Post by Nitaidas on Oct 22, 2009 7:37:52 GMT -6
I highly recommend this book to anyone who thinks that free will and determinism are incompatible. Dennett does a good job of marshaling arguments for the evolution of free will and pointing out the weaknesses in the attempts by others to work indeterminism into their accounts of free will. It is not an easy book. Don't bother with it if you do not want to face the challenge of thinking about what you are reading.
I must say I think he has a point. Part of the problem arises from what different people mean by free will. His version of free will is completely materialistic whereas others insist on bringing a supernatural element into free will. Naturally, for Dennett that kind of free will does not exist. He gives a good example of who this works on page 222:
"Recall the myth of Cupid, who flutters about on his cherubic wings making people fall in love by shooting them with his little bow and arrow. This is such a lame cartoonist's convention that it is hard to believe that anybody ever took any version of it seriously. But we can pretend: Suppose that once upon a time there were people who believed that an invisible arrow from a flying god was a sort of inoculation that caused people to fall in love. And suppose some killjoy scientist then came along and showed them that this was simply not true. No such flying gods exist. 'He's shown that nobody ever falls in love, not really. The idea of falling in love is just a nice---maybe even a necessary---fiction. It never happens.' That is what some might say. Others, one hopes, would want to deny it: 'No. Love is quite real, and so is falling in love. It just isn't what people used to think it is. It's just as good---maybe even better. True love doesn't involve any flying gods." The issue of free will is like this. If you are one of those who think that free will is only really free if it springs from an immaterial soul that hovers happily in your brain, shooting arrows of decision into your motor cortex, then, given what you mean by free will, my view is that there is no free will at all. If, on the other hand, you think free will might be morally important without being supernatural, then my view is that free will is indeed real, but just not quite what you probably thought it was."
I must say I think he has a point. Part of the problem arises from what different people mean by free will. His version of free will is completely materialistic whereas others insist on bringing a supernatural element into free will. Naturally, for Dennett that kind of free will does not exist. He gives a good example of who this works on page 222:
"Recall the myth of Cupid, who flutters about on his cherubic wings making people fall in love by shooting them with his little bow and arrow. This is such a lame cartoonist's convention that it is hard to believe that anybody ever took any version of it seriously. But we can pretend: Suppose that once upon a time there were people who believed that an invisible arrow from a flying god was a sort of inoculation that caused people to fall in love. And suppose some killjoy scientist then came along and showed them that this was simply not true. No such flying gods exist. 'He's shown that nobody ever falls in love, not really. The idea of falling in love is just a nice---maybe even a necessary---fiction. It never happens.' That is what some might say. Others, one hopes, would want to deny it: 'No. Love is quite real, and so is falling in love. It just isn't what people used to think it is. It's just as good---maybe even better. True love doesn't involve any flying gods." The issue of free will is like this. If you are one of those who think that free will is only really free if it springs from an immaterial soul that hovers happily in your brain, shooting arrows of decision into your motor cortex, then, given what you mean by free will, my view is that there is no free will at all. If, on the other hand, you think free will might be morally important without being supernatural, then my view is that free will is indeed real, but just not quite what you probably thought it was."