Dennett is amazing. He gives you the impression of having some deep and daring new ideas. And he seems to have the ability to present them in a refreshing, funny, original way. - But he just does not deliver. If at all, he is good where he criticizes other positions. Nice the polemic against Wolfe. No, the soul has not died. Yes, there is consciousness. Just do not ask to go into any detail.
He tries to show that free will does not contradict a deterministic world. Now, I am all in favor of a Life-like deterministic world but our world is probably not deterministic and if it were there could be a really complex universe with free-like actions but it would still be designed and by definition not free. I would not complain. But you cannot have it both ways.

Picked this up from a thrift store and was delighted to find that it is a signed copy. That means, at some point, this book sat in front of the author -something I've yet to do. Okay, where the book has been does not have anything to do with the content. This is my second book by Dennett and is the recommended September 2013 book for the science/philosophy book club of which I am an enthusiastic member.

Does Free Will exist? A philosophical discussion based on biology. Dennett's writing isn't particularly easy to get through, however, I think it is worth the effort. Numerous reviews and discussions of this book can be found online, as well as a video review.

The best defence of compatibalism I've come across and probably the only position that doesn't melt my brain. Great writer, who, even when you don't agree with him, leaves his arguments easy to follow. The intro/summary bits he does for each chapter are a very useful feature, he does it in Darwin's Dangerous Idea too.

Interesting ideas, well argued, but at least 100 pages of outdated or superfluous information. Recomand to read it without the last 3 chapters.

One of the most influential books I’ve read in a while. I approached Dennet’s book on free will as a pretty diehard determinist. I had read many compatibilists in the past and was never swayed by the arguments. Peter Van Inwagen made the best case for compatibilism I had see so far but I still felt like the philosophical position felt like a cop out.

I went into this book a big fan of Dennet but very skeptical of his ability to change my opinion on this subject. You can imagine my surprise when I came out the other side a compatiblist.

I feel Dennet takes the age old argument and seeks to ad clarity to it. He does this by redefining terms to try and develop a framework with which we can more easily discuss the idea. Because of this I understand why people like Sam Harris accuse him of “changing the subject.”

Dennet defines free will almost as an emergent property (similar to his views on consciousness). He makes a fantasic case that all actions in the universe are an effect for some cause; and that we are not disconnected from the cosmic chain of cause and effect.

However, he claims that what we are interested in when we say “freewill” is still maintained and that we can still be held accountable for our decisions. Where philosophers like Van Inwagen claim that free will and determinism both exist by some inexplicable force; Dennet redefines free will.

Dennet uses the language of evolution as an analogy for how we can talk about human free will under a deterministic model of the universe. Similar to how once you have enough evolutionary data points, you can say “this species adapted” (even though there were no choices involved); you can say a person “chose” something once your deterministic system gets complex enough.

He describes our brains as deterministic machines that are able to process infinitely complex data inputs to generate an output that is impossible to predict from an outsider. The output given by your brain is only known to the complex (and deterministic) system of your brain. Because of this, it is still practical to describe your brain’s outputs as “choices.” This allows us to maintain the language of freewill without subscribing ourselves to an impossible libertarian freewill model of human choice.

As far as accountability for our actions goes his solution is fiendishly simple. The precise output of our brains is unpredictable by other brains, but the general output is. We know that the environment influences what kind of output we will see, so to help create a trend of more positive outputs we create an environment that will influence the brain in a way we want.

Essentially, if we want people to make choices in line with society, we can influence the deterministic system of the brain by holding the people accountable for their actions. Societal consequences become new datapoints for the deterministic system of our brain that will hopefully change future behavior. It’s a deceptively simple way of allow us to justify holding other accountable.

This book and philosophy has completely changed my perspective on this issue and my outlook on life. I feel more optimistic about my place in all this and my ability to create meaningful positive societal change.

As of now, this is my go-to recommendation on this topic for anyone who might be interested in freewill.

Just listened, but a little bit confusing. Need rereading.

I'm pretty sure this book is mostly about Dumbo (Stop that crow!). No, really, Dennett uses the phrase "Stop that crow" at least a hundred times in the book, and it isn't because it adds substance to the argument - it's like a flag indicating that he expects some people to be offended: he's sort of pointing at them disparagingly. I found that distracting, at first, and maddening by the end.

I had nothing at stake, reading the book, but I was bothered by the dull repetition, the tone, the incorrect ideas about pseudo-random number generators (he probably has heard about this mistake by now), the computer science topics that didn't contribute much, if anything, to the overall argument, and the general unfinished quality of the book. There are incomplete sentences, even. The flow of the argument is not very great, and the writing seems unfocused. I felt like I was reading a rough draft.

Actually, this book would probably have made a good essay, suitably trimmed.

Complaints aside, it was a thought-provoking book, and I'm glad I read it. I wonder what I ought to read on this topic next. Suggestions?

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’.

I got over halfway through and stopped reading. I gave the book two stars because there were still some interesting discussions here and there. In the first couple of chapters, I wasn't agreeing with Dennett at all. And then he did something awesome: he wrote out the anticipated objections, as if he was reading my mind, and then answered them simply and straightforward. But he stopped doing that and I just found myself either not following what he was saying or not agreeing, the former is probably the most likely. After a while, it seemed like Dennett didn't want to address free will head-on, and instead used metaphors to explain tangential topics. I just lost interest.

This is an exceptionally well-written book. The author has been working with the material for a very long time and presents it in a manner very similar to a series of lectures in an undergraduate course, with each chapter building on, and referring back to, the previous ones.

I found the first half of the book, which deals with the question of how free will can be compatible with determinism fantastic. In the second half of the book, he looks at how the intellectual/conceptual self can perform the function of ethical decision-making. This is a bit dull, as there is nothing really new here. It also leaves out the felt sense of self as addressed, for example, in Descartes' Error, and The Illusion of Conscious Will (which he mentions and apparently agrees with). Although he hints at the variability of the self and the difficulties of attributing agency, it seems that his main goal is to return to a conventional understanding of morality and self, using new building blocks. Fair enough. It would, however, have been nice to explore the ways in which new building blocks can be used to build new models.

Needs massive interventions on the parts of editors.

"Una persona es un homínido con el cerebro infectado, ocupado por millones de simbiosis culturales, y el principal de los estímulos es el sistema simbiótico conocido como lenguaje". (p.173)

Citado en  Visión de Paralaje Pág.304 y ampliamente discutido en las páginas siguientes.