Fundamentally disappointing. I went in hoping for a good defence of compatiblism and got nothing other than a few bland assertions

More formal philosophy in background would have helped. Everything he said was well argued and made sense, but he was generally reacting to and responding to quesions in contemporary and historical philosophy.

I had been meaning to read some Daniel Dennet books for a while. Saw this one at the library and decided to read it. Or maybe "I" didn't, who's to say. Maybe I can't actually "decide" anything. I'm kidding, but also, who knows haha. I don't think the audiobook version was the way to go for me on this one. I think I needed to read the physical book and spend more time with this, because I either couldn't really follow it, or I'm dense. I'll be re-reading this at another time.

Dennett believes interest in free will is motivated by fear, fear that without it our experience of life will change. Life will become either a dreamlike hypnotic state or a prison.

Dennett rejects this. Prisons, he observes, take many forms. One can be confined to a small cell or, like Napoleon on Elba, have an entire island.

The title of the book emerges from this idea, that our conceptualizations of free will need to account for its variety, or elbow room.

Dennett is a compatibilist. He believes free will and determinism are compatible, that you can believe in both and be logically consistent.

I’m currently re-reading the book. Even though I am overall more sympathetic to Sapolsky’s argument in *Determined*, I’m currently more persuaded by Dennett. Will need to brood further and may update my review later.

What a journey :) I read this to get a better understanding of what compatibilism is all about and this book more than delivered. While I can't say that I was able to fully follow all of his arguments or that I am now fully convinced, I have to say that Dennett brings some very interesting perspectives to the table as to why we actually have free will in a deterministic universe (at least the kind of free will that one might want). It must also be said that he can be quite funny at times, "dropping some lines" that I would not have expected in a philosophy book on such a difficult subject.

Dennett starts by looking at typical ways in which a lack of free will is often introduced, and shows that these thought experiments (whether on purpose or without thinking about it) play on some innate fears that one might have about such a scenario. He shows that these fears are unfounded, which sets the scene for a more neutral discussion of what we might mean when we say "I have free will", focusing on different areas such as "What would be control over my decisions", "Who is this me that wants free will", etc.?

I can't really give a good overview of all the points made as I still need to read more to get the full picture, but just for the idea of "transivity of control" and the basic idea of "when you wake up in the morning you either get up or you don't - you have to choose" this was a wonderful read.

When I have seen more perspectives I will definitely revisit this for further understanding. I honestly regret buying this for the Kindle... This deserves a place on my physical bookshelf. But perhaps I was doomed to make that mistake < /pun>

Interesting read, but difficult: Dennett writes for the student of Philosophy. Eminently accessible to a person willing to commit, but, as all philosophical writing, commitment it requires. He explores Free Will in terms of Determinism, that is, the proposal that Free Will as we think of it, is an illusion and that human beings as rational agents are as subject to causation as dominoes. It's an extremely uncomfortable idea for many people, and Dennett doesn't spend a great deal of time acclimating one. Best to get comfortable with the idea before Dennett sweeps you up in all the subsequent implications.

What an absolute bore. He tackles non problems with great gusto and pishes away real challenges as if they were nothing and never actually addresses them. He comes across like the sort of man who never let's anyone else get a word in at a party. Heck, the author he most often references is himself.

Dennett spends half his time making the case for determinism, and the other half laying out the argument for why it's really not that scary. He uses very clear language to keep the book accessible even to people without backgrounds in philosophy, which is good. Philosophers are weird, y'all.

The book came highly recommended, so I was deeply disappointed. The non-problem that Dennett wants to solve comes from 19th Century physics, which led to the belief that the world is deterministic. How can we reconcile this with our experienced perception of free will? While the whole book is meant to provide an answer to this question, I could not find them. To the best of my knowledge, after reading this book, I believe that Dennett has no answers.
First, note that 20th Century physics, based on quantum theory, is not deterministic. Even Newtonian mechanics leads to chaos theory, which allows the minutest perturbations to lead to greatest of changes - this creates elbow room for free will if you look at the equations carefully. But never mind. Let us give it all up: assume, contrary to fact, that the best theories of physics show us a deterministic world today. What makes you think that the laws of physics are etched in stone until eternity? Just a little while ago, there was excitement over a fundamental discovery of new particles, new principles of physics. The search for a unified theory is still on. As Karl Popper noted, and no one has refuted, law of science can never be proven, they can only be disproven. Why should we believe in a deterministic universe?
NEXT, consider what this determinism has to trump. Every moment of my life, I am making decisions, big and small. Whether I should go out for dinner, or just order in? We all feel, intuitively, that the decisions we make matter, and determine our future. Dennet wants us to believe that ALL of mankind is deluded, and only he, and a handful of philosophers, have exclusive grasp of a terrible truth - we are, none of us, free to choose. He is free to believe that, but you and I are also free not to.

I always enjoy Dennett's writing style, but I also think this is the most convincing of his work that I've read. It's similar to Consciousness Explained in focusing in on one particular topic, but Dennett is still grasping toward a theory of consciousness in that book, while I think his theory of compatibilism as laid out here is much more complete. I came into this book believing in determinism and felt Dennett did a good job arguing that it does not constrain our free will in ways that matter. The most challenging mental hurdle for me, and the cornerstone of the argument, is breaking the natural conceptual separation of "ourselves" from "the physical world."

I did it! I finished the Dan Dennett book!

Elbow Room is a strong argument for compatibalism. Dennett argues that yes, we mostly live in a deterministic universe (quantum indeterminism isn’t that important for the purpose of agency), but we still have “a type of free will worth wanting”, where we can talk reasonably about agency, self-control, and deliberation.

Recommended for people who are already thinking about free will, people who heard a neuroscientist point out that you are your brain and think that ends the idea of the self, people who want to over-think things in general.

A nice presentation of the contemporary compatibilist position on free will (ie even though determinism may be how our physical world works, that's no reason to think we don't have free will)