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Title: Freedom Evolves
ISBN: 0142003840
Author:
Daniel C. Dennett
Publicate Date: 2004-01-27
Publish: 2004-01-27
List Price: $17.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $2.99
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Well Done Dennett
This book does a magnificent job of presenting the idea of freedom in a mathematical format that simply cannot be refuted. Are we determined mechanisms in a determined universe? Dennet says yes. But he argues effectively that this does NOT mean that we are fatally doomed to any particular future. He says that we are as free in our will as we could ask to be, and the reason is that so much is determined! Our nature allows so much to take part in our decisions that it ultimately gives us control; any other way, and we'd be simply be response mechanisms. What a brilliant argument he presents in this masterpiece!
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2: Dennett's Incoherent Idea
Dennett holds with 'Freedom Evolves' that humans have more and more options as a consequence of evolution but this is at odds with the adaptionist version of evolution which Dennett adheres too. With adaptionist evolution there is no direction to evolution no tendency to more options, evolution is just one damn thing after another. With adaptionist evolution people have an 'as if' teleology but this 'as if' teleology is a function of a past rather than of a future. With an 'as if' teleology one does what the past instructs one to do which is a function of past enviroments but there is no drive to a wider world and more options. Either evolution has a direction, Dennett rejects this, in which case there are more and more options as a result of evolution, or people are machines and there is at the best the illusion of free will which Dennett accepts. Free will really has no place in the system of Dennett.
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3: The evolution of freedom
This book is part of Dennett's series on evolution, determinism, and moral philosophy. Human beings evolved to have free will. We are designed to make choices. He argues successfully against the idea that determinism limits our choices and freedom. Like all Dennett's books it is well-written.
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4: A Strong Case for Darwinian Compatibilism
After reading Freedom Evolves, I would have to say that Dennett accomplished that which he set out to do, namely, to explain in a popular science book that all the varieties of free will that is worth wanting is possible on determinism.
Dennett exposes the metaphysical baggage that has been around the debate on free will and argues that free will is the ability to simulate probable events and act to avoid unpleasant consequences and that everything you do is a result of your nature, your thoughts, desires, knowledge and past decisions; what you do is a result of who you are.
A marvelous book that might just provide the solution to the problem of free will. In essence, it has gone a long way towards this goal. Another good treatment of compatibilism can be found in Richard Carrier's book Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism.
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5: Compatibilism Defended Weakly
For the last part of this book, all the author seems to need is free will. I think we can all accept that (except, perhaps, for a few dreary philosophers with little or no influence). This book may make a real contribution in describing how free will evolved and evolves.
The first part of the book is devoted to an attempt to demonstrate that determinism and free will are compatible. This part is confusing and, I believe, confused. At one point he claims that the "prime mammal" argument is analogous to the "long causal chain" argument of hard determinists and that the same fallacy applies to both. This is crap. The arguments are not analogous and the "prime mammal" fallacy does not apply to the "long causal chain" argument.
Earlier the book attempts to explain how the evolution of avoiders could occur in Conway's game of Life. I don't see immediately how replicating Life objects acquire an interest in self preservation and the propagation of the "species," which I think are essential in Darwinian evolution, nor do I see how competitions, also required, arise. This may be a flaw in my own thinking - I'm not sure.
Dennett is very imaginative and there are many instructive areas of the book, regardless of whether or not you are willing to accept every argument he makes.
My own view is that for operational purposes (living in this world) free will is evident.
Determinism, on the other hand, is not evident. Debates and discussions determinism are futile exercises. The only purpose I see for them is to entertain philosophers (which might actually be useful in the sense that it occupies their time and therefore limits their ability to do damage by propagating some crazy ideology into the political arena).
Incidentally, if there were determinism and if there were no free will, philosophers sometimes worry about accountability. "How could we hold him responsible for murdering that woman?" This is an out-of-bounds concern. Under these conditions, holding people accountable, or not, would be part of what is determined.
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