Freedom evolves
by Daniel C. Dennett · first published 2002
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Argues that free will is compatible with determinism, framing it as an emergent capacity that evolved. It offers a clear, rigorous treatment for readers exploring free will and the philosophy of mind.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"Four billion years ago, there was no freedom on our planet, because there was no life. What kinds of freedom have evolved since the origin of life? Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? If you are free, are you responsible for being free, or just lucky?". "In Freedom Evolves, Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained, sets out to answer these questions, showing how we, alone among the animals, have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. In a series of strikingly original arguments drawing on evolutionary biology,
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…that nondeterminism is somehow an important ingredient in whatever it is we mean by "free will". This doesn't make much sense to me. If you want it to not make sense to you as well, read Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves. You might want to budget more than a couple hours for that book, though.
on “Tell YC: Answers from John McCarthy” ↗I recommend Dennett's review of Harris's book to people who recommend it: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13814 Also Elbow Room, or, better, Freedom Evolves.
on “What If Consciousness Comes First?” ↗…collections of a bunch of molecules, arranged just so. There is no magical essence called "desk", it's made up of stuff, and we experience that arrangement of stuff accordingly. See Dennett, (2003): "Freedom Evolves" for a more lucid account. He says the same as is said in the article, but instead re-defines "free will" to fit the reality of these conclusions - a more intellectually satisfying approach, even though…
on “Is Free Will An Illusion?” ↗I say this every time this topic comes up, which seems to be often, so I'm sorry to sound like a broken record, but y'all need to read 'Freedom Evolves' by Dan Dennett, followed up by his longer more important work, 'Consciousness Explained.' You might not agree with his conclusions, as they're fairly radical, but it answers the question of the original…
on “Ask HN: How can you be rational and still believe in free will?” ↗'Freedom evolves' by Daniel Dennett deals with this. http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Evolves-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/01... Our future may be fixed, but our nature is not. We don't have a 'God's eye view' that sees all our…
on “Ask HN: How can you be rational and still believe in free will?” ↗If you're interested in these topics, I highly recommend a couple of books by philosopher Daniel Dennett: 'Consciousness Explained' and 'Freedom Evolves'. His way of reconciling determinism with free will goes something like this. Assuming determinism, then we are living in one of a huge number of possible universes. As limited intelligences, we have…
on “Do Fruit Flies Have Free Will?” ↗…actions, the freedom to manipulate other agents with our clever words. Dan Dennett makes a better case for this than I, please look into his wonderful books on the topic. Daniel Dennett: --Elbow Room --Freedom Evolves
on “What's expected of us” ↗…saying you're wrong but you've got quite a lot of arguing to do as philosophers have been trying to prove free will exists for centuries. The best argument for it that I've read is from Daniel Dennett in 'Freedom Evolves' where he suggests free will is a kind of emergent behaviour which while not being real is 'real enough'. Obviously I'm nowhere near doing it justice as it's an entire book by a proper philosopher but…
on “Your success isn’t down to free will – luck determines everything” ↗…So does Douglas Hofstadter Dennett does a good refutation of Penrose. There's some in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (I think; might be confusing it with Consciousness Explained), but he finishes the job in Freedom Evolves Long story short, his assertion is that the contradiction between determinism in physics and free will in humans is a category mix-up, not a true contradiction. There are so many layers between the two…
on “John Conway: Discovering free will (2011)” ↗This bogus argument has been refuted numerous times--read Dennett's book "Freedom Evolves" for one sort of response. And whether people are "pretending" something is irrelevant (and ad hominem, and not even true). The plain fact remains that all evidence and logic supports physicalism, and…
on “AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem” ↗this. Read "Freedom Evolves" or the shorter precursor "Elbow Room". This confusion of free will with indeterminacy, and the specious connection with Quantum Mechanics (taken to the absurd extreme by Penrose) really muddies the…
on “The Free Will Theorem” ↗…an inevitable and ultimately predictable consequence of The Big Bang) reign in contemporary thought. Free will is largely considered to be an illusion or psychological trick (see eg. Daniel C. Dennett 'Freedom Evolves') and several studies have shown that decisions happen before we become aware of them and believe ourselves to have consciously decided (see Benjamin Libet's experiments amongst many others). For free…
on “Facebook’s war on free will” ↗If Dennett's argument (in the ordered list in that post) is stated accurately, it is obviously wrong. Having not read _Freedom Evolves_, I can't say whether this is an accurate summary, but it's clear that "to avoid the actions you'll deterministically take" and "to avoid objects" are not using "avoid" in the same sense.
on “How Dumb is Daniel Dennett?” ↗I haven't read Freedom Evolves, but I intend to. Judging by the list of points that Aaron provides and Dennett's other books, I bet Dennett's actual point was to say: 'Look, this is plausible, and you can't dismiss it out of hand.…
on “How Dumb is Daniel Dennett?” ↗…work he seems to be pretty smart, which is why I suspect that this Aaron guy is misunderstanding his argument. I note that his summary is in fact a summary of somebody else's summary. I haven't read Freedom Evolves, but my guess is that Dennett was actually making an argument that it's possible to simulate, in a deterministic universe, entities which have "free will", or at least which believe they do. I doubt he…
on “How Dumb is Daniel Dennett?” ↗