Freedom Evolves [Paperback]

Our point of view as living acting human beings is not the point of view of atoms or of gods and cannot be, need not be, and cannot even coherently be imagined to be. If you want to get that point across to an intelligent, scientifically inclined clinger to metaphysics, mysticism, or their lord Jesus Christ, this might be an ideal book to give them.

That said, I have some quibbles with Dennett's approach. He argues that an event can be determined but not inevitable, meaning not unavoidable (from the point of view of the agent involved), and he develops this point as something more than just a clever play on etymologies. But he goes on throughout the book to discuss free will in solely negative terms as the ability to avoid things. Why is there not one word on free will as the ability to create the new and unexpected? Why is there not even a comment on avoiding failing to be brilliant or heroic? In fact, Dennett uses forced confinement (as in a US prison cell) as an analogy for free will (we avoid child molestation by locking up people convicted of child molestation). Further, Dennett focuses part of his discussion of "intuitions" regarding free will on anger and resentment. Where in all of this is admiration, appreciation, self-satisfaction, gratification, or friendship?

Dennett leaves out much of what is valuable about free will. Those who object to his compatibilism may use this fact against him. I find compatibilism completely convincing but Dennett's view of life depressing.

Dennett clearly supports our habit of locking many people up in prisons, although he offers castration as a possible alternative for pedophiles. But, while protecting children from pedophiles may have something to do with the will power of former pedophiles trying to change, it ought to be seen as a separate issue from retribution for guilt grounded in freely willed criminal behavior.

If we are going to be advanced enough to drop metaphysics, we should also be advanced enough to make our handling of crime forward looking, focused on reconciliation and restitution. Dennett's fantasy about guilty individuals adopting a "Thanks I needed that" attitude toward punishment does not advance this project at all.

The point of the work is to show the compatibility of metaphysical determinism and moral free will. In Dennett's views, the metaphysical question of determinism vs. indeterminism is irrelevant to the issue of free will. Moral agency is a property of beings that have evolved the ability to communicate with other beings and to reflect (albeit imperfectly) upon their internal psychological state. When we say "she could have done otherwise", it is not a metaphysical statement; it is a statement of abilities at an agent level. Even though a chess program is unambigously deterministic, it is still meaningful to say that "it could have done otherwise."

Michael Shermer has a review of Freedom Evolves in Science in which he takes minor issue with Dennett and argues that only a sort of "pseudo-freedom" is compatible with determinism. But Dennett's main point is that this "psuedo-freedom" is a real and meaningful -- indeed, it possesses all the meaningful properties that are desirable of free will.

Not being one who follows philosophical debates on free will too closely, I found Dennett's reasoning fairly self-evident, but philosophers may take greater issue with it. Regardless, Dennett is a capable writer and clear thinker; his works are always fun reads.

For someone of Dennett's prestige and genius- he's certainly one of the 20th century's great philosophers- he must feel pressured to come up with something new, to be more brilliant, to soar even higher than the last time, he is expected to deliver, and this is what I feel this book is, a book to satisfy those who demand from him new genius, but instead of delivering that, he has fallen into the trap of writing something simply because he feels he has to, instead of writing because he has found the next piece of the puzzle. He talks much, but says little.

Yet once again, as he has done in previous books, he writes much about Conrad's Life Worlds. I feel this is dangerous thing to do, to rest so much on this program, because in the future, if the logic and flaw of it are exposed, his writing so much about it will lessen the value of his own teachings. He needs new "examples" to get his points across and should not place so much emphasis continuously on this. I'm not saying it has flaws, but he is walking too much on this "plank."

He also seems to apologize too much for what he is about to say. Great philosophers don't make apologies. They accept them from others. He says many times people reading might be tempted to "stop that crow!" yet there is little here that merits that reaction. In fact, if there are two opposite ways to go from Dennett's work, he firmly stays outside the camp of the radical. "I'm not saying we're Zombies, I'm not saying to castrate" The question is can someone who is so worried about misinterpretation really be laying everything they think and feel completely on the line, or do they hold back from fear?" Has his position become so lofty, he enjoys the status quo and seeks to maintain it at the expense of his own development?

Dennett goes to great lengths to try to despel Libet's experiments, which is almost always a sure sign there might be something to them. An example of "The philosopher doth protest too much." Instead of turning me away from them, he has done the opposite and made me interested.

At the end of the book, he seems to have forgotten what the book is supposed to be about, and it lacks an ending chapter that summarizes everything before it and gives us something tangible in terms of clear-cut explanations about what he is saying on the subject matter. Instead, you are left on your own to sort out whether anything concrete has been said about it at all. The extensive reading lists he gives at the end of each chapter is also a clue that Dennett is not willing, or perhaps can't, fully discuss things to the satisfaction of the reader. He seems willing to insert meanderings of many topics in order to avoid having to discuss the real issues. The stories here are not as clever as before, the quotations less stimulating, and his take on things too brief and "thrown in" to have any impact. He expouses "free will" in terms of morality and ethics, topics of great interest and makes for great padding, but are not necessarily the most important in terms of conclusions.

The problem is that there is nothing "new" here. It's another revisit to the well of the past. Dennett would be best served to follow the streams of thought his "Consciousness Explained" produced and at the end of that stream, move to deeper waters.