free will

Colleagues, Comrades, Sparring Partners, Onlookers:

Underlying the recent dust-up over sociobiology is that perennial
philosophical question of free will versus determinism.

I thought some of you might be interested in a great little book (170 pp)
on the subject:

Dennett, Daniel C.  1984.  Elbow Room:  The Varieties of Free Will Worth
        Wanting.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Dennett is a philosopher of consciousness, who more recently wrote the
outstanding "Darwin's Dangerous Idea."  

In the end he comes around to a position quite similar to Karl's, who of
course said "we make our own history, but not under conditions of our own
choosing," but what makes it so valuable is that Dennett works through the
nature of the free will we do have based on understanding human beings as
biological organisms.

And unlike John Searle, who is a better philosopher of consciousness,
Dennett is a fabulously entertaining writer!

RH