ciceraw 2008-05-03

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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.

Moridin 2008-02-15

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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.

John Garst 2007-12-08

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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.

Robert Aubrey Hagan 2007-08-23

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I very recently became enthralled with evolutionary psychology after having enjoyed Pinker's "Blank Slate", Haidt's "Happiness Hypothesis" and Wright's "Moral Animal."

I bought "Freedom Evolves" while on vacation, when the store didn't have a copy of "Darwin's Dangerous Idea."

Given Dennett's sterling reputation, and craving a convincing and well-honed argument to back-up my intuitive sense that a hard determinist world view verges on lunacy, I came away slightly let down (although I enjoyed the book).

(The opening pages recount a very disturbing incident--which Dennett uses masterfully to frame his argument-- that I'd previously assumed to be urban legend. I find myself calling daycare to make sure my wife dropped the kids off safely. And, although I'm not typically characterized as compassionate, I can't help but be subsumed with compassion for this poor man whose tragic story Dennett recounts.)

Hopefully someone will further develop Prof. Dennett's argument for freewill/determinism compatibility, but in the meantime, I'm plenty content to breeze along with my ownintuitive (and admittedly unsophisticated)instinct that a deterministic world view is, from a practical perspective, absurd.

After all, the notion that determinism is the 'correct' stance is meaningless so far as its impact on ethics or our day-to-day lives. If one were to subscribe to determinism, he'd be lumped in with the sniping, whiny leftist lemmings who naively parrot the "more evolved" motto that we have "no right to judge" criminals and madmen (unless, of course, they happen to be baptists from the south).

By "absurd" I mean simply as follows: To argue (as some do) that we can't blame or praise someone's actions or hold him accountable for his deviant or illegal behaviors because his genes and unfortunate upbringing alleviate any moral culpability, is, at its root, to ignore the naked fact that natural selection also endowed me with genes and an upbringing. Only my genes and environmental influences (deterministically)instruct me to seek retribution for the bad guy's "blameless" deviance. If you can't blame him then you can't blame me for my desire to punish him either--neither of us are free to act otherwise.

Steve Reina 2007-04-29

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

If reality is deterministic, then can anyone seriously believe in free will.

In giving an emphatic "yes" Dan Dennett posits a philosophy which attempts to show that -- properly understood -- determinism does indeed reconcile itself with the notion of free will (ostensibly something non deterministic).

In laying out his thesis, Dennett draws from a variety of sources however, amazingly enough, not choas theory.

This isn't surprising because in his earlier Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett confessed that he didn't understand physics.

Regrettably, this lack of knowledge has denied him an important additional method by which to reconcile the two phenomenon he purports to discuss. Though certainly not a panacea, choas theory does posit that in sufficiently choatic systems, periodic patches of order emerge.

The significance of this view is obvious when one is discussing a field so broad a free will.

When properly viewed it emerges that free will isn't free.

Where Dennett took the example of baseball player responding to a pitch, let us take the example of you saying hello to a friend. While it's true that your friend may respond by singing a song or doing a dance, the smart money is on the idea that you will get some type of greeting in response to your greeting. In other words, free will isn't free but rather yields responses that lie within a fairly predictable horizon of responses.

Another good case in point is an individual choosing a mate. Research by Dr. Helen Fisher (see her Why we love) says that our romantic choices will ultimately combine two features: 1) a common economic, religious, social background with 2) those physical traits we deem desireable (themselves predictable as pointed out in the Nancy Etcoff book Survival of the Prettiest by means symmetry, youth, apparent reproductive fecundity and the like).

Still another good case in point is the individual in choosing a religion. Typically, children follow the faith of their parents.

True, in each of these situations, it is predictable that a certain percentage of random choices will occur outside the predicted outcomes but a fair analysis seems to suggest that free will generally expresses itself in the form of an individual doing what -- by dint of genetic proclivity or experiential background -- they were in essence programmed to do.

That said, Dennett's point that more learning and ability to learn widens the options is well taken. However, the Tao Te Ching's advice to "not let your wheels stray from old ruts" becomes not so much advice as a fair predicter of human behavior.