"Sir," harrumphed Dr. Johnson, "We know our will is free, and
there's an end on't." Professor Dennett (Philosophy, Tufts) also
knows the will is free, but in this witty, wide-ranging, steadily
persuasive essay he transforms Johnson's (and most other people's)
intuitive certitude into a series of rationally articulated
probabilities. The "elbow room" he argues for is the sphere
inhabited by "us sinners" (limited, conditioned, but responsible
agents), as opposed to both the realms of absolute freedom imagined
by Socrates, Kant, Sartre, Chisolm, et al., and the dungeons of
determinism or fatalism. The latter, of course, are what really
worry us; but Dennett shows that the specters of heteronomy are
neither irrefutable axioms nor solid science, but "unfocused
images" that break down under scrutiny. In one of his many
illuminating metaphors, he contrasts body English (the
determinist's view that all our thinking and straining and deciding
affect the real world no more than a golfer's antics after hitting
a putt help to sink it) with follow-through: the seemingly
illogical but undeniable fact that "keeping one's head down" after
striking the ball - doggedly assuming our deliberations and choices
make a difference - makes for a better shot. But if Dennett
assaults behavioristic and related models of mind, he's no kinder
to "soft" ideas of free will, such as the belief that there can be
no moral or criminal guilt unless a person in a given situation
could have done otherwise: first of all, we can never say with
authority whether alternate actions were possible or not (too many
imponderables); second, even if we knew, our knowledge would have
little value (all "microcircumstances" being unique); and third,
the agent's lack of an alternative might have no importance (if he
had made himself a hardened criminal). As readers of The Mind's I
(1981) will remember, Dennett has a remarkable gift for
constructing humanistic psychology out of materials garnered from
physics, biology, and cybernetics. He's in even better form here -
and with his sprightly style and exceptional clarity, he's a worthy
descendant, if not a disciple, of his great forebear, William
James. (Kirkus Reviews)
Based on the author's presentation of the John Locke lectures at
Oxford, 1983.
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