This book was interesting and fun to read but I can't entertain his philosophy/science because...:

Dennett entertains the idea of a "free" human subject (or "agent" as he calls it) who must make deterministic snap nonthinking reactions and, eventually, transform into a being that never wavers when making decisions, because all decisions become practical, mathematical, scientific. This idea is quite fascinating if you fancy a future Utopia where: there is no god, no room for the imagination, no arguments about art, and absolutely no Profound Art, because, according to Dennett (and his idea) placing an art and artist who is gifted above all the others in artistic matters is analogous to "racism." As a "free" practical subject all I need to do is relate to the art as something that resonates for me because it speaks to my "inner" qualities as a member of this or that community. - All you need to do to meet this "free" subject, today, is immerse yourself into mass culture for awhile (and believe me, you'll meet a lot of people/cooperators, some good, some not so good - but this is not the main point!). A sober imagination and a high IQ will take you far in Dennett's society because their are no other "potentialities" out there beyond what has been given to you by your "cooperative" milieu.

So what's so great about Dennett's society is that it makes things easy (not a bad prospect for many... but for others... Hell!). Ease and simplicity allows you to move about the world in complete obedience to its laws and decrees. Complexity and imagination complicates the world, precipitates madness, and puts you in a state of unease - and this is when philosophy, religion, and art (things Dennett has conceptually referred to as "memes") enter the fray. For philosophy proper, freedom is taking it upon yourself to explore your potential in all its vastness; to learn to decipher what is real, what is virtual, what is imaginative; to will the imagination to weave into the most ambiguous and dizzying texts with an array of perspectives in mind to work through them; and to exit this skirmish with an innovative perspective worth everything in the world to you, Eureka! - Dennett does not think this is a Great Thing, as many of the philosophers do, so he presents us with a version of Materialist-Determinism unique in its kind.

This is one of my first explorations in the cognitive sciences, but I am interested. However, it does seem to me as though the cognitive sciences are extremely vain, and envious of the philosophers: for the cognitive scientist does not give the philosopher or the artist its rightful due when it comes to erudition; he seems to say, "So you have a soul, and all these wonderful linguistic novelties and the like - why can't I do that?" A succinct, rather laymen's, reply is: "You have to will it, mentally, form it, intellectually, produce it, artistically, and actually BELIEVE (and this is something the scientist simply cannot do) you are entitled to do so." Recreate nature; don't just reproduce it. But, at least cognitive science is something fun to critique. And that's worth something!

I don't read much philosophy, and this book makes me appreciate how little philosophy I've read about free will. Most of this book went over my head. The general sense I got from this is that Dennett doesn't think free will is incompatible with determinism. Instead, we can make decisions in a world where some things are inevitable. Something like that. I have no idea.

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.

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.

This book is essential to understand truly Dennett's ideas.
The point he makes, against all those who are afraid of determinism, genes and modern science, is that with our consciousness explained and debunked we're more free than ever.

Unfortunately Dennett lacks writing skills (he always exaggerate with examples) and this book isn't a masterpiece of style.


http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incpages...
Here's his website.
Give him a try and read
'Postmodernism and truth', 1998
and
'Some observations on the psychology of thinking about free will', 2007

For a slightly different account of consciousness (that Dennett often criticizes), read this article of Pinker
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/art...

In "Freedom Evolves," Dennett makes an extended case for "compatibilism," the position that free will and determinism are compatible. He concedes that determinism (or even indeterminism) does not allow for contra-causal free will (where we get to wholly determine our actions, free of influences from any prior events), but states that we have another variety of free will ("worth wanting"), which enables humans to make considered decisions and be morally responsible for their actions.

The book ultimately failed to persuade me, and instead left me wanting more (more explanations and examples that could drive home his highly un-intuitive position). This is, mind you, the same thing that happened with me when I read his "Consciousness Explained" (1991) — a magnificent piece of work that also failed to persuade me (despite reading it thrice!) and many others (after all, people call the book Consciousness Explained Away).

I commend Dennett for his brilliant decades-spanning work on how consciousness and free will can exist in a physicalist world (his latest on this theme is "From Bacteria to Bach and Back", which I read not long ago). The positions he advocates may very well be right, but I fear that despite that, many of us may never be able to come to terms with them.

The best materialistic account of free will I've yet encountered. It's not his fault, but in my opinion it doesn't quite solve the problems it sets out to solve.

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.

I've read several Dennett books in the past, and picked up this book on a whim because of its focus on free will and moral agency. It was obvious that some views would be dated since almost 20 years of cognitive neuroscience have taken place since its publication. The notion of top-down AI and a centralized consciousness in real people has been so utterly destroyed, quibbling with people who still believe such things seems as pointness as quibbling with Freudians who still believe in the vast bulk of what Freud said. I was right about the book's datedness, but that doesn't detract from the book's utility and whimsy.

Because the last two decades have been a slam-dunk win for ideas of distributed and emergent intelligence, the intelligent philosophers painted as Dennett's critics almost seem quaint. By now, everyone should recognize not only that there is no homunculus or Cartesian stage operating as what we might call a soul, personality, or unified consciousness, but there also is no sliding window of consciousness that can accurately determine what we might call "now." Dennett cites several studies that show our bodies and lower nervous system processes prepare for action long before the conscious mind decides upon action. Because Denett is a kind and gentle soul who is not out to kick crutches from people who retain ideas of a unified consciousness, he does not satirically scoff at intelligent critics who want to trash determinism by retaining a belief in a soul or a mini-me inside the cortex. Instead, he says that consciousness is a drawn-out process, and we only receive a unified view of the now we think we perceive long after that now is past.

Dennett uses plenty of interesting tricks and illustrated examples showing that free will and moral agency is compatible with emergent intelligence, provided we see free will as a group process that arises from our communication with others. This kind of distributed intelligence isn't just distributed across brain and body, Dennett said, it's distributed across bodies and across time. Dennett reserves his biggest scorn for the popular writers who claim that an emulated environment isn't as good as the "real thing," whatever that means. For example, he excoriates Tom Wolfe for failing to realize the good ritalin might provide for some youth, because this makes their moods or mental intentions "less real." Dennett reminds us that it is not always clear what "real" is.

Of course, the progress made since 2003 in creating AI platforms that can emulate moral agency makes it all the more urgent to decide if machines can have moral agency. But what we can't do, Dennett said, is claim that a belief in distributed emergent intelligence robs us of our notions of free wll and moral agency.

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.

Freedom Evolves is similar to Drescher's Good and Real, in that it attempts to derive ethics from a naturalistic worldview. The author starts by discussing Conway's Game of Life, and shows that even in such a simple deterministic world, it makes sense to talk about higher level constructs having purpose or making choices. He moves from this simple example to a discussion of what people usually mean when they talk about choice and causality, and I found there to be some really interesting surprises there. In particular, some events may be considered uncaused in a colloquial sense.

Much of the book is dedicated to refuting various theories about free will that require an indeterministic universe, which I was less interested in. I'm basically sold on the idea that determinism doesn't prevent choice at the level of agents.

The middle third of the book is spent showing examples and telling Just So stories about how certain aspects of our freedom could have evolved in a deterministic world. One chapter discusses the rise of biological life through evolution (design from determinism). Another goes over how, once there were brains, memes were able to have a huge impact on evolution. These memes competed and created new cultures, forming a still higher level of design that was capable of reflecting on itself. It's this self-reflection, using memes as tools, that allowed humans to capture random reasons of evolution and make them our own.

The last section of the book discusses ethics under this viewpoint of human freedom. Since freedom is based on memetic tools running on brains, it's very feasible for different people to have different levels of moral culpability. The book discusses different ways of dealing with this, but one of the most interesting to my mind is the idea that, in a well run society, people want to be held accountable for their actions. Culpable, free people have more agency in their own lives and in society. This view of human freedom gives it both costs and benefits, and finds that people will want freedom in spite of its costs because of its benefits.

I believe Dennet's overall goal with this book is worthy of appreciation, but I can't say I have been fully convinced yet; my intuitions haven't been pumped far enough.