dennett on free will

On Thu, 1 Mar 2001 Threehegemons@aol.com wrote:

> RH--I'm sorry I don't have time to read the Dennett book--what are the 
> varieties of free will worth wanting?
> 
> Steven Sherman

Steven:

Here are some excerpts to give you a flavor of Dennett's argument:

"We already saw in chapter two that if, in order to be a genuine moral
agent, one had to have a perfect Kantian Will, infinitely sensitive to the
sweet voice of Reason, there could be no moral agents in our
universe.  And in chapter four we saw that a completely self-made self,
one hundred percent responsible for its own character, was an
impossibility.  But the prospect was seen to be good that we finite and
imperfect beings are worthy approximations of these imaginary
absolutes.  We should look for a similar resting place for our concept of
moral resoponsibility."  (p. 156-7)

"My conclusions are neither revolutionary nor pessimistic.  They are only
moderately revisionary:  the common wisdom about our place in the universe
is roughly right.  We do have free will.  We can have free will and
science too."  (p. 19)

from Elbow Room by Daniel Dennett (MIT Press, 1984)


By my reading, Dennett comes out someplace quite close to Marx, who said
"men make their history, but not under conditions of their own
choosing" (or words very much to that effect, in the 18th Brumaire).

What he, like Marx, challenges is an idealist, absolute definition of free
will, and argues that by that definition (or definitions), free will does
not exist, but that we lose nothing because of this fact.  Humans are
biological organisms (this is a major part of his exposition), and of
course are limited by this -- we can't flap our wings and fly if we want
to -- we do not have "free will" to do anything we want.

So once you accept a more reasonable, limited definition of free will,
then yes, we do have free will.

As for Boris, I'm not sure what the problem is with people exercising 
free will and making choices, and that resulting in predictable patterns
amenable to study by science.  Are you a subscriber to a Kantian
definition of free will?

Richard Hutchinson