Dennett: Freedom Evolves

From Scienticity

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Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves. New York : Viking, 2003. xiii + 347 pages, "notes on sources and further reading", bibliography, and index.

I admire Dennett for his ability to jump right in and say what he's about. Here is the first paragraph of the first page of the text of the book:

One widespread tradition has it that we human beings are responsible agents, captains of our fate, because what we really are are souls, immaterial and immortal clumps of Godstuff that inhabit and control our material bodies rather like spectral puppeteers. It is our souls that are the source of all meaning, and the locus of all our suffering, our joy, our glory and shame. But this idea of immaterial souls, capable of defying the laws of physics, has outlived its credibility thanks to the advance of the natural sciences. Many people think the implications of this are dreadful: We don't really have "free will" and nothing really matters. The aim of this book is to show why they are wrong. [p. 1]

Do we have free will? Is our free will apparent or real? Does it matter? Just as many people cannot imagine morality without a God, many cannot imagine free will—or even a point to living—if there is no soul, something (anything!) other than just a biological, deterministic brain.

Dennett wants us to see that it's simply not true; the soul is unnecessary and neural reductionism doesn't have to mean personal determinism. That's the argument; here's his approach:

Since I am conscious and you are conscious, we must have conscious selves that are somehow composed of these strange little parts. How can this be? To see how such an extraordinary composition job could be accomplished, we need to look at the history of the design processes that did all the work, the evolution of human consciousness. We also need to see how these souls made of cellular robots actually do endow us with the important powers and resultant obligations that traditional immaterial souls were supposed to endow us with (by unspecified magic). Trading in a supernatural soul for a natural soul—is this a good bargain? What do we give up and what do we gain? People jump to fearful conclusions about this that are hugely mistaken. I propose to prove this by tracing the growth of freedom on our planet from its earliest beginnings at the dawn of life. What kinds of freedom? Different kinds will emerge as the story unfolds. [p. 3]

Dennett likes to start at the beginning and move forward from there with careful thought. He proposes to take an evolutionary view towards the question of free will. He is a philosopher, yes, but his outlook is naturalistic and analytical, which is why a note for a book with a subject like this appears here. One can learn a great deal about applying an analytical, scientific stance towards any subject by watching how Dennett forges his argument.

With a bit of humor, Dennett argues against those who fear that too much understanding of how the brain works will dispel all semblance of free will.

Whales roam the oceans, birds soar blithely overhead, and, according to an old joke, a 500-pound gorilla sits wherever it wants. but none of these creatures is free in the way human beings can be free. Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species, us. The differences between autonomous human agents and the other assemblages of nature are visible not just from an anthropocentric perspective but also from the most objective standpoints (the plural is important) achievable. Human freedom is real—as real as language, music, and money—so it can be studied objectively from a no-nonsense, scientific point of view. But like language, music, money, and other products of society, its persistence is affected by what we believe about it. So it is not surprising that our attempts to study it dispassionately are distorted by anxiety that we will clumsily kill the specimen under the microscope. [pp. 304—305]

I didn't find Freedom Evolves as breathtaking as Darwin's Dangerous Idea, but I didn't expect to—that book is in a class by itself. Nevertheless, I found it stimulating to read and profitable to have read.

-- Notes by JNS