There is a whole bunch of genuinely useful stuff in this book that will, I think, change the way that I think about my self. There are also a bunch of places where I think that Dennett is hindered by a particular "rational" viewpoint that prevents him from offering the sort of argument that will be meaningful to a non-academic audience. It's certainly not the responsibility of academia to make itself accessible, but I think that in a book where so much of the discussion rests on an assumption of how people as a group think and feel about a topic, there is a clear and present benefit to having a very good understanding of how those people think, and I'm not always convinced that Dennett does.

But let's talk about the good stuff. Dennett develops an argument about humans as biological robots made out of overlapping cognitive systems, and talks about how we have evolved to be good approximations of "semantic engines," or systems that can engage with pure, Platonic ideas. As such, there is no singular atomic seat of our consciousness, no indivisible unit that is our self. Dennett discusses the weirdness of particle physics: it doesn't matter if atomic interactions are purely deterministic or are probabilistic because in either case our minds are much too large of structures to affect the outcome. I came away from this with an appreciation for the fact that "free will" as conceived of in the popular sentiment is probably the wrong thing to even be thinking about, and that the determinism of the atoms in our universe is entirely irrelevant.

Clearly, this is not a book that I'm going to recommend to other people unless they're looking for something very specific, but even still, I think this is going to fundamentally improve the way I think about my mind. Not read for enjoyment, so no star rating.

(As an aside, if you have ever read Anathem, you will find so much in this book that Stevenson has incorporated.)

This book is a good place to start if you (like me) are unfamiliar with the terms of philosophy and have some questions about free will vs. determinism. My favorite parts of the book were the quotes by other authors (it gave me ideas for what to read next). I did not like that the basis of Dennett's argument for free will was based on the assumption that God does not exist. In many respects, this book swayed me toward the opposing arguments the author was trying to debunk.

I read this only to say "I've read more on the apparent "free will" question.". I do not find the question of free will all that interesting, which is why I haven't read a lot on the subject.

The present writing is not much of a review but rather a note to myself for this logged book.

I am a big fan of Dan Dennett. Free will is a very difficult topic to explain and this is a very careful, thoughtful treatment of the subject. I started to write a detailed summary of the book, but decided cut to the basics: This was an early book of his on the topic of consciousness and free will, and his later books are much better. You can see in this book the seeds of ideas that he will later present in "Consciousness Explained." Most everything in this book is explained better in that one.

The age old question of free will. Dennett approach the problem as a sculptor would a piece of granite. He wants to work all our the edges, get a very rough idea, before adding detail and ultimately polishing the theory.

He start with an entire chapter on why we don't want to think about free will. It seems clear that the idea of free will is a very dear to us. We simply can't be disinterested, there is some nagging feeling that makes us want to avoid the subject like a really bad smell. He outlines a set of bugbears:

(1) Invisible Jailer: If we have not free will, then we might be in jail
(2) Nefarious Neurosurgeon: or someone might be able to control us
(3) Cosmic Child Toys: or we might be toys to gods
(4) Malevolent Mindreader: or we might be predicable and therefor unable to win
(5) Sphexishness: we might be just acting according to program
(6) Disappear self: if we look to hard we might find there is no one home
(7) Dread Secret: finding out the truth might ruin your life

The "problem" with free will, is all of the fears embodied above.

There is an interesting part about body english -- those movements that you do that can't possibly have effect, but you do them anyway, as if superstitiously. Launching the bowling ball and then dancing or wheeling as if to control the ball down the alley. However there is an alternative: don't loop up too soon after hitting a golf ball. The practive of keeping your head down AFTER hitting the ball still can have an effect how you behave before hitting it. Which is it: pointless or important?

He lists a number of intuition pumps:

(1) Plato's cave
(2) Quine's Gavagai
(3) Goodman's grue-bleen puzzle
(4) Rawl's original position
(5) Farrell's bat
(6) Putnam's twin earth
(7) Searle's chinese room

What we are left with is the "Compatiblist" view of free will, which always feels like merely shifting the definition of the terms. The compatiblist believe that we make all the choices that we want to make, and that those choices are determined by our history. You might say: your actions are determined by your needs and desires, but your needs and desires are determined by your experience, and therefor your actions are determined. But STILL you exercise free will because that IS your free will to follow your needs and desires.

This argument leaves most traditionalists unsatisfied. "I don't FEEL like my actions are determined. I can decide what I want to do any moment." Of course you can, but you always decide what you think is the best or most appropriate thing to do, which at the end of the day is determined for you.

The most important part of this discussion is really exposing the "libertarian free will" as unrealistic illusive fantasy. You would never want to live a life where you could arbitrarily make any choice at any moment without regard to your needs and desires. You really don't want to ride in a taxi where the driver had the free will to just drive off a cliff or into a wall at any moment. We would never want the kind of free will that allow you to suddenly decide to put arsenic into the dinner you are making, or to arbitrarily decide to throw your child from a building. we most certainly do not want to make completely arbitrary and capricious actions.

It turns out that free will means simply that your actions are guided by YOUR needs and desires, and they are NOT guided by someone else's desired. Free will is denied when you are locked up and prevented from some external reason to do what you desire. What we really mean by free will is not that we can take any ARBITRARY action at any moment, but that we are not FORCED to take an action different than what we want. It really has nothing to do with determinism.

Thus, having your own actions determined by your own needs and desires is actually the kind of free will that you want. That is the point of this book. I assure you, if you are not already acquainted with these ideas, you will on first reading reject them. As most people will reject the superficial description of the book. But further study is warranted, and Dennett has adequately organized this concept. However, as I said earlier, I would recommend his later, larger book: Consciousness Explained as it covers many of these same topics.

This is Dennett's earlier attempt to clarify philosophical thinking on the topic of free will. His thinking has evolved since it was written, and the newest edition has some qualifiers in the preface. But it remains a masterpiece complete with many important thought experiments which help demystify this question that has plagued philosophers of the past for a long time.

He takes a so-called "compatibilist" approach in this books, that free will and determinism are compatible ideas. He defines free will by showing what it would mean for free will, as we know it, to be taken away. In the end free will isn't some fundamental magical stuff that we have happen to uniquely posses, but a sort of meta-phenomenon that, like the intentional stance, is a useful description of part of the human experience.

This book is written in a fairly airy style, a little less down to Earth than his later writing.

Reading this, I was struck by how similar Dennett’s so-called compatiblist position is to the so-called incompatibilist positions of Sam Harris and Galen Strawson (the other authors I’ve read on free will recently). The best I can tell, though they put it differently, they all agree that it doesn’t make sense to punish people who have done wrong merely for the sake of punishing them, but it does often make sense to punish people for the sake of deterring them or similar people from continuing to do wrong. The main disagreement seems to be whether the decision making capability humans inarguably do have should be called free will or not!

I found the style of the book somewhat annoying. Dennett spends a lot of time attacking what he calls “bugbears” - analogies for lack of free will that are designed to present it as concerning. These analogies include things like being a puppet controlled by a puppeteer, or being locked in a room while incorrectly thinking you are free to leave at any time. In each case, he points out dissimilarities between the analogy and our actual situation and argues that the dissimilarities, and not the similarities, are what cause us concerns in the case of the bugbears. I did find it helpful to think through these analogies and how they are similar to and different from reality. The overall tone, though, seemed condescending and a bit strawman-ish.

Highly Accessible

The first two chapters are the best source I have found defining both technical terms and the common short cut phrases tossed around by philosophers that tend to confound non philosophers like myself.

Determinism does not mean that our fate was determined before we were born. But much of what happens to us in a lifetime is certainly influenced by that. Determinism is not fatalism. For someone to say, "It does not matter what I do, whatever is meant to happen will happen," is quite absurd. And yet to say we have free will and that I can do whatever I want to do, is also absurd.

For me understanding determinism, I think of this instant of my life on a straight line. The straight line is my past. It cannot be changed, as much as I would give anything to change some things. I ache to change them. But they are frozen in time. It is the next instant in my life line that is determined by all that went before. Those instants pile up.

Soren Kierkegaard said, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." I learn from my past and behave based on that learning. I am affected by environment, heredity, and chance.

I "feel" like I have free will, just like everyone else. In fact, I understand that I am wrong, that in reality I have no free will. But I cannot shake that "feeling" that I am a free person.

clarifying, much food for thought, and oddly motivating, like self-help from an unusual angle

This is one of my favorite books of all time.

do we have free will? what does that mean? is one state of the world always determined by the previous state, all the way back to the 'beginning?' what would it mean for our free will if it were?

dennett reminds me that there are reasonable people out there, thinking brilliant thoughts about tough subjects. i'm pleased to recommend his little book on free will: go read it unless you think you can do otherwise.

Dennett like Hofstadter, is a popular thinker but not appreciated enough as an actual philosopher. If you compare him with Dawkins and Hitchens he comes off as this fringe scientist or something. Dennet is just as knowledgeable as Dawkins and Hitchens scientifically, if not more so. And on the same level if not above Harris philosophically. Just because Dennett doesn’t attack Christianity in the face all the time doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand religion in context. His discretion comes from his open mindedness. He’s past the whole rebellious phase of hating on the exploitation of religion. And thank goodness for that. We need better emotional leadership than that. Which is why this book is not a five for me. It’s philosophically really well done but it lacks any kind of superfluous or artistic connection with the information. I’m interested in the way he experiences free will day to day. I need to know more how he might feel about the information age of social media algorithms and data points. What kind of free will is meaningfully left. The question is practical and philosophical. Like a modern form of Kant. Even Deleuze struggles to answer this directly enough. We need an American philosopher to really take a stand on this stuff.