I was wondering if anybody out there has read any books by Daniel Dennett. The couple I’m most interested in are:
Freedom Evolves
Consciousness Explained
Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Freewill
While I’m planing on buying these books I would like to know if anybody else might have already studied his work and have any opinions? I know relitively little except a friend will be studying his work during his final year of philosophy.
I’ve read Freedom Evolves. It is areally good. Pretty the most enjoyable philosopher to read. He makes it fun and easy to understand…
Cool, what are the main philosophical points he makes? Meaning in which direction does he go on freewill? I’ve read somewhere that he talks about how Determinism at some level is required for Freewill to function, as if nothing was related on some level or didn’t have a cause, then the entire world would be more random then Free-Willed. Does he follow the Schopenhauer school of though, where our will is really more like coerced then actually free.
Hi Pax,
At his best Dennett is among the best; at his worst he’s no more tedious than the rest. Dawkins recently said that Dennett is a philosopher of science that bothers to read science. That’s high praise, coming from Dawkins.
I read Brainchildren a few years ago. It’s a collection of Dennett’s essays on the subject of AI and consciousness (qualia, zombies, etc.). I recall my feeling that some of these pieces were a bit dated, though it might be that I simply agree with him too often (I don’t know which is the more boring: perfect sense or perfect nonsense). I best remember the very last essay on the virtues of ignorance or “moral first-aid until the doctor of philosophy arrives”. I quite enjoyed that. Overall, I’d give the book 2.5 or 3 stars out of a possible of 5.
Pax, if you’re set on buying this book you can have my copy. The US post office has a fairly inexpensive surface rate to Europe (I think the boats are rowed by Iraqi galley slaves these days). Just PM me with your address and I’ll send it over to you.
Despite the fact that Elbow Room seems to have fallen “stillborn from the press,” I’ve long kept a copy on my bookshelf. The first chapters are routine; nearly everyone who takes up the question of free will begins by showing that it’s not what we think it is. But things really start to move along by Chapter 4, “Self-Made Selves,” which begins with this quote by Nietzshe:
“Some souls one will never discover unless one invents them first.”
“Do we do the things that we do?” Can we create ourselves, as Sartre suggested, ex nihilo? Is there a “Central Headquarters” of the self? How is “luck” involved with how think and behave?
The next chapter, “Acting Under the Idea of Freedom” contains a wonderful discussion of inevitability or inexorability:
“Suppose astronomers discover a huge comet and calculate its trajectory: it will land on North America in exactly one week and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Faced with this horrible vision, we can imagine people casting abut for strategems; They ask themselves over and over,“Is there nothing can can be done?” People begin praying for a miracle, and then, on the eve of destruction, another comet appears in just the right place to deflect the doomsday comet from its path, preventing the deaths of millions. Was it a miracle? No, as it turns out; the second comet did not just miraculously materialize. It too, had been heading on its foreordained route for millions of years; the astronomers had just not noticed it before. But a careful scrutiny of old observatory photos shows that it was out there, exactly on track to save us…Did the second comet prevent a catastrophe? Which catastrophe did it prevent? There never was going to be a catastrophe.”
Pretty good, eh? It gets even better. But given that I’m out of time, I’ll just skip to the end where he asks on the last page, “Can I conceive of beings whose wills are freer than our own?” Isn’t that a geat question? I give Elbow Room 4.0 to 4.5 out of 5 possible stars.
Best wishes,
Michael
Let’s see, I’ve read:
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Consciousness Explained
and
Dennett and His Critics
That last one has some nifty essays that spend more time expanding on Dennett rather than criticizing him. There’s one essay that goes after Nagel’s, “What’s it like to be a bat?” called, interestingly enough, “What’s it like to be boring and myopic?”