Product Description

Anyone who has wondered if free will is just an illusion or has asked 'could I have chosen otherwise?' after performing some rash deed will find this book an absorbing discussion of an endlessly fascinating subject. Daniel Dennett, whose previous books include Brainstorms and (with Douglas Hofstadter) The Mind's I, tackles the free will problem in a highly original and witty manner, drawing on the theories and concepts of several fields usually ignored by philosophers; not just physics and evolutionary biology, but engineering, automata theory, and artificial intelligence. In Elbow Room, Dennett shows how the classical formulations of the problem in philosophy depend on misuses of imagination, and he disentangles the philosophical problems of real interest from the "family of anxieties' they get enmeshed in - imaginary agents, bogeymen, and dire prospects that seem to threaten our freedom. Putting sociobiology in its rightful place, he concludes that we can have free will and science too. Elbow Room begins by showing how we can be "moved by reasons" without being exempt from physical causation. It goes on to analyze concepts of control and self-control-concepts often skimped by philosophers but which are central to the questions of free will and determinism. A chapter on "self-made selves" discusses the idea of self or agent to see how it can be kept from disappearing under the onslaught of science. Dennett then sees what can be made of the notion of acting under the idea of freedomdoes the elbow room we think we have really exist? What is an opportunity, and how can anything in our futures be "up to us"? He investigates the meaning of "can" and "could have done otherwise," and asks why we want free will in the first place. We are wise, Dennett notes, to want free will, but that in itself raises a host of questions about responsibility. In a final chapter, he takes up the problem of how anyone can ever be guilty, and what the rationale is for holding people responsible and even, on occasion, punishing them. Daniel C. Dennett is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Elbow Room is an expanded version of the John Locke Lectures which he gave at Oxford University in 1983. A Bradford Book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #264404 in Books
• Published on: 1984-11-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Review
"Sir," harrumphed Dr. Johnson, "We know our will is free, and there's an end on't." Professor Dennett (Philosophy, Tufts) also knows the will is free, but in this witty, wide-ranging, steadily persuasive essay he transforms Johnson's (and most other people's) intuitive certitude into a series of rationally articulated probabilities. The "elbow room" he argues for is the sphere inhabited by "us sinners" (limited, conditioned, but responsible agents), as opposed to both the realms of absolute freedom imagined by Socrates, Kant, Sartre, Chisolm, et al., and the dungeons of determinism or fatalism. The latter, of course, are what really worry us; but Dennett shows that the specters of heteronomy are neither irrefutable axioms nor solid science, but "unfocused images" that break down under scrutiny. In one of his many illuminating metaphors, he contrasts body English (the determinist's view that all our thinking and straining and deciding affect the real world no more than a golfer's antics after hitting a putt help to sink it) with follow-through: the seemingly illogical but undeniable fact that "keeping one's head down" after striking the ball - doggedly assuming our deliberations and choices make a difference - makes for a better shot. But if Dennett assaults behavioristic and related models of mind, he's no kinder to "soft" ideas of free will, such as the belief that there can be no moral or criminal guilt unless a person in a given situation could have done otherwise: first of all, we can never say with authority whether alternate actions were possible or not (too many imponderables); second, even if we knew, our knowledge would have little value (all "microcircumstances" being unique); and third, the agent's lack of an alternative might have no importance (if he had made himself a hardened criminal). As readers of The Mind's I (1981) will remember, Dennett has a remarkable gift for constructing humanistic psychology out of materials garnered from physics, biology, and cybernetics. He's in even better form here - and with his sprightly style and exceptional clarity, he's a worthy descendant, if not a disciple, of his great forebear, William James. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.