider," either.
But, Dennett, as he did in Elbow Room (written before he fully formulated his ideas of consciousness vs. folk psychology) claims that there is a type of free will compatible with materialism and indeed, even worth saving.
Dennett rejects the philosophical label of "compatibilist" re his ideas on free will; nonetheless, any quibbles he has with the label are minor and ultimately, differences that make no difference. He claims that there are varieties of free will that do exist and are worth having. (I would say, instead, "worth believing in," as I don't believe his case is proven.)
Dennett uses more of his famous "intuition pumps" to elucidate his ideas on free will in a quasi-Socratic manner.
BUT, BUT, BUT, he never squares this -- he never even attempts to square this -- with his rejection of a "Cartesian Meaner" as stated in "Consciousness Explained."
Other modern cognitive philosophers DO go down this road and find there is no "central self" to have free will; Dennett's illogic must be held against any explication of free will he makes. (Daniel Wegner, among others, is a better read than Dennett.)
This book is a 2/3 star border for me, but, as I do occasionally here on older books with numerous other ratings, I adjust my rating to counter others, and so it gets bumped down.
July 20, 2009
We live in a deterministic universe.
Drop an apple and it will reliably fall to the ground, knock a snooker ball (or an atom) into another one at a particular speed and angle and you can predict the paths of both of them. Even the strange sub-atomic quantum realm operates within areas of probability that average out to give us the predictable effects that we can measure on larger scales.
As Douglas Hofstadter argues in '' our brains are composed of neurons with the simple function of switching off and on in response to the inputs from their neighbours and thus can be considered as formal systems acting in a deterministic fashion. Determinism implies that given a particular configuration of particles in the universe (including the states of the neurons in our brains) there is only one possible state that the system can advance at the next tick of the cosmic clock. How can the absolute inevitability of all things be reconciled with the sense of free will that we all experience?
It's a tricky question, and one that Dennett does not shy away from confronting in this book. It's a question that makes some people very nervous - if we don't have free will then what is the point of anything? Dennett likens this to Dumbo the elephant who believes that he can only fly when holding his magic feather until a pesky crow points out that the feather is not needed - stop that crow! Needless to say, Dennett sees himself in the role of the crow questioning the magic feathers that we insist on clinging onto.
He squares the circle by first explaining exactly what determinism is and what it implies, beginning with simple mathematical models such as Conway's Life game and chess playing computers, and then shown how rational agents can develop 'evitability' within such systems. He then argues that natural selection of both our brains and the cultural memes that govern our lives have given rise to consciousness and free will, as well as concepts such as morality and altruism that initially seem at odds with 'red in tooth and claw' style Darwinism.
If the book has any faults, it is that Dennett spends quite a lot of the time trying to anticipate the arguments that will be raised in objection to his thesis, thus making some of the early chapters somewhat convoluted in their presentation as he defines what determinism and free will are not before moving on to give his own ideas.
Absolutely fascinating, and full of optimism for our ability to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps of our own consciousness.
Drop an apple and it will reliably fall to the ground, knock a snooker ball (or an atom) into another one at a particular speed and angle and you can predict the paths of both of them. Even the strange sub-atomic quantum realm operates within areas of probability that average out to give us the predictable effects that we can measure on larger scales.
As Douglas Hofstadter argues in '' our brains are composed of neurons with the simple function of switching off and on in response to the inputs from their neighbours and thus can be considered as formal systems acting in a deterministic fashion. Determinism implies that given a particular configuration of particles in the universe (including the states of the neurons in our brains) there is only one possible state that the system can advance at the next tick of the cosmic clock. How can the absolute inevitability of all things be reconciled with the sense of free will that we all experience?
It's a tricky question, and one that Dennett does not shy away from confronting in this book. It's a question that makes some people very nervous - if we don't have free will then what is the point of anything? Dennett likens this to Dumbo the elephant who believes that he can only fly when holding his magic feather until a pesky crow points out that the feather is not needed - stop that crow! Needless to say, Dennett sees himself in the role of the crow questioning the magic feathers that we insist on clinging onto.
He squares the circle by first explaining exactly what determinism is and what it implies, beginning with simple mathematical models such as Conway's Life game and chess playing computers, and then shown how rational agents can develop 'evitability' within such systems. He then argues that natural selection of both our brains and the cultural memes that govern our lives have given rise to consciousness and free will, as well as concepts such as morality and altruism that initially seem at odds with 'red in tooth and claw' style Darwinism.
If the book has any faults, it is that Dennett spends quite a lot of the time trying to anticipate the arguments that will be raised in objection to his thesis, thus making some of the early chapters somewhat convoluted in their presentation as he defines what determinism and free will are not before moving on to give his own ideas.
Absolutely fascinating, and full of optimism for our ability to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps of our own consciousness.
October 12, 2017
I have never been a Daniel Dennett fan. His occasional arrogance and sometimes stodgy style don't help, but he does provide the reader with lots of very stimulating arguments, and on several occasions, I found myself stopping to put the book down and spend time mulling over the points made. It was worth the three stars just to experience that.
December 22, 2024
I was hoping he could convince me we have freedom, but the logic seemed to go in too many directions. Here are a few random notes and quotes:
"Yes, we have a soul. But it's made of lots of tiny robots."--Giulio Giorelli.
"I'm not a fatalist, but even if I were, what could I do about it?"--Emo Phillips.
Determinism is the thesis that "there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future."--Peter Van Inwagen. (I find it hard to disagree with this, with the possible exception of something unexpected happening in someone's environment. I was looking for a way out in this book.)
"Jesus is coming! Look busy!"--bumper sticker.
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking."--H. L. Mencken.
"50% off! Today only! $5.95!"--Sign that Allen Funt put up on the old tv show Candid Camera. People actually bought random stainless steel tubing.
"Fake it until you make it."--slogan for Alcoholics Anonymous.
"What animates practical thought is a concern for acting in accordance with reasons."--Immanuel Kant.
"Yes, we have a soul. But it's made of lots of tiny robots."--Giulio Giorelli.
"I'm not a fatalist, but even if I were, what could I do about it?"--Emo Phillips.
Determinism is the thesis that "there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future."--Peter Van Inwagen. (I find it hard to disagree with this, with the possible exception of something unexpected happening in someone's environment. I was looking for a way out in this book.)
"Jesus is coming! Look busy!"--bumper sticker.
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking."--H. L. Mencken.
"50% off! Today only! $5.95!"--Sign that Allen Funt put up on the old tv show Candid Camera. People actually bought random stainless steel tubing.
"Fake it until you make it."--slogan for Alcoholics Anonymous.
"What animates practical thought is a concern for acting in accordance with reasons."--Immanuel Kant.
April 10, 2017
I was a bit disappointed by Freedom Evolves, but that’s largely due to my own expectations. I had heard that Dennett held some sort of compatibilist view, whereby he argues that true, non-deterministic free will arises through evolution from a basis of determinism at the lower physical level. I was looking forward to be challenged and even swayed to this position by good arguments. Unfortunately Dennett’s view seems to be simply that the universe is deterministic, but at the level of complex creatures, evolution has driven the interactions within the brain and in relation to the external environment to generate a kind of will that is intentional and beneficial, and that for all intents and purposes (legal, moral, etc), this can be considered “free� will, or at least “a kind of free will worth having.� But even Dennett acknowledges that this kind of will is not really free from constraints, and is still deterministic (though, like a coin-flip, the outcome is dependent on so many factors that it cannot be reliably predicted).
This secondary argument of evolved “free� will seems to have developed to provide a safety net for people who are convinced by the primary argument for determinism and would otherwise throw up their hands and scream, “then what’s the point!� - these are people who grasp determinism but have not thought about the subject any further. In this respect his arguments for evolved free will (though they are largely informal and often not logically argued) do provide some perspective for such people and may cushion the blow, or at least promote further thought.
What I do respect about the work is that it is (for once!) philosophy that is grounded in science, not simply speculation. Dennett draws from examples in psychology and neuroscience, and while his conclusions are sometimes tenuous and often speculative, they are at least grounded in physical fact.
For me though, the ideas presented are not really that profound. The conclusions are often pushed past the point that they have been established through the argumentation, and to the extent that they have been demonstrated, they are often fairly obvious. The ideas and examples given can often be found elsewhere in his own work and the work of popular authors like Richard Dawkins. I would therefore only recommend this to someone with an interest, but who has not read many other works on these topics.
This secondary argument of evolved “free� will seems to have developed to provide a safety net for people who are convinced by the primary argument for determinism and would otherwise throw up their hands and scream, “then what’s the point!� - these are people who grasp determinism but have not thought about the subject any further. In this respect his arguments for evolved free will (though they are largely informal and often not logically argued) do provide some perspective for such people and may cushion the blow, or at least promote further thought.
What I do respect about the work is that it is (for once!) philosophy that is grounded in science, not simply speculation. Dennett draws from examples in psychology and neuroscience, and while his conclusions are sometimes tenuous and often speculative, they are at least grounded in physical fact.
For me though, the ideas presented are not really that profound. The conclusions are often pushed past the point that they have been established through the argumentation, and to the extent that they have been demonstrated, they are often fairly obvious. The ideas and examples given can often be found elsewhere in his own work and the work of popular authors like Richard Dawkins. I would therefore only recommend this to someone with an interest, but who has not read many other works on these topics.
February 4, 2021
I am sorry to say that I was quite disappointed by this book. I did not know what to expect. However, I thought I would find a discussion of the evolution of individual’s freedom from instincts across natural evolution, or perhaps of the evolution of freedom during humankind development, or even of the evolution of the notion of freedom in human societies. I found nothing of the sort. First of all, there is nothing about evolution out of human society. Nothing about non-human primates, altruist birds, social insects (or rat-moles), non-organismal multicellular assemblies, etc. (so many interesting topics to discuss in relation with evolution of freedom). There are endless chapters of rambling on previously misrepresented ideas of the author (it is hard to find a page without a self-citation) with abundant criticisms of other authors. There are excruciating digressions about cell-automata (the “game of life�) that the author apparently discovered just before and felt compelled to show how much he learnt about. Unfortunately, he only barely brushed the subject, referring to works that were many decades old. Worse, he completely ignored the stochastic versions (a.k.a. the modern, useful, versions) in the discussion about determinism and learning. In general, the difference between determinism, indeterminism and randomness is entirely ignored; to the point where we can wonder if the author is actually aware of it. When talking about the fundamental (some would say “philosophical�) basis of free will, there is nothing about the physics concepts of block universes or the different interpretations of quantum mechanics, including the key many-worlds interpretation. The only chapters I found interesting were towards the end of the book that basically say “if you are not free but you don’t know it, just act as if�. So� nothing much to add since St Augustine and St Thomas.
June 19, 2009
I was interested in this book because of the hypocritical inconsistency exhibited by many secular types who, reasonably enough, deny the existence of "God" but bristle at the prospect that we all live in a completely determined universe. They (and I include myself here) reflexively feel that while science rightly treats the entirety of the natural world as subject to the same universal (deterministic) laws, they must preserve an idea of human free will as an exception to the laws of physics, in exactly the same way that theists allow for intervention by "God". As Dennett puts it, this indeterminism insists that human beings are little godlets, or miracle workers, able to defy the otherwise universal laws of physics. Dennett understands that we want to believe that we are always "able to choose otherwise" in a given situation because, if we're not, there seems to be no basis for moral responsibility: praise and blame only make sense in relation to free choices, and why care about anything if we can never deserve praise or blame for whatever good or bad we do? His thesis, in short, is that it is unnecessary to invoke miraculous powers to solve this apparent problem. Thanks to natural selection, humans have more freedom than has ever existed in the history of the universe. Although this freedom is not exempt from the physical laws governing every particle in the universe, and is hence determined, it is only determined in the same sense that a coin toss is determined. That is to say our choices are determined by so many intervening variables that no observer can possibly know their outcomes. Dennett's view is that in the important sense of everyday life, humans make free choices. The key distinction here is between the physical level, the fundamental variables that determine the outcome of the coin toss, versus the design level, what agents are actually able to observe and experience. The latter is what matters to all of us, and the observable operation and evolution of freedom on that level--in our everyday experience--gives us a sufficient (Dennett argues, more well-founded) basis for moral responsibility.
All of this makes pretty good sense to me, despite my ingrained aversion to determinism. My only problem with Dennett, and I am still mulling whether I think it taints his whole philosophical outlook, is that he is utterly uncritical of his own implicit mainstream views of technological progress (which he presumes even now to be an inevitable, unstoppable impulse of human culture) and the state (which he presumes to be the only solution to organizing human society). He reaffirms these positions in his pejorative use of the terms "anarchy" and "Luddites" and in his praise of "civilization". "Science" is his main affinity, and those very institutions are prerequisite for its existence. It should not be a surprise then that they aren't in question here. What remains to be answered for me is, what is the benefit of a scientific deterministic worldview when we have concluded that the state system and the technological progress that created it (and that it demonstrably perpetuates in return) were not, are not, and cannot be desirable? Early in the book, (with none of his characteristic well-reasoned argument) Dennett parodies postmodern critics of science who characterize it as "just another in a long line of myths". But he proves himself, disappointingly, to be an equally simple-minded partisan of "science"; he sees history and the future going in only one direction, that of more elaborate guns, memes, and steel for which our "freedom" is evolving to help us to be prepared. The book leaves me more worried about the possibilities of a future with more science than about the question of my own free will. Personally, I hope that imperialistic science eventually becomes a detour, albeit an informative one, from which a freer, wiser humanity was able to return, instead of the dead end of absolute control which is its inexorable instinct.
All of this makes pretty good sense to me, despite my ingrained aversion to determinism. My only problem with Dennett, and I am still mulling whether I think it taints his whole philosophical outlook, is that he is utterly uncritical of his own implicit mainstream views of technological progress (which he presumes even now to be an inevitable, unstoppable impulse of human culture) and the state (which he presumes to be the only solution to organizing human society). He reaffirms these positions in his pejorative use of the terms "anarchy" and "Luddites" and in his praise of "civilization". "Science" is his main affinity, and those very institutions are prerequisite for its existence. It should not be a surprise then that they aren't in question here. What remains to be answered for me is, what is the benefit of a scientific deterministic worldview when we have concluded that the state system and the technological progress that created it (and that it demonstrably perpetuates in return) were not, are not, and cannot be desirable? Early in the book, (with none of his characteristic well-reasoned argument) Dennett parodies postmodern critics of science who characterize it as "just another in a long line of myths". But he proves himself, disappointingly, to be an equally simple-minded partisan of "science"; he sees history and the future going in only one direction, that of more elaborate guns, memes, and steel for which our "freedom" is evolving to help us to be prepared. The book leaves me more worried about the possibilities of a future with more science than about the question of my own free will. Personally, I hope that imperialistic science eventually becomes a detour, albeit an informative one, from which a freer, wiser humanity was able to return, instead of the dead end of absolute control which is its inexorable instinct.
March 7, 2007
A book combining many ideas from and , and pushing them into their logical follow-up questions: If materialism is so true, what are we to do about determinism and free will? A more in-depth look at determinism, what freedom really is, why quantum physics has no place in arguments of free will, and why we have nothing to fear from deterministic worlds. Discusses issues in possibility, causality, possible futures versus determined futures, possible pasts versus determined pasts (just read it!), and a host of other interesting ideas.
January 3, 2008
Needs massive interventions on the parts of editors.
November 9, 2017
After re-reading Consciousness Explained (1991) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995) recently, I decided to go all-out and re-read Freedom Evolves (2002) and Breaking the Spell (2006) as well. I'm glad I did; the books make a lot more sense on a second reading (and I have acquired a lot more background information and knowledge meanwhile). Each book contains a set of original ideas or new approaches to old problems, and for this Dennett deserves credit - a lot. A major drawback of his books is that he easily gets bogged down in philosophical issues that a lot of readers will not like (let alone follow). In this light, Freedom Evolves is a breath a fresh air, compared with Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea - two amazingly difficult, dense works of 400-500 pages...
Basically, Dennett applies the theory of evolution (an algorithmic process) to the notions of consciousness and free will. Does consciousness exists? Are we free? Dennett gives these questions his best shot and comes up with a coherent, convincing model of consciousness (and somewhat less convincing) human freedom. Here are some short steps that outline his main argument (I'm sure I missed some important details).
1. We - including our mental faculties - are products of natural selection, just like the rest of life on earth. Some steps are not yet clear and scientists are currently working on promising theories (e.g. origin of life). Even so, the broad outlines from millions of years of evolution are clear: from prokaryotes to eukaryotes to multicellular organisms to the diversity of life we witness. No skyhooks, cranes all the way!
2. There's a path up to Mount Improbable - via 'situation-action machines', 'choice machines', 'Popperian hypothesis-generating intellects' - leading to our own mental world: 'Gregorian creatures'. In other words: there's an immense variety of degrees of freedom, all according to the 'need-to-know-principle' that economically minded Mother Nature endorses.
3. Human consciousness and intelligence are adaptations, shaped by gene-meme coevolution. The origin of language led to an environment where humans communicate their mental states to each other and via this means learned to 'talk to themselves' (i.e. reflecting on our own mental states).
4. Not only this: consciousness itself is a tool that we use in our everyday communication: our 'self' is a point of reference in dealing with others. This leads to the illusion of consciousness. We think there's a centre (a Cartesian Theatre) where the 'buck stops' - a sort of control centre where we observe our bodies as machines under our control. This is simply not true (according to Dennett). In reality there are many simultaneous, parrallel processes going on inside our brains: consciousness is nothing else but our noticing of some processes - the ones that are most important for our functioning. (So, you don't notice the neurological processes regulating your heartbeat; you will notice changes in your visual area though).
5. Towards the end of his book - after dealing with consciousness - Dennett plunges into the debate of free will. Are we free? Well, according to Dennett, freedom is gradual. In general, we are more free than human beings were 100 years ago; some individuals are more free than others; human beings come equipped with more degrees of freedom (the maximum possible?) than other animals. This doesn't solve the issue though: does it make sense to ask: could I have done otherwise at time t in situation X? If determinism is right, I could have done nothing else, therefore I am not free. Dennett doesn't solve the puzzle, he just asks us to not be too narrow in defining the options at time t - minor variations are allowed ("If you make yourself really small, you can externalize everything"). In other words: it is not useful to take a dive into the quantum world (atom for atom comparisons or the (mis)use of quantum indeterminacy), just ask yourself if you could have achieved the thing you value in a range of similar circumstances. This still sounds fishy to me, it smells like a cleverly disguised evasion.
6. But luckily Dennett comes to the rescue: determinism is not related to freedom. In other words: whether we live in a deterministic or an indeterministic universe is completely irrelevant to the question about free will. Dennett argues that only a deterministic world offers the stability and predictablity for nature to 'design' organisms that can use their intelligence to interact with the world to accomplish goals. This is entirely convincing and I personally don't see why so many people who fear determinism flee into obscure quantum indeterminacy. In essence, they claim that we are guided - in all our decisions - by complete randomness. Is this free? It seems to me we would be just bouncing balls of random happenings: where's the freedom in this?
In all, this was an amusing book to read - food for thought - even though at some moments the main story became bogged down in intricate philosophical debates. I realize that this is a necessary inconvenience, but still found it tiresome at some points. In all, it's an interesting book that offers some original insights and is written in a clear and concise way. It's certainly one of Dennetts easier-to-follow books. For example, I found his treatment of consciousness (one chapter) much more enlightening than his treatment of consciousness in Consciousness Explained (a whole book!).
There's still a nagging question after closing the book though. I'm not a philosopher, I'm just an (interested) onlooker, but it seems to me that Dennetts treatment of freedom is ultimately a retreat into obscurity. Do we have freedom, or not? Maybe that's not the right way to ask it, indeed. But saying that freedom is the 'capacity to achieve what we value in a range of circumstances' leaves a lot of questions unanswered. I think Dennett is right in claiming that freedom is gradual and that it is a product of gene-meme coevolution. He convinced me on these points.
But that still leaves open the question of exactly how free the murderer is when he commits his act. According to Dennett, we should ask if this person can honestly acquiesce in his punishment; if not, then either this person is not rational (and therefore not responsible for his crime) or else this person is fully responsible for his self-control. In other words: anyone 'above the minimum treshold of self-control' is free and thereby responsible for his/her self-control; this treshold is politically agreed upon. Does Dennett claim that (at least in jurisprudence) freedom is a political construct? It seems so.
It seems to me that Sam Harris' answer is much more coherent and convincing (cf. Harris, 2011). Harris claims that if you would trade places, atom for atom, with this murderer, including his personal history, you would do exactly the same thing - is this freedom? But then again, if you would trade places, you wouldn't be you anymore...
This is another famous, excruciatingly tiresome philosophical thought experiment: If an evil neurosurgeon would take your brains out of your body and put it in someone else body - ofcourse under anaesthesia - would you be this other person? Or would you be your old self? These sorts of philosophical thought experiments are excruciatingly tiresome: if this evil neurosurgeon would do the things explained, you would simple be dead. Period.
What if an evil brain surgeon anaesthesizes you and puts your brain in vat and.... Practically impossible! Period.
Maybe I'll just wait another 25 years to await the advances in neuroscience and cognitive psychology instead of reading more books of philosophers on free will, consciousness and mind.
Basically, Dennett applies the theory of evolution (an algorithmic process) to the notions of consciousness and free will. Does consciousness exists? Are we free? Dennett gives these questions his best shot and comes up with a coherent, convincing model of consciousness (and somewhat less convincing) human freedom. Here are some short steps that outline his main argument (I'm sure I missed some important details).
1. We - including our mental faculties - are products of natural selection, just like the rest of life on earth. Some steps are not yet clear and scientists are currently working on promising theories (e.g. origin of life). Even so, the broad outlines from millions of years of evolution are clear: from prokaryotes to eukaryotes to multicellular organisms to the diversity of life we witness. No skyhooks, cranes all the way!
2. There's a path up to Mount Improbable - via 'situation-action machines', 'choice machines', 'Popperian hypothesis-generating intellects' - leading to our own mental world: 'Gregorian creatures'. In other words: there's an immense variety of degrees of freedom, all according to the 'need-to-know-principle' that economically minded Mother Nature endorses.
3. Human consciousness and intelligence are adaptations, shaped by gene-meme coevolution. The origin of language led to an environment where humans communicate their mental states to each other and via this means learned to 'talk to themselves' (i.e. reflecting on our own mental states).
4. Not only this: consciousness itself is a tool that we use in our everyday communication: our 'self' is a point of reference in dealing with others. This leads to the illusion of consciousness. We think there's a centre (a Cartesian Theatre) where the 'buck stops' - a sort of control centre where we observe our bodies as machines under our control. This is simply not true (according to Dennett). In reality there are many simultaneous, parrallel processes going on inside our brains: consciousness is nothing else but our noticing of some processes - the ones that are most important for our functioning. (So, you don't notice the neurological processes regulating your heartbeat; you will notice changes in your visual area though).
5. Towards the end of his book - after dealing with consciousness - Dennett plunges into the debate of free will. Are we free? Well, according to Dennett, freedom is gradual. In general, we are more free than human beings were 100 years ago; some individuals are more free than others; human beings come equipped with more degrees of freedom (the maximum possible?) than other animals. This doesn't solve the issue though: does it make sense to ask: could I have done otherwise at time t in situation X? If determinism is right, I could have done nothing else, therefore I am not free. Dennett doesn't solve the puzzle, he just asks us to not be too narrow in defining the options at time t - minor variations are allowed ("If you make yourself really small, you can externalize everything"). In other words: it is not useful to take a dive into the quantum world (atom for atom comparisons or the (mis)use of quantum indeterminacy), just ask yourself if you could have achieved the thing you value in a range of similar circumstances. This still sounds fishy to me, it smells like a cleverly disguised evasion.
6. But luckily Dennett comes to the rescue: determinism is not related to freedom. In other words: whether we live in a deterministic or an indeterministic universe is completely irrelevant to the question about free will. Dennett argues that only a deterministic world offers the stability and predictablity for nature to 'design' organisms that can use their intelligence to interact with the world to accomplish goals. This is entirely convincing and I personally don't see why so many people who fear determinism flee into obscure quantum indeterminacy. In essence, they claim that we are guided - in all our decisions - by complete randomness. Is this free? It seems to me we would be just bouncing balls of random happenings: where's the freedom in this?
In all, this was an amusing book to read - food for thought - even though at some moments the main story became bogged down in intricate philosophical debates. I realize that this is a necessary inconvenience, but still found it tiresome at some points. In all, it's an interesting book that offers some original insights and is written in a clear and concise way. It's certainly one of Dennetts easier-to-follow books. For example, I found his treatment of consciousness (one chapter) much more enlightening than his treatment of consciousness in Consciousness Explained (a whole book!).
There's still a nagging question after closing the book though. I'm not a philosopher, I'm just an (interested) onlooker, but it seems to me that Dennetts treatment of freedom is ultimately a retreat into obscurity. Do we have freedom, or not? Maybe that's not the right way to ask it, indeed. But saying that freedom is the 'capacity to achieve what we value in a range of circumstances' leaves a lot of questions unanswered. I think Dennett is right in claiming that freedom is gradual and that it is a product of gene-meme coevolution. He convinced me on these points.
But that still leaves open the question of exactly how free the murderer is when he commits his act. According to Dennett, we should ask if this person can honestly acquiesce in his punishment; if not, then either this person is not rational (and therefore not responsible for his crime) or else this person is fully responsible for his self-control. In other words: anyone 'above the minimum treshold of self-control' is free and thereby responsible for his/her self-control; this treshold is politically agreed upon. Does Dennett claim that (at least in jurisprudence) freedom is a political construct? It seems so.
It seems to me that Sam Harris' answer is much more coherent and convincing (cf. Harris, 2011). Harris claims that if you would trade places, atom for atom, with this murderer, including his personal history, you would do exactly the same thing - is this freedom? But then again, if you would trade places, you wouldn't be you anymore...
This is another famous, excruciatingly tiresome philosophical thought experiment: If an evil neurosurgeon would take your brains out of your body and put it in someone else body - ofcourse under anaesthesia - would you be this other person? Or would you be your old self? These sorts of philosophical thought experiments are excruciatingly tiresome: if this evil neurosurgeon would do the things explained, you would simple be dead. Period.
What if an evil brain surgeon anaesthesizes you and puts your brain in vat and.... Practically impossible! Period.
Maybe I'll just wait another 25 years to await the advances in neuroscience and cognitive psychology instead of reading more books of philosophers on free will, consciousness and mind.
April 1, 2021
Bilim çevrelerinin neredeyse ağız birliği yaparcasına bir yanılsama olduğunu belirttiği özgür iradeye en sağlam desteğin eleyici materyalizmin temsilcilerinden biri olarak görülen Dennett'dan gelmesi ilginç.
Dennett'in kitaplarını okumak bir kar küresini var güçle sallamak gibi. Bittiğinde ortalık toz duman. Ancak biraz sakinleştikten ve kitaba dair inceleme ve eleştirilerden ibaret ek okumalar yaptıktan sonra manzara netleşiyor. Hiçbir zaman kolay değil, ama manzara bu gayrete değer. Bu kitap için en büyük destek Kerem Cankoçak'ın özet mahiyetindeki değerlendirmesi.
İlk anlaşılması gereken nokta; özgür iradenin yaşamla ortaya çıktığı gerçeği. Öncesinde tek hakim güç fiziksel kanunlar.
İkinci adım; fiziksel bir gerçeklik olarak belirlenimciliğin, biyolojik bir davranış olan kaçınma ile çelişmediğini anlamak.
Sonrası ise bu basit kaçınma hareketinin evrim tornasında milyarlarca yıl içinde, adım adım özgür iradeye dönüştüğünü izlemek.
Özgür iradeye alan bırakacağı düşünülen kuantum belirlenimsizliğinin, kavramı açıklamaktan ziyade başka bir gizeme teslim ettiği ve bizleri karar veren değil karara tabi kıldığı şeklindeki argüman ikna edici. Belirlenimsizlik bizi kararlar alan iradeye değil rastgeleliğe götürüyor.
Özgür iradeye karşı güçlü bir dayanak olan Libet deneylerinin ise bilincin beyinde uzay ve zamanda yayılmış bir süreç olduğunu görmeyip, zaman açısından doğrusal bir değerlendirmenin hatalı yorumu olduğu ileri sürülmüş. Bu da Dennett’in bilincin çoklu taslak modeli ile daha önce ortaya koyduğu iddianın bizzat kendisi.
Dennett'in kitaplarını okumak bir kar küresini var güçle sallamak gibi. Bittiğinde ortalık toz duman. Ancak biraz sakinleştikten ve kitaba dair inceleme ve eleştirilerden ibaret ek okumalar yaptıktan sonra manzara netleşiyor. Hiçbir zaman kolay değil, ama manzara bu gayrete değer. Bu kitap için en büyük destek Kerem Cankoçak'ın özet mahiyetindeki değerlendirmesi.
İlk anlaşılması gereken nokta; özgür iradenin yaşamla ortaya çıktığı gerçeği. Öncesinde tek hakim güç fiziksel kanunlar.
İkinci adım; fiziksel bir gerçeklik olarak belirlenimciliğin, biyolojik bir davranış olan kaçınma ile çelişmediğini anlamak.
Sonrası ise bu basit kaçınma hareketinin evrim tornasında milyarlarca yıl içinde, adım adım özgür iradeye dönüştüğünü izlemek.
Özgür iradeye alan bırakacağı düşünülen kuantum belirlenimsizliğinin, kavramı açıklamaktan ziyade başka bir gizeme teslim ettiği ve bizleri karar veren değil karara tabi kıldığı şeklindeki argüman ikna edici. Belirlenimsizlik bizi kararlar alan iradeye değil rastgeleliğe götürüyor.
Özgür iradeye karşı güçlü bir dayanak olan Libet deneylerinin ise bilincin beyinde uzay ve zamanda yayılmış bir süreç olduğunu görmeyip, zaman açısından doğrusal bir değerlendirmenin hatalı yorumu olduğu ileri sürülmüş. Bu da Dennett’in bilincin çoklu taslak modeli ile daha önce ortaya koyduğu iddianın bizzat kendisi.
Read
August 11, 2021If you like what Daniel Dennett calls "toy universes" or "toy worlds," you will love this book. If, like me, you question the validity of contrived analogies between "toy" mental constructions and the actual human world, you will find the book less endearing.
Interspersed among lengthy digressions on toy mental constructions in the first half of this book are comments that sometimes appear to be germane to the issue at hand: scientific determinism versus free will. Dennett is a self-acknowledged "compatibilist"—one who takes a middle road between the "hard determinists" and the advocates of free will. "[C]ompatibilism [is] the view that free will and determinism are compatible after all, the view that I am defending in this book." (Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves, Kindle ed. [New York: Penguin, 2004), 98.) How Dennett can take such a position without violating the principle of (non)contradiction is the central mystery of this work. He tries to accomplish it by utilizing semantic legerdemain: changing the historical meanings of such terms as "determinism," "inevitability," and "free will" so that they signify something other than what they have classically meant in the millennia of philosophical, scientific, and other debate on these issues. In Dennett's universe, "determinism" does not imply either inevitability or causation, and "free will" does not mean free will but rather something like free will. For example, Dennett remarks in chapter 4: "The hard determinists among you may find in subsequent chapters that your considered view is that whereas free will� as you understand the term� truly doesn’t exist, something rather like free will does exist, and it’s just what the doctor ordered for shoring up your moral convictions, permitting you to make the distinctions you need to make." (Dennett, Freedom Evolves, 98 [italics in the original].) Nevertheless, like the impossibility of following the ball in quantum mechanics, I still don't understand his exact position even after two readings of this book. The judgment of Dennett's hard-determinist friend Sam Harris (whose book on free will I have otherwise critically reviewed here) may be on point:
"As I have said, I think compatibilists like Dennett change the subject: They trade a psychological fact—the subjective experience of being a conscious agent—for a conceptual understanding of ourselves as persons. This is a bait and switch." (Sam Harris Free Will, Kindle ed. [New York: Free Press, 2012], 22.)
About half-way through his book, Dennett transitions from an obsession with game theory to a preoccupation with genetic and cultural evolution. This change in focus was welcome to the present reader. At least here we are dealing with empirical fact (or, more precisely, Dennett's interpretation of empirical fact through more analogical reasoning). But the relevance of this large digression to the issue of determinism versus free will is less than apparent. "Freedom evolves," according to Dennett, but what does this mean exactly? Although the last two chapters delineate a picture of evolved human life that implies free will, he nevertheless maintains until the end of the book that scientific determinism remains valid. The entire book juggles these inconsistent concepts as though they are somehow compatible, but in the end Dennett never resolves the contradiction.
Alan E. Johnson
April 29, 2018
8/11/2021 NOTE: See also the discussion of Dennett in my book Free Will and Human Life.
Interspersed among lengthy digressions on toy mental constructions in the first half of this book are comments that sometimes appear to be germane to the issue at hand: scientific determinism versus free will. Dennett is a self-acknowledged "compatibilist"—one who takes a middle road between the "hard determinists" and the advocates of free will. "[C]ompatibilism [is] the view that free will and determinism are compatible after all, the view that I am defending in this book." (Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves, Kindle ed. [New York: Penguin, 2004), 98.) How Dennett can take such a position without violating the principle of (non)contradiction is the central mystery of this work. He tries to accomplish it by utilizing semantic legerdemain: changing the historical meanings of such terms as "determinism," "inevitability," and "free will" so that they signify something other than what they have classically meant in the millennia of philosophical, scientific, and other debate on these issues. In Dennett's universe, "determinism" does not imply either inevitability or causation, and "free will" does not mean free will but rather something like free will. For example, Dennett remarks in chapter 4: "The hard determinists among you may find in subsequent chapters that your considered view is that whereas free will� as you understand the term� truly doesn’t exist, something rather like free will does exist, and it’s just what the doctor ordered for shoring up your moral convictions, permitting you to make the distinctions you need to make." (Dennett, Freedom Evolves, 98 [italics in the original].) Nevertheless, like the impossibility of following the ball in quantum mechanics, I still don't understand his exact position even after two readings of this book. The judgment of Dennett's hard-determinist friend Sam Harris (whose book on free will I have otherwise critically reviewed here) may be on point:
"As I have said, I think compatibilists like Dennett change the subject: They trade a psychological fact—the subjective experience of being a conscious agent—for a conceptual understanding of ourselves as persons. This is a bait and switch." (Sam Harris Free Will, Kindle ed. [New York: Free Press, 2012], 22.)
About half-way through his book, Dennett transitions from an obsession with game theory to a preoccupation with genetic and cultural evolution. This change in focus was welcome to the present reader. At least here we are dealing with empirical fact (or, more precisely, Dennett's interpretation of empirical fact through more analogical reasoning). But the relevance of this large digression to the issue of determinism versus free will is less than apparent. "Freedom evolves," according to Dennett, but what does this mean exactly? Although the last two chapters delineate a picture of evolved human life that implies free will, he nevertheless maintains until the end of the book that scientific determinism remains valid. The entire book juggles these inconsistent concepts as though they are somehow compatible, but in the end Dennett never resolves the contradiction.
Alan E. Johnson
April 29, 2018
8/11/2021 NOTE: See also the discussion of Dennett in my book Free Will and Human Life.
January 31, 2009
Having read a lot in the area of consciousness and free-will and being a researcher in neuroscience, I can say that Dennett has a good grasp of the most important aspects of this field. For anyone not in the field, they can get an excellent review of the many sides of the debate. In addition to reading the scientific and philosophical journals, out of professional interest, I was also reading Wegner's "The illusion of Conscious Will". I can't be completely objective, because both authors were preaching to the choir. But as far as the writers out there who are in the field and trying to simultaneously get their latest theories out there while making them somewhat accessible to anyone interested, Dennett does a good job. I liked this as much, maybe more than Breaking the Spell, his book on explaining religion and his position on atheism. All in all a highly recommended read for anyone wondering how anyone could believe we don't have free will.
March 6, 2016
It's not that I would disagree with Dennett on his main points. It's that I despise his writing.
All the space he uses to ridicule those who don't get his views, the overall condescending tone, the superfluous use of block quotes - sometimes only to show that he's famous: "hey, I was referenced to in this novel, in which there's a fictitious character who happens to be wrong about free will!". Frankly, I expected better, and those expectations were probably why I ended up finishing the book: I held on to the hope that it would get better towards the end.
Writing pop science is a tricky job. But as many other writers demonstrate, it is possible to be clear without being condescending, to be conversational without rambling, and to disagree with views without ridiculing them.
All the same, I probably did get something out of this, although I'm rather unsure what it was I got. I award the second star in honor of that mysterious take-off.
All the space he uses to ridicule those who don't get his views, the overall condescending tone, the superfluous use of block quotes - sometimes only to show that he's famous: "hey, I was referenced to in this novel, in which there's a fictitious character who happens to be wrong about free will!". Frankly, I expected better, and those expectations were probably why I ended up finishing the book: I held on to the hope that it would get better towards the end.
Writing pop science is a tricky job. But as many other writers demonstrate, it is possible to be clear without being condescending, to be conversational without rambling, and to disagree with views without ridiculing them.
All the same, I probably did get something out of this, although I'm rather unsure what it was I got. I award the second star in honor of that mysterious take-off.
October 28, 2022
Daniel Dennett loves to confuse you by hijacking terms and making you believe that you’ve completely misunderstood what a word means. One of my favourite passages from Freedom Evolves is where Dennett brings up Austin’s putt. Austin is a good golfer who is, we are told, faced with a simple putt, but it just so happens that he misses this one particular putt. The question now is: could he have made the putt? One possible answer is no: if you were to wind back the clock, and the universe is deterministic, Austin would miss the putt again—and he would miss it every single time you wound back the clock. So he couldn’t have made the putt—right? Well, yes and no. There is of course a different way we use the word could. Remember: Austin is a good golfer, so, in a way, he absolutely could have made the putt. It’s not like he doesn’t know what he is doing!
For Dennett, free will (could he have made the putt?) is not about breaking the laws of physics—you can’t wind back the clock and expect something different to happen. No: for Dennett, it seems to be more about competence: of course, I may not have been able to make the putt, but Austin could. In fact, he makes puts like it all the time!
So how is the putt related to free will? People are capable of making decisions in the same way Austin is capable of making the putt. When we make decisions, and say we could have done otherwise, we are using the word could in the same way we do when we talk about Austin and his putt. We are not saying that you could wind back the clock and make a different decision. What this implies for the "free" in "free will" is another story...
For Dennett, free will (could he have made the putt?) is not about breaking the laws of physics—you can’t wind back the clock and expect something different to happen. No: for Dennett, it seems to be more about competence: of course, I may not have been able to make the putt, but Austin could. In fact, he makes puts like it all the time!
So how is the putt related to free will? People are capable of making decisions in the same way Austin is capable of making the putt. When we make decisions, and say we could have done otherwise, we are using the word could in the same way we do when we talk about Austin and his putt. We are not saying that you could wind back the clock and make a different decision. What this implies for the "free" in "free will" is another story...
August 23, 2018
Well at least I can say I’ve now at least attempted to steel-man compatibilism, though it continues to fall short given the context of our societies and the beliefs people hold. And don’t get me wrong; Dennett makes a fascinating case for a justified use of a term like ‘free will�. The problem, however, is that he drastically underestimates the adherence to libertarian free will that continues to permeate society, particularly across religious cultures. This flavor of ‘free will�, which Dennett thoroughly shows to be nonsensical, continues to justify eternal punishment for finite earthly actions, and even in our human justice systems provides grounds for retributive justice which should be decades if not centuries in our past.
It’s clear that Dennett still holds to some of the fears regarding the counterfactual of a world where people recognize we don’t have free will, but I think this is the case for many new ideas before they spread and are properly understood. We cannot hold to masses to some sort of lower standard forever, and creating a ‘new definition� for free will only muddies the water in other important conversations that need to be had.
It’s surely one of the best arguments I’ve heard for the wrong conclusion, but wrong nonetheless. Also, there are a few too many tangents with respect to Darwinian memetic selection that are a bit beyond the scope when describing just how 'freedom evolves�.
It’s clear that Dennett still holds to some of the fears regarding the counterfactual of a world where people recognize we don’t have free will, but I think this is the case for many new ideas before they spread and are properly understood. We cannot hold to masses to some sort of lower standard forever, and creating a ‘new definition� for free will only muddies the water in other important conversations that need to be had.
It’s surely one of the best arguments I’ve heard for the wrong conclusion, but wrong nonetheless. Also, there are a few too many tangents with respect to Darwinian memetic selection that are a bit beyond the scope when describing just how 'freedom evolves�.
January 16, 2021
An absolute delight. I really loved the way the whole argument for the intentional stance was embodied in each chapter while giving the reader mounts of arguments and evidence about how the drivers of our cultural evolution has panned out.
There is something about the way Dennett argues that always gets me. It's beautiful, on point, and most of the time simply masterful. I think many of the bad reviews on this one are based on the assumption that his defense for the stance was a definitive answer. I also believe many people favors another kind of "argumentative strategy" when reading books on the subject or the likes. Dennett does not give a grandiose conclusion nor makes absolute claims throughout the book, instead it is full of provocative insights build upon what I think is a really well documented background. His whole conclusión Is even written in such a way that I believe one should feel inclined to at least look at the further reading proposed. Great experience overall.
Loved the reference to Dimonds guns, germs and steel. Lol
There is something about the way Dennett argues that always gets me. It's beautiful, on point, and most of the time simply masterful. I think many of the bad reviews on this one are based on the assumption that his defense for the stance was a definitive answer. I also believe many people favors another kind of "argumentative strategy" when reading books on the subject or the likes. Dennett does not give a grandiose conclusion nor makes absolute claims throughout the book, instead it is full of provocative insights build upon what I think is a really well documented background. His whole conclusión Is even written in such a way that I believe one should feel inclined to at least look at the further reading proposed. Great experience overall.
Loved the reference to Dimonds guns, germs and steel. Lol
April 23, 2024
The Greek word that gave us 'pharmacy' meant both 'poison' and 'cure'. The thoroughgoing naturalism of which Dennett is arguably the most brilliant exponent has, it seems to me, pernicious influences in the world, mainly in the form of 'nothingbuttery' (love is 'nothing but' survival instinct, we are 'nothing but' genes etc). That's the poison part - often manifested in the increasingly widespread belief that since we are 'nothing but' assemblages of atoms obeying the laws of physics (with a smidge of genetic determinism thrown in), it stands to reason that we cannot have free will, since we are determined by our antecedent conditions (physical, genetic etc). This is where the cure part comes in. Dennett has established a reputation as a 'debunker' (of religion etc) - but this book shows him in a 'bunking' mode. In my view, he deserves to be much more known for this other persona. Like "Elbow Room", his previous book on the topic, he constructs careful arguments to prop up the idea that free will is notjust an illusion.
Perhaps the easiest starting point is by examining the odd hope that some place in quantum physics, who seems to outline some pockets of genuine indeterminacy embedded in the fabric of the world. Some harbour hopes that this would open a window through which agency can creep in, channels through which the will can affect and effect outcomes which are not given in advanceby the prior state of the world. Dennett's point is that such hopes are misguided. Randomquantum fluctuations cannot provide a solid foundation for free will - which, after all, is meant to maintain a *link* between intention, action and outcome. We would need to 'to get the undetermined
quantum event to be not just in you but yours.'. Like Velcro, we need something to latch onto - and asking for an indeterministic world is asking for too much!
Does this mean we are inevitably at the mercy of determinism? Not so, argues Dennett. The real variables are *information and control*, not determinism. But to see his argument we need to shake off a few persistent intuitions. Determinism suggests that, if you ran the movie of the universe again, I would do the same actions in exactly the same way (and, presumably, some sort of omniscient entity could predict that, too). Whither free will, then? If everything is determined, it could not have been different. Dennett argues that this is true, but not that interesting - almost a truism. If nothing changed, nothing changes. The more interesting question is whether I could have done different in *slightly different circumstances*. A golfer that misses a shot and says 'I could have sunk it' usually means that it was *within their capabilities*, perhaps with slight changes in footing, grip etc. Dennett builds on this intuition by comparing two chess programs, A and B. B loses one game - and an observer says 'B could have castled'. If we ran the same game over and over again, B would always lose. But if we run different permutations, and see that in some similar games, B is able to castle (perhaps because it spends a split-second longer evaluating moves, or it has a different value in its pseudo-random-number generator), it seems we are right to say that B could have castled. In other words, given the information set and capabilities of the programme, the option was in some sense, available. This is the crux of Dennett's 'compatibilist' position - the fact that B is a completely deterministic programme is irrelevant to whether we can speak in a real and causal sense about the options available - there is 'elbow room' for manoeuvre.
He explores some interesting implications of this idea with the help of John Conway's Game of Life - a simple model of cellular automata, where just two lines determining if the cells in a grid are ON or OFF - again, purely deterministic, but where nevertheless there are possibilities - not least the possibility of running a Universal Turing Machine on it, i.e. anything that can be programmed. His main argument is that even in such simple worlds, there can be an objective sense in which to speak of features which are more or less conducive to the avoidance of harm and the pursuit of goals (simple replication in the first instance, and more complex goals as entities - in the real world this time - get more complex. This explains the title: free will is not a metaphysical quality inherent in the universe, but something that *emerges* at a certain level of complexity - notably, when reasons (what Dennett calls 'free-floating rationales') become appropriated, consciously as our reasons. Importantly, is also something that can be lost. It is a faculty to be cultivated which is implicit in folk practices and law, too - infants and those with senile dementia are said, rightly, to not have it/have lost it.
This gradualist, evolving perspective is important. Consider, as a parallel, the evolution of species. We would say, today, that mammals are creatures with certain recognisable features, which are *born of other mammals* - that is the whole point of speciation, that different species do not mate! But if you run the clock backwards in time far enough, you run into difficulties as you run into the transitional species between reptiles and mammals. "Can we identify a mammal, the Prime Mammal, that didn't have a mammal for a mother... On what grounds? Whatever ever the grounds are, they will be indistinguishable from the grounds we could also use to support the verdict that that animal was not a
mammal—after all, its mother was a therapsid. What should we do? We should quell our desire to draw lines. We don't need to draw lines. We can live with the quite unshocking and unmysterious fact that, you see, there were all these gradual changes that accumulated over many millions of years and eventually produced undeniable mammals."
Similarly, when incompatibilists insist that our antecedents condition us and thus negate free will, they do not allow for different degrees of determination. "Events in the distant past were indeed not "up to me," but my choice now to Go or Stay is up to me because its "parents"—some events in the recent past, such as the choices I have recently made—were up to me (because their "parents" were up to me), and so on, not to infinity, but far enough back to give my self enough spread in space and time so that there is a me for my decisions to be up to! The reality of a moral me is no more put in doubt by the incompatibilist argument than is the reality of mammals."
More: "what is inevitable doesn't depend on whether or not determinism reigns, but on "whether or not there are steps we can take, based on information we can get in time to take those steps, to avoid the foreseen harm. There are two requirements for a meaningful choice: information and a path for the information to guide".
Words as commonly used often capture important truths, and Dennett gives the example of Martin Luther, defending his views in front of the Inquisition with the famous: "Here I stand. I can do no other". This is a statement of determination (pun very much intended) - where the supposed lack of alternatives was not invoked as an excuse - precisely the opposite, Luther was taking responsibility!
Now for a small quibble - Dennett discusses the case of redwood trees that grow so tall due to a 'tragedy of the commons' situation - if only some agreement among trees could be reached so that they don't all have to waste time reaching so high for the light. This is an example of the problem with evolutionary 'Just So' stories - simple, seductive, but sometimes wrong. It turns out, as Peter Wohlleben shows in his 'Secret Life of Trees' that mother trees often regulate the growth of their saplings by sharing or withdrawing resources such that the young'uns don't grow too fast and thus, risk breaking by not having thick enough trunks. It's a minor point in the context of the book, but it is emblematic of the perils of 'nothingbuttery' - seeing trees as nothing more than basic organisms blinds one from seeing more complex modes of interaction. David Graeber's 'What's the point if we can't have fun?' looks at this issue more closely, exploring how the concept of play and fun is banished from biology .
Coming back to the topic, there is a different side of 'nothingbuttery' which Dennett is rightly worried about - the more we think we are nothing but the playthings of circumstance, the more likely we are to act irresponsibly. In one study, participants who were 'primed' to believe there is no free will were more likely to cheat during the experiment! And this is why I think this is an important book - higher-order concepts and values are often under assault from those who want to 'debunk' them, and Dennett makes an eloquent attempt to rescue free will from such assaults.
The open question, to me, is whether the tools of naturalism are sufficient here, given the broader cultural forces at play. One beautiful quote in the book speaks of how "it is solely by believing himself a creature but little lower than the cherubim that man has by interminable small degrees become, upon the whole, distinctly superior to the chimpanzee." (JB Cabell). The idea that, without smuggling in metaphysics, we can speak of ourselves as persons capable of values in a way which is orthogonal to the 'stuff' we are made of, is the crux of the issue. Music is nothing but air vibrations, and yet it's something completely different at the same time. Similarly, there is a whole set of descriptions of what humans are - as persons, capable of recognising other persons, as well as reflecting and acting on the distinction between values (which we ought to have) and mere preferences (which we happen to have) - and, like in geometry, important distortions and losses can happen if we try to reduce them all in one plane. (Roger Scruton's books on Human Nature and The Soul of the World explore these ideas beautifully).
Dennett does an eloquent attempt at this reconciliation. But when he says that "Exercises in ethical theorizing that refuse to bow to the empirical facts about the human predicament are bound to generate fantasies that may have some aesthetic interest but ought not to be taken seriously as practical recommendations. Like everything else evolution has created, we're a somewhat opportunistically contrived bag of tricks, and our morality should be based on that realization" one can wonder whether that is putting the case two strong. Whatever our morality is, it is also partly a rebellion against the bags of tricks in the meatbags that we are! Nevertheless, to all those who feel that Science� has long shown that we do not have free will (because of determinism) or, more recently, that we do (because quantum stuff), this book is well worth a read!
Perhaps the easiest starting point is by examining the odd hope that some place in quantum physics, who seems to outline some pockets of genuine indeterminacy embedded in the fabric of the world. Some harbour hopes that this would open a window through which agency can creep in, channels through which the will can affect and effect outcomes which are not given in advanceby the prior state of the world. Dennett's point is that such hopes are misguided. Randomquantum fluctuations cannot provide a solid foundation for free will - which, after all, is meant to maintain a *link* between intention, action and outcome. We would need to 'to get the undetermined
quantum event to be not just in you but yours.'. Like Velcro, we need something to latch onto - and asking for an indeterministic world is asking for too much!
Does this mean we are inevitably at the mercy of determinism? Not so, argues Dennett. The real variables are *information and control*, not determinism. But to see his argument we need to shake off a few persistent intuitions. Determinism suggests that, if you ran the movie of the universe again, I would do the same actions in exactly the same way (and, presumably, some sort of omniscient entity could predict that, too). Whither free will, then? If everything is determined, it could not have been different. Dennett argues that this is true, but not that interesting - almost a truism. If nothing changed, nothing changes. The more interesting question is whether I could have done different in *slightly different circumstances*. A golfer that misses a shot and says 'I could have sunk it' usually means that it was *within their capabilities*, perhaps with slight changes in footing, grip etc. Dennett builds on this intuition by comparing two chess programs, A and B. B loses one game - and an observer says 'B could have castled'. If we ran the same game over and over again, B would always lose. But if we run different permutations, and see that in some similar games, B is able to castle (perhaps because it spends a split-second longer evaluating moves, or it has a different value in its pseudo-random-number generator), it seems we are right to say that B could have castled. In other words, given the information set and capabilities of the programme, the option was in some sense, available. This is the crux of Dennett's 'compatibilist' position - the fact that B is a completely deterministic programme is irrelevant to whether we can speak in a real and causal sense about the options available - there is 'elbow room' for manoeuvre.
He explores some interesting implications of this idea with the help of John Conway's Game of Life - a simple model of cellular automata, where just two lines determining if the cells in a grid are ON or OFF - again, purely deterministic, but where nevertheless there are possibilities - not least the possibility of running a Universal Turing Machine on it, i.e. anything that can be programmed. His main argument is that even in such simple worlds, there can be an objective sense in which to speak of features which are more or less conducive to the avoidance of harm and the pursuit of goals (simple replication in the first instance, and more complex goals as entities - in the real world this time - get more complex. This explains the title: free will is not a metaphysical quality inherent in the universe, but something that *emerges* at a certain level of complexity - notably, when reasons (what Dennett calls 'free-floating rationales') become appropriated, consciously as our reasons. Importantly, is also something that can be lost. It is a faculty to be cultivated which is implicit in folk practices and law, too - infants and those with senile dementia are said, rightly, to not have it/have lost it.
This gradualist, evolving perspective is important. Consider, as a parallel, the evolution of species. We would say, today, that mammals are creatures with certain recognisable features, which are *born of other mammals* - that is the whole point of speciation, that different species do not mate! But if you run the clock backwards in time far enough, you run into difficulties as you run into the transitional species between reptiles and mammals. "Can we identify a mammal, the Prime Mammal, that didn't have a mammal for a mother... On what grounds? Whatever ever the grounds are, they will be indistinguishable from the grounds we could also use to support the verdict that that animal was not a
mammal—after all, its mother was a therapsid. What should we do? We should quell our desire to draw lines. We don't need to draw lines. We can live with the quite unshocking and unmysterious fact that, you see, there were all these gradual changes that accumulated over many millions of years and eventually produced undeniable mammals."
Similarly, when incompatibilists insist that our antecedents condition us and thus negate free will, they do not allow for different degrees of determination. "Events in the distant past were indeed not "up to me," but my choice now to Go or Stay is up to me because its "parents"—some events in the recent past, such as the choices I have recently made—were up to me (because their "parents" were up to me), and so on, not to infinity, but far enough back to give my self enough spread in space and time so that there is a me for my decisions to be up to! The reality of a moral me is no more put in doubt by the incompatibilist argument than is the reality of mammals."
More: "what is inevitable doesn't depend on whether or not determinism reigns, but on "whether or not there are steps we can take, based on information we can get in time to take those steps, to avoid the foreseen harm. There are two requirements for a meaningful choice: information and a path for the information to guide".
Words as commonly used often capture important truths, and Dennett gives the example of Martin Luther, defending his views in front of the Inquisition with the famous: "Here I stand. I can do no other". This is a statement of determination (pun very much intended) - where the supposed lack of alternatives was not invoked as an excuse - precisely the opposite, Luther was taking responsibility!
Now for a small quibble - Dennett discusses the case of redwood trees that grow so tall due to a 'tragedy of the commons' situation - if only some agreement among trees could be reached so that they don't all have to waste time reaching so high for the light. This is an example of the problem with evolutionary 'Just So' stories - simple, seductive, but sometimes wrong. It turns out, as Peter Wohlleben shows in his 'Secret Life of Trees' that mother trees often regulate the growth of their saplings by sharing or withdrawing resources such that the young'uns don't grow too fast and thus, risk breaking by not having thick enough trunks. It's a minor point in the context of the book, but it is emblematic of the perils of 'nothingbuttery' - seeing trees as nothing more than basic organisms blinds one from seeing more complex modes of interaction. David Graeber's 'What's the point if we can't have fun?' looks at this issue more closely, exploring how the concept of play and fun is banished from biology .
Coming back to the topic, there is a different side of 'nothingbuttery' which Dennett is rightly worried about - the more we think we are nothing but the playthings of circumstance, the more likely we are to act irresponsibly. In one study, participants who were 'primed' to believe there is no free will were more likely to cheat during the experiment! And this is why I think this is an important book - higher-order concepts and values are often under assault from those who want to 'debunk' them, and Dennett makes an eloquent attempt to rescue free will from such assaults.
The open question, to me, is whether the tools of naturalism are sufficient here, given the broader cultural forces at play. One beautiful quote in the book speaks of how "it is solely by believing himself a creature but little lower than the cherubim that man has by interminable small degrees become, upon the whole, distinctly superior to the chimpanzee." (JB Cabell). The idea that, without smuggling in metaphysics, we can speak of ourselves as persons capable of values in a way which is orthogonal to the 'stuff' we are made of, is the crux of the issue. Music is nothing but air vibrations, and yet it's something completely different at the same time. Similarly, there is a whole set of descriptions of what humans are - as persons, capable of recognising other persons, as well as reflecting and acting on the distinction between values (which we ought to have) and mere preferences (which we happen to have) - and, like in geometry, important distortions and losses can happen if we try to reduce them all in one plane. (Roger Scruton's books on Human Nature and The Soul of the World explore these ideas beautifully).
Dennett does an eloquent attempt at this reconciliation. But when he says that "Exercises in ethical theorizing that refuse to bow to the empirical facts about the human predicament are bound to generate fantasies that may have some aesthetic interest but ought not to be taken seriously as practical recommendations. Like everything else evolution has created, we're a somewhat opportunistically contrived bag of tricks, and our morality should be based on that realization" one can wonder whether that is putting the case two strong. Whatever our morality is, it is also partly a rebellion against the bags of tricks in the meatbags that we are! Nevertheless, to all those who feel that Science� has long shown that we do not have free will (because of determinism) or, more recently, that we do (because quantum stuff), this book is well worth a read!
March 30, 2013
Some people worry about free will. They worry in particular about not having it.
If our universe is deterministic, a hypothetical being who knows all the physical properties of the universe at one point in time - where all the particles are, and where they're moving - and possesses sufficient computing power, knows the entire history and future of the universe. He knows, for example, what you're going to choose for breakfast tomorrow - and the day after, and the day after that, and all your future breakfast choices until you die (and he knows the date and cause of your death).
If the whole world, including our brains, works like clockwork then, I may worry, "I'm" not really deciding anything I think or do. The laws of the physical universe have decided everything already: my initial makeup, my external environment, and how I will respond to it. So how can we be responsible for what we do, and how can we be praised or blamed?
Feeling uncomfortable about this, but unwilling to abandon a universe ruled by physical laws, some have argued that we might be able to escape the problem if our universe is not deterministic. Happily enough, quantum mechanics shows indeterminacy exists in the physical world. That is, reality appears to have a degree of randomness about it, which appears mainly at the subatomic level. There are many possible future universes, and so even an omniscient being doesn't know for sure what the future looks like.
But is this relevant to how much control you have over your own decisions? Dennett argues, though it is an aside to his main thesis, that it does not. If what happens in the universe at a subatomic level is based entirely on impersonal physical processes, "you" don't obviously have more free will if those processes are non-deterministic.
Dennett's view seems to be that all attempts to argue that what happens in your brain is not the result of impersonal subatomic interactions seem to involve postulating explicitly or - more commonly these days - implicitly, some kind of immaterial soul or mind that is distinct from your body (the idea known as Cartesian dualism). "You" and your consciousness are separate from your physical brain, at least at critical decisonmaking junctures, and so you're not entirely bound by what happens in it, and can exercise "control" over the direction your brain's processing takes.
Dennett refutes arguments that try to derive free will from indeterminacy, in particular those of Robert Kane. Dennett sees free will at a subatomic level as both unattainable and - equally provocatively - not even desirable.
Dennett is by no means a skeptic about free will. The first main point of his book is that morally significant free will, the kind that most if us want to have, has got nothing to do with what happens at a subatomic level, or whether or not our universe is deterministic. "Free will" exists at a higher level of abstraction. This is called the "compatibilist" version of free will, held by many philosophers from Hobbes and Hume onward.
If you zoom right in on me, or on you, we're just an assembly of particles behaving according to physical laws. If you look at in any particular neighbourhood of molecules, you can't tell if you're looking at a human being or a lump of coal. But as you zoom out, you start to see patterns and structures - cells, tissues, organs, and eventually animals. What's more, those structures are not just a chance grouping at one instant: they are persistent, and self-replicating and evolving over time. Dennett holds that it is at this level that notions of avoidance, will, and choice emerge. They are innate "designed" capabilities.
We are natural born choosers. We constantly receive information from the environment, process it (both "consciously" and otherwise) and then make decisions to cause particular things to come about, or to avoid things from coming about - to the extent that we foresee or anticipate them. Many animals, in fact, exercise some degree of choice, but we have evolved this capability to an extremely sophisticated and qualitatively greater extent. In Dennett's example, if we're at bat in baseball and the ball is pitched at our body, we may choose to avoid it to escape pain and injury (as many animals would) or we may avoid avoiding it in service of some other uniquely human goal we have in mind (gaining a walk to first base, winning the game, etc).
At this level, we have a kind of free will, so long as no one else is actively coercing us to do one thing or another. Dennett, in common with other compatibilists, thinks this everyday version of free will is much more important and relevant to autonomy and morality than the subatomic or metaphysical sort.
Much of the rest of the book is speculation about how this kind of free will might have evolved. This discussion was, for me at least, less compelling. Nevertheless, I found the book as a whole highly worthwhile.
If our universe is deterministic, a hypothetical being who knows all the physical properties of the universe at one point in time - where all the particles are, and where they're moving - and possesses sufficient computing power, knows the entire history and future of the universe. He knows, for example, what you're going to choose for breakfast tomorrow - and the day after, and the day after that, and all your future breakfast choices until you die (and he knows the date and cause of your death).
If the whole world, including our brains, works like clockwork then, I may worry, "I'm" not really deciding anything I think or do. The laws of the physical universe have decided everything already: my initial makeup, my external environment, and how I will respond to it. So how can we be responsible for what we do, and how can we be praised or blamed?
Feeling uncomfortable about this, but unwilling to abandon a universe ruled by physical laws, some have argued that we might be able to escape the problem if our universe is not deterministic. Happily enough, quantum mechanics shows indeterminacy exists in the physical world. That is, reality appears to have a degree of randomness about it, which appears mainly at the subatomic level. There are many possible future universes, and so even an omniscient being doesn't know for sure what the future looks like.
But is this relevant to how much control you have over your own decisions? Dennett argues, though it is an aside to his main thesis, that it does not. If what happens in the universe at a subatomic level is based entirely on impersonal physical processes, "you" don't obviously have more free will if those processes are non-deterministic.
Dennett's view seems to be that all attempts to argue that what happens in your brain is not the result of impersonal subatomic interactions seem to involve postulating explicitly or - more commonly these days - implicitly, some kind of immaterial soul or mind that is distinct from your body (the idea known as Cartesian dualism). "You" and your consciousness are separate from your physical brain, at least at critical decisonmaking junctures, and so you're not entirely bound by what happens in it, and can exercise "control" over the direction your brain's processing takes.
Dennett refutes arguments that try to derive free will from indeterminacy, in particular those of Robert Kane. Dennett sees free will at a subatomic level as both unattainable and - equally provocatively - not even desirable.
Dennett is by no means a skeptic about free will. The first main point of his book is that morally significant free will, the kind that most if us want to have, has got nothing to do with what happens at a subatomic level, or whether or not our universe is deterministic. "Free will" exists at a higher level of abstraction. This is called the "compatibilist" version of free will, held by many philosophers from Hobbes and Hume onward.
If you zoom right in on me, or on you, we're just an assembly of particles behaving according to physical laws. If you look at in any particular neighbourhood of molecules, you can't tell if you're looking at a human being or a lump of coal. But as you zoom out, you start to see patterns and structures - cells, tissues, organs, and eventually animals. What's more, those structures are not just a chance grouping at one instant: they are persistent, and self-replicating and evolving over time. Dennett holds that it is at this level that notions of avoidance, will, and choice emerge. They are innate "designed" capabilities.
We are natural born choosers. We constantly receive information from the environment, process it (both "consciously" and otherwise) and then make decisions to cause particular things to come about, or to avoid things from coming about - to the extent that we foresee or anticipate them. Many animals, in fact, exercise some degree of choice, but we have evolved this capability to an extremely sophisticated and qualitatively greater extent. In Dennett's example, if we're at bat in baseball and the ball is pitched at our body, we may choose to avoid it to escape pain and injury (as many animals would) or we may avoid avoiding it in service of some other uniquely human goal we have in mind (gaining a walk to first base, winning the game, etc).
At this level, we have a kind of free will, so long as no one else is actively coercing us to do one thing or another. Dennett, in common with other compatibilists, thinks this everyday version of free will is much more important and relevant to autonomy and morality than the subatomic or metaphysical sort.
Much of the rest of the book is speculation about how this kind of free will might have evolved. This discussion was, for me at least, less compelling. Nevertheless, I found the book as a whole highly worthwhile.
July 21, 2014
I enjoy the author's approach to our deterministic universe and the perspective of free will with moral responsibility for our own actions. As always, the author is never in your face with his beliefs and practices the art of critical reasoning better than anyone. He puts others contrary viewpoints in their most effective forms and systematically shows why they are not right and are not as effective as they might seem at first glance, and then goes on to build a coherent consistent system.
For me, I enjoy the author's writing style, but I realize it can be dense for others and the author himself refers to some of his previous writing as "obscure and difficult". I guess I like obscure and difficult when I know at the end I'll understand the subject matter better than I have ever before.
He says that "if you make anything small enough than everything will be external". By making the role of the individual insignificant you will make free will outside of the person and free will belongs within us not outside of us. Also, he says that "we all want to be held accountable for our own actions", both at the individual and societal level. That makes free will within us.
As the author steps the reader through the development of freedom, he also gives the listener some of the best takes on why homo sapiens are so different from any other species known in the universe.
Most of what is in this book seems to be covered in his other books I've read, Consciousness, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Intuition Pumps. For those who don't have the time to read those three books (2 of which are fairly long listens), this book would act as a great surrogate for them.
For me, I enjoy the author's writing style, but I realize it can be dense for others and the author himself refers to some of his previous writing as "obscure and difficult". I guess I like obscure and difficult when I know at the end I'll understand the subject matter better than I have ever before.
He says that "if you make anything small enough than everything will be external". By making the role of the individual insignificant you will make free will outside of the person and free will belongs within us not outside of us. Also, he says that "we all want to be held accountable for our own actions", both at the individual and societal level. That makes free will within us.
As the author steps the reader through the development of freedom, he also gives the listener some of the best takes on why homo sapiens are so different from any other species known in the universe.
Most of what is in this book seems to be covered in his other books I've read, Consciousness, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Intuition Pumps. For those who don't have the time to read those three books (2 of which are fairly long listens), this book would act as a great surrogate for them.
March 2, 2021
This is the book that turned me into a major Dennett fanboy. Before this, I'd read Consciousness Explained, but felt frustrated because I didn't feel like I understood consciousness any better after reading it. But this book is a whole other deal, leaving me feeling satisfied. I think Dennett has made a lot of progress on these difficult topics in his long career. Free will and consciousness are kind of intertwined mysteries, so when you talk about one, it's common to bring up the other. The title of the book pretty much describes the content. Since I'm also a fan of Richard Dawkins, it's nice that Dennett is friends with him and influenced by his work on evolution. The fact that it's impossible for our human brains to fully understand billions of years of evolution cannot be overstated. This, I think, is what makes these topics so difficult. The way things are are not as they have always been.
March 19, 2014
Daniel Dennett is a brilliant explainer. He takes a blend of science and philosophy and makes it accessible to the casual (well, non-scientist) reader. He certainly does that in this book, though I can't claim to understand big chunks of his logic, for which I blame myself. (Since it's a book about personal freedom, autonomy, blame and responsibility, I could hardly hold him accountable for the concepts I didn't grasp!)
It isn't as entertaining or broadly appealing as "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," but "Freedom Evolves" is nevertheless a rewarding book. There is a lot to chew on here, on almost every page. It took me ages to read this--a page here and there, with weeks between--but the effort pays off.
If you are persuaded that we live in a deterministic universe, where free will is an illusion, this book very likely will change your opinion.
Or maybe not. Maybe it wasn't meant to be� ;)
It isn't as entertaining or broadly appealing as "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," but "Freedom Evolves" is nevertheless a rewarding book. There is a lot to chew on here, on almost every page. It took me ages to read this--a page here and there, with weeks between--but the effort pays off.
If you are persuaded that we live in a deterministic universe, where free will is an illusion, this book very likely will change your opinion.
Or maybe not. Maybe it wasn't meant to be� ;)
July 17, 2016
U knjizi Evolucija Slobode, filozof Danijel Denet jednim darvinističkim pristupom pokazuje kako determinizam uopšte nije onakav kakvim ga obično smatramo. Većina ljudi o ovoj temi razmišlja apsolutistički: ako je determinizam stvaran onda nemamo slobodnu volju i obrnuto, ako imamo slobodnu volju onda ništa nije predvidivo. Denet ovde pokazuje da je moguće i po malo od oba. Determinizam ne znači neizbežnost i ne znači potpuno određenu sudbinu. Čak se ispostavlja da determinisan svet često povećava našu slobodu jer možemo predvideti gde će nas udariti grom, na primer, i spasava nas haosa koji se dešava bez našeg uplitanja, bez naših slobodnih želja.
Sloboda je evoluirala zajedno s nama i tek je kod nas, uz razvoj kulture i jezika dostigla ono što danas smatramo slobodnom voljom a u budućnosti možemo očekivati i neke njene više nivoe.
Dopala mi se knjiga. Mene je ubedio u priličnoj meri.
Sloboda je evoluirala zajedno s nama i tek je kod nas, uz razvoj kulture i jezika dostigla ono što danas smatramo slobodnom voljom a u budućnosti možemo očekivati i neke njene više nivoe.
Dopala mi se knjiga. Mene je ubedio u priličnoj meri.
May 5, 2019
A lot of philosophy about whether or not we have free will, or if everything is fated beforehand. I know there was a reason this was on my to-read list, but looking back at it, I really can't remember why. A bit dry in places.
August 20, 2008
i've been 'currently reading' this book for over a year now. i'll pick it up get very into it and then put it down for months.
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March 19, 2008I didn't actually finish this, and I hope to come back to it.
December 24, 2008
I read this book for a paper I needed to write on my philosophy of education. It was amazing in places. My paper, slightly less so.
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