Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting - Softcover

Dennett, Daniel C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262540428 ISBN 13: 9780262540421

Publisher: Mit Pr, 1984

Synopsis

Anyone who has wondered if free will is just an illusion or has asked 'could I have chosen otherwise?' after performing some rash deed will find this book an absorbing discussion of an endlessly fascinating subject. Daniel Dennett, whose previous books include Brainstorms and (with Douglas Hofstadter) The Mind's I, tackles the free will problem in a highly original and witty manner, drawing on the theories and concepts of several fields usually ignored by philosophers; not just physics and evolutionary biology, but engineering, automata theory, and artificial intelligence.

In Elbow Room, Dennett shows how the classical formulations of the problem in philosophy depend on misuses of imagination, and he disentangles the philosophical problems of real interest from the "family of anxieties' they get enmeshed in - imaginary agents, bogeymen, and dire prospects that seem to threaten our freedom. Putting sociobiology in its rightful place, he concludes that we can have free will and science too. Elbow Room begins by showing how we can be "moved by reasons" without being exempt from physical causation. It goes on to analyze concepts of control and self-control-concepts often skimped by philosophers but which are central to the questions of free will and determinism. A chapter on "self-made selves" discusses the idea of self or agent to see how it can be kept from disappearing under the onslaught of science. Dennett then sees what can be made of the notion of acting under the idea of freedomdoes the elbow room we think we have really exist? What is an opportunity, and how can anything in our futures be "up to us"? He investigates the meaning of "can" and "could have done otherwise," and asks why we want free will in the first place.We are wise, Dennett notes, to want free will, but that in itself raises a host of questions about responsibility. In a final chapter, he takes up the problem of how anyone can ever be guilty, and what the rationale is for holding people responsible and even, on occasion, punishing them.

Elbow Room is an expanded version of the John Locke Lectures which Dennett gave at Oxford University in 1983.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor Codirector of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds; Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness; Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting; Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (all published by the MIT Press), From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Mind, and other books.

Review

Once again Daniel Dennett has made a stunning contribution to our achieving a monist physicalism which is compatible with human experiences. Just as his funtional mind-brain identity theory enable us to avoid positing 'grandmother neurons', so his new analysis enables psychologist to understand the competitive advantage of those species that believe they have free will and the stupidity of teaching introductory psychology students that they have none. A readable, light hearted book on a very serious subject. While philosphy citations outnumber those to psychology about two to one, Dennett is both well read and subtley competent in psychology, and the book will be enjoyed by intellecutal psychology students fully as much as by philosophy majors.

―Donald T. Campbell, University Professor of Social Relations & Psychology, Past President, American Psychological Association

I have always enjoyed the energetic and often unexpected provocation of Daniel Dennett's mind. In these powerful and no doubt controversial lectures, he gives elbow room for fresh thought as well as free will. Anyone who reads them carefully will be delighted by the unexpected views which Daniel Dennett provides.

―Jonathan Miller, Lever Hulme Research Fellow in Cognitive Science, University of Sussex

Daniel Dennett throws light into the darkness of ourselves by asking whether we are free to control our actions. I am glad I was free to choose to read this book.

―Professor Richard L. Gregory, Director, Brain and Perception Labratory, University of Bristol, England

Edition details

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0262540428
• ISBN 13: 9780262540421
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 248