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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 'Godel, Escher, Bach' our brains are composed of neurons with the simple funct...
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.
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 cre...
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
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
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 tha...
Needs massive interventions on the parts of editors.
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 h...
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...
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 mor...
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, an...
A book combining many ideas from Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 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 pa...
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 pr...
