Humans are physical beings with evolved brains and evolved minds.
Humans are also moral agents with consciousness and will. How
should we try to reconcile these very different visions of our
humanness? Since human freedom is real, 'so it can be studied
objectively from a no-nonsense, scientific point of view.' And in
Freedom Evolves, Dennett attempts to produce just such a
no-nonsense, scientific account of human freedom, to reconcile the
seemingly irreconcilable. The conventional arguments against both
free will, on the one hand, and scientific materialism, on the
other, rests on the belief that in a deterministic universe there
is simply no room for freedom. Not so, says Dennett. Such a view
confuses determinism and inevitability. Suppose I'm playing
baseball and the pitcher chucks the ball directly at my face. I
turn my head to avoid it. There was, therefore, nothing inevitable
about the ball hitting my face. But, a sceptic might say, I turned
my head not of my own free will but was caused to do so by factors
beyond my control. That is to misunderstand the nature of
causation, Dennett retorts. What really caused me to turn my head
was not a set of deterministic links cascading back to the
beginnings of the universe - though that certainly exists - but my
desire at that moment not to get hit by the baseball. At a
different moment I might decide to take a hit in the face, if by
doing so I help my team win the game. Dennett argues that freedom
is not an illusion but an objective phenomenon, distinct from all
other biological conditions and found only in one species - us. A
profound and important book. (Kirkus UK)
Daniel C. Dennett's Freedom Evolves tackles the most important
question of human existence - is there really such a thing as free
will? How can humans make genuinely independent choices if we are
just a cluster of cells and genes in a world determined by
scientific laws? Here, Daniel Dennett provides an impassioned
defense of free will. But rather than freedom being an eternal,
unchanging condition of our existence, in reality, he reveals, it
has evolved: just like life on the planet and the air we breathe.
Evolution is the key to resolving this greatest of philosophical
questions - and to understanding our place in the world as uniquely
free agents. Dennett shows that far from there being an
incompatibility between contemporary science and the traditional
vision of freedom and morality, it is only recently that science
has advanced to the point where we can see how we came to have our
unique kind of freedom. 'A serious book with a brilliant message'
Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen 'Powerful and ingenious ...
The definitive argument that the human mind is a product of
evolution' John Gray, Independent 'A book of sparkling brio and
seemingly effortless panache ... Dennett at his best is as good as
it gets' Spectator Daniel C. Dennett is one of the most original
and provocative thinkers in the world. A brilliant polemicist and
philosopher, he is famous for challenging unexamined orthodoxies,
and an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement. His books
include Brainstorms, Brainchildren, Elbow Room, Breaking the Spell,
Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Freedom Evolves.
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