Freedom Evolves

I spent about 3 months reading and considering Prof Dennett's Freedom Evolves. I rated the book 4 stars, as I think it should be widely read. I didn't rate it 5 stars, because it is a difficult read for those unfamiliar with modern philosophy. Of course, a watered-down "lay" version would not be as convincing, so maybe it deserves 5 stars.

This is a very well written text, with a chapter summary, next chapter preface and recommending reading after each chapter. The summaries and prefaces make it easy for those who want to take the "short course," skipping the detailed cases and argumentation. I would recommend the book be referenced in courses such as contemporary philosophy, philosophy of mind, epistemology and ethics. At the graduate and professional level, the question may be raised whether Dennett's proposed explanation of the origin of mind (and free will) is an adequate philosophical explanation.

The book is best understood if one has had an introductory course in modern philosophy. Since Descartes, modern people have disputed over the philosophy of mind, which is what this book is about. What is consciousness? What is free will? How are these conditions possible? These are deep questions, for which philosophers have given widely divergent answers since the beginning of civilization. There are the dualists, from Plato to Descartes and including Kant, who assert the existence of a non-material soul, spirit or essence. Dualism is supported by religious believers and theologians, who have always been the majority of men. Even in godless versions of Buddhism, there is a common belief in some sort of re-incarnation which presupposes the migration of some non-material being from one creature to another. (How else would a person know it was once a cricket?)

There is an equally long, but less advertised, tradition of materialists who do not believe in souls, spirits, gods or demons. For materialists, our sense of self, our consciousness and our free will are all part and parcel of our material being. In the simplest terms, what you see is what you get. Dennett and I belong to this tradition, but this is not to say there is anything like unanimity among materialists. Almost every aspect of materialism is disputed by one materialist or another. Dennett's views fall into the camp of "evolutionary philosophy," to give it a name, which is almost entirely populated by contemporaries. This is because Darwin's Theory of Evolution has had a profound and growing influence over everyone since its invention. Darwinian thinking has been further promoted by Einstein's Relativity and the rush of Quantum Mechanics from purest abstraction to engineering, all in less than the first 50 years of the 20^th century. Only now are most educated people becoming comfortable with those recent scientific revolutions. Dennett is a leader among those who are integrating modern science into philosophy, which is not the same as the immediately previous clutch who were philosophers of science. In this sense, Dennett is a second generation contemporary: the philosopher's first job was grasping the science, which now allows it to be incorporated. The eventual result (I hope) could be a truly modern philosophy, comprehensive in scope like that of Plato, Aristotle or Kant. Dennett is busy chiseling out one of the stones that will be part of that edifice. (Yes, even the master builders depended on the work of others.)

This book summarizes and builds on Dennett's two earlier works, Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). Dennett defends a position: compatibilism: (1991)

This is, of course, brings us to the nub of the book: free will. Compatibilists - again, I am with Dennett - see no contradiction between the monistic existence of a material world and free will. In the first few chapters, Dennett argues against those determinists who say that the world is mechanical - a Newtonian clockwork - so there is no such thing as free will. Free will must be an illusion, because everything is determined. In the next few chapters, Dennett argues against those materialists who say free will depends on some sort of randomness. For those materialists, Quantum Mechanics is the saving grace which allows the freedom required of a free will. Dennett's strategy in both cases is to show that both determinists and indeterminists conceive "free will" in the sense of Descartes cogito, which requires an "I" somewhere. That "I" is located in what Dennett calls the Cartesian Theater, which he had put up for auction as surplus philosophical property in Consciousness Explained. Dennett's view is that you will not find the "I" anywhere because it is everywhere; it is systemic.

The center of Freedom Evolves is that it is perfectly reasonable to suppose the neural networks of the latest primates are where the ego resides, if we don't take that term - "reside" - too literally. That's because Mother Nature has gone through a lot of pain and trouble to throw out her latest experimental model - us. We are the result of billions of years of tests, failures, improvements and re-tests; that is, if you believe in evolution. (If you don't, there's no help for you here.) What Dennett showed in Darwin's Dangerous Idea is that there is a progression from the simplest bacteria to eukaryotes with neural tubes to us. Further, that progression leads straightaway to "consciousness," self-identity and all the other things we consider ourselves to have. Once you have reflective organisms, you also have moral agents. None of this requires the world to be a Newtonian clockwork, or Quantum chaos. That's because, regardless of the underlying mechanism, 'I', 'consciousness,' 'my will,' etc are all systemic notions - ways of talking about matter organized in a certain way.

My hackneyed example of this sort of thinking is 'you can run Windows╓ on a computer made of mouse traps.' This is a characteristically very recent way of thinking, beginning only after World War II. It separates 'the system' from the underlying mechanism. This is the founding idea of programming - "software" -as a separate science. Systems are often mathematical, and always imbedded in a language. You cannot see Windows╓ or English or C++, although you can see their symbols and scripts. You see Windows╓ in operation, but you never see "it." I think Dennett is proposing the mind belongs to the class of "systems," like those in the machines we use everyday.

The compatibilist position, expounded in Freedom Evolves, is that nature has developed the machinery by which we became moral agents; i.e., creatures with a free will. Once we reach that state of moral agency, it matters little how we got there; now we are responsible for what we do. Thus, Dennett lays the foundation for a materialist ethical theory. That's really the best part of the book, which makes the struggle worth it. You see, the religionists - soulful people all - would have you believe all materialists are immoral demons; in the Italian smear, animale! But, it is not true.