In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the relation of consciousness, the will, and our intentional and voluntary actions. Wegner claims that our experience and common sense view according to which we can influence our behavior roughly the way we experience that we do it is an illusion.

"The three works in this collection, all dating from Nietzsche's last lucid months, show him at his most stimulating and controversial: the portentous ...

“Supposing that truth is a women-what then?” This is the very first sentence in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil . Not very often are philosophers so disarmingly explicit in their intention to discomfort the reader. In fact, one might say that the natural state of Nietzsche’s reader is one of perplexity. Yet it is in the process of overcoming the perplexity that one realizes how rewarding to have one’s ideas challenged. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche critiques the mediocre in (...) modernity and challenges the reader to accept their state of becoming and accept improvisation and creativity of the process. Nietzsche’s book is carefully designed to disorient the reader, to systematically provoke and tease her to the point of stealing away her certainties. It is challenging yet rewarding to overcome the perplexities of Nietzsche’s teachings. (shrink)

This essay challenges the widely accepted principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. The author considers situations in which there are sufficient conditions for a certain choice or action to be performed by someone, So that it is impossible for the person to choose or to do otherwise, But in which these conditions do not in any way bring it about that the person chooses or acts as he (...) does. In such situations the person may well be morally responsible for what he chooses or does despite his inability to choose or to do otherwise. Finally the author considers certain suggestions for revising the principle he rejects or for replacing it with a principle of an altogether different kind. (shrink)

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) is one of the truly great philosophers of the modernist period, and there is currently a major renaissance of interest in his unduly neglected texts and ideas amongst philosophers, literary theorists, and social theorists. Creative Evolution (1907) is the text that made Bergson world-famous in his own lifetime; in it Bergson responds to the challenge presented to our habits of thought by modern evolutionary theory, and attempts to show that the theory of knowledge must have its basis (...) in a theory of life. (shrink)

An overview of chaos, indeterminism, free will and the relationship between physics and free will.

It’s a question that has puzzled philosophers and theologians for centuries and is at the heart of numerous political, social, and personal concerns: Do we have free will? In this cogent and compelling book, Julian Baggini explores the concept of free will from every angle, blending philosophy, sociology, and cognitive science to find rich new insights on the intractable questions that have plagued us. Are we products of our culture, or free agents within it? Are our neural pathways fixed early (...) on by a mixture of nature and nurture, or is the possibility of comprehensive, intentional psychological change always open to us? And what, exactly, are we talking about when we talk about “freedom” anyway? Freedom Regained brings the issues raised by the possibilities—and denials—of free will to thought-provoking life, drawing on scientific research and fascinating encounters with everyone from artists to prisoners to dissidents. He looks at what it means for us to be material beings in a universe of natural laws. He asks if there is any difference between ourselves and the brains from which we seem never able to escape. He throws down the wildcards and plays them to the fullest: What about art? What about addiction? What about twins? And he asks, of course, what this all means for politics. Ultimately, Baggini challenges those who think free will is an illusion. Moving from doubt to optimism to a hedged acceptance of free will, he ultimately lands on a satisfying conclusion: it is something we earn. The result is a highly engaging, new, and more positive understanding of our sense of personal freedom, a freedom that is definitely worth having. (shrink)

In the subsequent pages, I want to develop a distinction between wanting and valuing which will enable the familiar view of freedom to make sense of the notion of an unfree action. The contention will be that, in the case of actions that are unfree, the agent is unable to get what he most wants, or values, and this inability is due to his own "motivational system." In this case the obstruction to the action that he most wants to do (...) is his own will. It is in this respect that the action is unfree: the agent is obstructed in and by the very performance of the action. (shrink)

Written in 1888, while Nietzsche was at the height of his brilliance, these two polemics blaze with provocative, inflammatory rhetoric. Nietzsche's "grand declaration of war," Twilight of the Idol s examines what we worship and why. Intended by the author as a general introduction to his philosophy, it assails "idols" of Western philosophy and culture (Socratic rationality and Christian morality among them) and sets the scene for The Antichrist . In addition to its full-scale attack on Christianity and Jesus Christ, (...) The Antichrist denounces organized religion as a whole. Students of philosophy, history, and German literature will find both works essential reading. (shrink)

Self-knowledge is based on several different forms of information, so distinct that each one essentially establishes a different 'self. The ecological self is the self as directly perceived with respect to the immediate physical environment; the interpersonal self, also directly perceived, is established by species-specific signals of emotional rapport and communication; the extended self is based on memory and anticipation; the private self appears when we discover that our conscious experiences are exclusively our own; the conceptual self or 'self-concept' draws (...) its meaning from a network of socially-based assumptions and theories about human nature in general and ourselves in particular. Although these selves are rarely experienced as distinct (because they are held together by specific forms of stimulus information), they differ in their developmental histories, in the accuracy with which we can know them, in the pathologies to which they are subject, and generally in what they contribute to human experience. (shrink)

Discusses the incompatibility of the concepts of free will and determinism and argues that moral responsibility needs the doctrine of free will.

The thesis of this article is that there has never been any ground for the controversy between the doctrine of free will and determinism, that it is based upon a misapprehension, that the two assertions are entirely consistent, that one of them strictly implies the other, that they have been opposed only because of our natural want of the analytical imagination. In so saying I do not tamper with the meaning of either phrase. That would be unpardonable. I mean free (...) will in the natural and usual sense, in the fullest, the most absolute sense in which for the purposes of the personal and moral life the term is ever employed. I mean it as implying responsibility, merit and demerit, guilt and desert. I mean it as implying, after an act has been performed, that one " could have done otherwise " than one did. I mean it as conveying these things also, not in any subtly modified sense but in exactly the sense in which we conceive them in life and in law and in ethics. These two doctrines have been opposed because we have not realised that free will can be analysed without being destroyed, and that determinism is merely a feature of the analysis of it. And if we are tempted to take refuge in the thought of an "ultimate ", an "innermost" liberty that eludes the analysis, then we have implied a deterministic basis and constitution for this liberty as well. For such a basis and constitution lie in the idea of liberty. -/- The thesis is not, like that of Green or Bradley, that the contending opinions are reconciled if we adopt a certain metaphysic of the ego, as that it is timeless, and identifies itself with a desire by a " timeless act". This is to say that the two are irreconcilable, as they are popularly supposed to be, except by a theory that delivers us from the conflict by taking us out of time. Our view on the contrary is that from the natural and temporal point of view itself there never was any need of a reconciliation but only of a comprehension of the meaning of terms. (The metaphysical nature of the self and its identity through time is a problem for all who confront memory, anticipation, etc.; it has no peculiar difficulties arising from the present problem.) -/- I am not maintaining that determinism is true; only that it is true insofar as we have free will. That we are free in willing is, broadly speaking, a fact of experience. That broad fact is more assured than any philosophical analysis. It is therefore surer than the deterministic analysis of it, entirely adequate as that in the end appears to be. But it is not here affirmed that there are no small exceptions, no slight undetermined swervings, no ingredient of absolute chance. All that is here said is that such absence of determination, if and so far as it exists, is no gain to freedom, but sheer loss of it; no advantage to the moral life, but blank subtraction from it. -- When I speak below of "the indeterminist" I mean the libertarian indeterminist, that is, him who believes in free will and holds that it involves indetermination. (shrink)

Essays discuss reason, self-control, self-definition, time, cause and effect, accidents, and responsibility, and explain why people want free will.

Bobzien presents the definitive study of one of the most interesting intellectual legacies of the ancient Greeks: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. She explains what it was, how the Stoics justified it, and how it relates to their views on possibility, action, freedom, moral responsibility, moral character, fatalism, logical determinism and many other topics. She demonstrates the considerable philosophical richness and power that these ideas retain today.

Consciousness is a mongrel concept: there are a number of very different "consciousnesses." Phenomenal consciousness is experience; the phenomenally conscious aspect of a state is what it is like to be in that state. The mark of access-consciousness, by contrast, is availability for use in reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action. These concepts are often partly or totally conflated, with bad results. This target article uses as an example a form of reasoning about a function of "consciousness" based on (...) the phenomenon of blindsight. Some information about stimuli in the blind field is represented in the brains of blindsight patients, as shown by their correct "guesses," but they cannot harness this information in the service of action, and this is said to show that a function of phenomenal consciousness is somehow to enable information represented in the brain to guide action. But stimuli in the blind field are BOTH access-unconscious and phenomenally unconscious. The fallacy is: an obvious function of the machinery of access-consciousness is illicitly transferred to phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Does free will exist? The question has fueled heated debates spanning from philosophy to psychology and religion. The answer has major implications, and the stakes are high. To put it in the simple terms that have come to dominate these debates, if we are free to make our own decisions, we are accountable for what we do, and if we aren't free, we're off the hook.There are neuroscientists who claim that our decisions are made unconsciously and are therefore outside of (...) our control and social psychologists who argue that myriad imperceptible factors influence even our minor decisions to the extent that there is no room for free will. According to philosopher Alfred R. Mele, what they point to as hard and fast evidence that free will cannot exist actually leaves much room for doubt. If we look more closely at the major experiments that free will deniers cite, we can see large gaps where the light of possibility shines through.In Free: Why Science Hasn't Disproved Free Will, Mele lays out his opponents' experiments simply and clearly, and proceeds to debunk their supposed findings, one by one, explaining how the experiments don't provide the solid evidence for which they have been touted. There is powerful evidence that conscious decisions play an important role in our lives, and knowledge about situational influences can allow people to respond to those influences rationally rather than with blind obedience.Mele also explores the meaning and ramifications of free will. What, exactly, does it mean to have free will -- is it a state of our soul, or an undefinable openness to alternative decisions? Is it something natural and practical that is closely tied to moral responsibility? Since evidence suggests that denying the existence of free will actually encourages bad behavior, we have a duty to give it a fair chance. (shrink)

A sourcebook/textbook on the problem of free will and determinism. Contains a history of the free will problem, a taxonomy of current free will positions, the standard argument against free will, the physics, biology, and neuroscience of free will, the most plausible and practical solution of the problem, and reviews of the work of the leading determinist Ted Honderich, the leading libertarian Robert Kane, the well-known compatibilist Daniel Dennett, and the determinism-agnostic Alfred Mele.

In Freedom Within Reason, Susan Wolf charts a course between incompatibilism, or the notion that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature, and compatibilism, or the notion that people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. Wolf argues that some of the forces which are beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of it, enabling us to see the world for what it is. (...) The freedom we want is not independence from the world, but independence from the forces that prevent us from choosing how to live in the light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. (shrink)

The Open Universe is the centerpiece of the argument of the Postscript.

Presents a synoptic, compact, and accessible exposition of this influential and interesting sector of twentieth-century American philosophy.

Physicalism, the thesis that everything is physical, is one of the most controversial problems in philosophy. Its adherents argue that there is no more important doctrine in philosophy, whilst its opponents claim that its role is greatly exaggerated. In this superb introduction to the problem Daniel Stoljar focuses on three fundamental questions: the interpretation, truth and philosophical significance of physicalism. In answering these questions he covers the following key topics: -/- (i)A brief history of physicalism and its definitions, (ii)what a (...) physical property is and how physicalism meets challenges from empirical sciences, (iii)'Hempel’s dilemma’ and the relationship between physicalism and physics, (iv)physicalism and key debates in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, such as supervenience, identity and conceivability, and (v)physicalism and causality. -/- Additional features include chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary of technical terms, making Physicalism ideal for those coming to the problem for the first time. (shrink)

I use recent developments in neuroscience to show how volitional mental events can be causal within a physicalist paradigm. (1) I begin by attacking the logic of Jaegwon Kim’s exclusion argument, according to which mental information cannot be causal of physical events. I argue that the exclusion argument falls apart if indeterminism is the case. If I am right, I must still build an account of how mental events are causal in the brain. To that end I take as my (...) foundation (2) a new understanding of the neural code that emphasizes rapid synaptic resetting over the traditional emphasis on neural spiking. (3) Such a neural code is an instance of ‘criterial causation,’ which requires modifying standard interventionist conceptions of causation. A synaptic reweighting neural code provides (4) a physical mechanism that accomplishes downward informational causation, (5) a middle path between determinism and randomness, and (6) a way for mind/brain events to turn out otherwise. This ‘synaptic neural code’ allows a constrained form of randomness parameterized by information realized in and set in synaptic weights, which in turn allows physical/informational criteria to be met in multiple possible ways when combined with an account of how randomness in the synapse is amplified to the level of randomness in spike timing. This new view of the neural code also provides (7) a way out of self-causation arguments against the possibility of mental causation. It leads to (8) an emphasis on deliberation and voluntary attentional manipulation as the core of volitional mental causation rather than, say, the correlates of unconscious premotor computations seen in Libet’s readiness potentials. And this new view of the neural code leads to (9) a new theory of the neural correlates of qualia as the ‘precompiled’ informational format that can be manipulated by voluntary attention, which gives qualia a causal role within a physicalist paradigm. I elaborate each of these ideas in turn below. -/- -/- (1) Countering Kim’s exclusion argument. The exclusion argument is, roughly, that the physical substrate does all the causal work that the supervenient mental state is supposed to do, so mental or informational events can play no causal role in material events. On Kim’s reductionistic view, all causation seeps away to the rootmost physical level, i.e. particles or strings. Add to that an assumption of determinism, and the laws of physics applicable at the rootmost level are sufficient to account for event outcomes at that level and every level that might supervene on that level. So informational causation, including voluntary mental causation or any type of free will that relies on it, is ruled out. -/- I argue that indeterminism undermines this sufficiency, so provides an opening whereby physically realized mental events could be downwardly causal. I argue that biological systems introduced a new kind of physical causation into the universe, one based upon triggering physical actions in response to detected spatiotemporal patterns in energy. This is a very different kind of causation than traditional Newtonian conceptions of the causal attributes of energy, such as mass, momentum, frequency or position, which seem to underlie deterministic and exclusionary intuitions. But patterns, unlike amounts of energy, lack mass and momentum and can be created and destroyed. They only become causal if there are physical detectors that respond to some pattern in energetic inputs. Basing causal chains upon successions of detected patterns in energy, rather than the transfer of energy among particles, opens the door not only to informational downward causation but to causal chains (such as mental causal chains or causal chains that might underlie a game of baseball or bridge) that are not describable by or solely explainable by the laws of physics applicable at the rootmost level. Yes, a succession of patterns must be realized in a physical causal chain that is consistent with the laws of physics, but many other possible causal chains that are also consistent with physical laws are ruled out by informational criteria imposed on indeterministic particle outcomes. Physical/informational criteria set in synaptic weights effectively sculpt informational causal chains out of the ‘substrate’ of possible physical causal chains. -/- (2) A new view of the neural code: I develop a new understanding the neural code that emphasizes rapid and dynamic synaptic weight resetting over neural firing as the core engine of information processing in the brain. The neural code is not solely a spike code, but a code where information is transmitted and transformed by flexibly and temporarily changing synaptic weights on a millisecond timescale. One metaphor is the rapid reshaping of the mouth (analogous to rapid, temporary synaptic weight resetting) that must take place just before vibrating air (analogous to spike trains) passes through, if information is to be realized and communicated. What rapid synaptic resetting allows is a moment by moment changing of the physical and informational parameters or criteria that have to be met before a neuron will fire. This dictates what information neurons will be responsive to and what they will ‘say’ to one another from moment to moment. -/- (3) Rethinking interventionist models of causation: Standard interventionist models of causation manipulate A to determine what effects, if any, there might be on B and other variables. If instead of manipulating A's output, we manipulate the criteria, parameters or conditions that B places on A's input, which must be satisfied before B changes or acts, then changes in B do not follow passively from changes in A as they would if A and B were billiard balls. Inputs from A can be identical, but in one case B changes in response to A, and in another it does not. This constant reparameterization of B is what neurons do when they change each other's synaptic weights. What I call "criterial causation" emphasizes that what can vary is either outputs from A to other nodes, or how inputs from A are decoded by receiving nodes. On this view, standard interventionist and Newtonian models of causation are a special case where B places no conditions on input from A. But the brain, if anything, emphasizes causation via reparameterization of B, by, for example, rapidly changing synaptic weights on post-synaptic neurons. -/- (4) How downward causation works: Downward causation means that events at a supervening level can influence outcomes at the rootmost level. In this context it would mean that information could influence particle paths. While it would be impossible self-causation if a supervening event changed its own present physical basis, it is not impossible that supervening events, such as mental information, could bias future particle paths. How might this work in the brain? The key pattern in the brain to which neurons respond is temporal coincidence. A neuron will only fire if it receives a certain number of coincident inputs from other neurons. Criterial causation occurs where physical criteria imposed by synaptic weights on coincident inputs in turn realize informational criteria for firing. This permits information to be downwardly causal regarding which indeterministic events at the rootmost level will be realized; Only those rootmost physical causal chains that meet physically realized informational criteria can drive a postsynaptic neuron to fire, and thus become causal at the level of information processing. Typically the only thing that the set of all possible rootmost physical causal chains that meet those criteria have in common is that they meet the informational criteria set. To try to cut information out of the causal picture here is a mistake; The only way to understand why it is that just this subset of possible physical causal chains—namely those that are also informational causal chains—can occur, is to understand that it is informational criteria that dictate that class of possible outcomes. -/- The information that will be realized when a neuron’s criteria for firing have been met is already implicit in the set of synaptic weights that impose physical criteria for firing that in turn realize informational criteria for firing. That is, the information is already implicit in these weights before any inputs arrive, just as what sound your mouth will make is implicit in its shape before vibrating air is passed through. Assuming indeterminism, many combinations of possible particle paths can satisfy given physical criteria, and many more cannot. The subset that can satisfy the physical criteria needed to make a neuron fire is also the subset that can satisfy the informational criteria for firing (such as ‘is a face’) that those synaptic weights realize. So sets of possible paths that are open to indeterministic elementary particles which do not also realize an informational causal chain are in essence “deselected” by synaptic settings by virtue of the failure of those sets of paths to meet physical/informational criteria for the release of a spike. -/- (5) Between determinism and randomness: Hume (1739) wrote “’tis impossible to admit of any medium betwixt chance and an absolute necessity.” Many other philosophers have seen no middle path to free will between the equally ‘unfree’ extremes of determinism and randomness. They have either concluded that free will does not exist, or tried to argue that a weak version of free will, namely, ‘freedom from coercion,’ is compatible with determinism. -/- A strong conception of free will, however, is not compatible with either determined or random choices, because in the determined case there are no alternative outcomes and things cannot turn out otherwise, while in the random case what happens does not happen because it was willed. A strong free will requires meeting some high demands: Beings with free will (a) must have information processing circuits that have multiple courses of physical or mental activity open to them; (b) they must really be able to choose among them; (c) they must be or must have been able to have chosen otherwise once they have chosen; and (d) the choice must not be dictated by randomness alone, but by the informational parameters realized in those circuits. This is a tough bill to fill, since it seems to require that acts of free will involve acts of self-causation. -/- Criterial causation offers a middle path between the two extremes of determinism and randomness that Hume was not in a position to see, namely, that physically realized informational criteria parameterize what class of neural activity can be causal of subsequent neural events. The information that meets preset physical/informational criteria may be random to a degree, but it must meet those criteria if it is to lead to neural firing, so is not utterly random. Preceding brain activity specifies the range of possible random outcomes to include only those that meet preset informational criteria for firing. -/- (6) How brain/mind events can turn out otherwise: The key mechanism, I argue, whereby atomic level indeterminism has its effects on macroscopic neural behavior is that it introduces randomness in spike timing. There is no need for bizarre notions such as consciousness collapsing wave packets or any other strange quantum effects beyond this. For example, quantum level noise expressed at the level of individual atoms, such as single magnesium atoms that block NMDA receptors, is amplified to the level of randomness and near chaos in neural and neural circuit spiking behavior. A single photon can even trigger neural firing in a stunning example of amplification from the quantum to macroscopic domains. The brain evolved to harness such ‘noise’ for information processing ends. Since the system is organized around coincidence detection, where spike coincidences (simultaneous arrival of spikes) are key triggers of informational realization (i.e. making neurons fire that are tuned to particular informational criteria), randomizing which incoming spike coincidences might meet a neuron's criteria for firing means informational parameters can be met in multiple ways just by chance. -/- (7) Skirting self-causation: A synaptic account of the neural code also gets around some thorny problems of self-causation that have been used to argue against the possibility of mental causation. The traditional argument is that a mental event realized in neural event x cannot change x because this would entail impossible self-causation. Criterial causation gets around this by granting that present self-causation is impossible. But it allows neurons to alter the physical realization of possible future mental events in a way that escapes the problem of self-causation of the mental upon the physical. Mental causation is crucially about setting synaptic weights. These serve as the physical grounds for the informational parameters that must be met by unpredictable future mental events. -/- (8) Voluntary attention and free will: I argue that the core circuits underlying free choice involve frontoparietal circuits that facilitate deliberation among options that are represented and manipulated in executive working memory areas. Playing out scenarios internally as virtual experience allows a superthreshold option to be chosen before specific motoric actions are planned. The chosen option can best meet criteria held in working memory, constrained by conditions of various evaluative circuits, including reward, emotional and cognitive circuits. This process also harnesses synaptic and ultimately atomic level randomness to foster the generation of novel and unforeseeable satisfactions of those criteria. Once criteria are met, executive circuits can alter synaptic weights on other circuits that will implement a planned operation or action. -/- (9) A new theory of qualia: The paradigmatic case of volitional mental control of behavior is voluntary attentional manipulation of representations in working memory such as the voluntary attentional tracking of one or a few objects among numerous otherwise identical objects. If there is a flock of indistinguishable birds, there is nothing about any individual bird that makes it more salient. But with volitional attention, any bird can be marked and kept track of. This salience is not driven by anything in the stimulus. It is voluntarily imposed on bottom-up information, and can lead to eventual motoric acts, such as shooting or pointing at the tracked bird. This leads to viewing the neural basis of attention and consciousness as not only realized in part in rapid synaptic reweighting, but also in particular patterns of spikes that serve as higher level units that traverse neural circuits and open what I call the ‘NMDA channel of communication.’ Qualia are necessary for volitional mental causation because they are the only informational format available to volitional attentional operations. Actions that follow volitional attentional operations, such as volitional tracking, cannot happen without consciousness. Qualia on this account are a ‘precompiled’ informational format made available to attentional selection and operations by earlier, unconscious information processing. -/- Conclusion: Assuming indeterminism, it is possible to be a physicalist who adheres to a strong conception of free will. On this view, mental and brain events really can turn out otherwise, yet are not utterly random. Prior neuronally realized information parameterizes what subsequent neuronally realized informational states will pass presently set physical/informational criteria for firing. This does not mean that we are utterly free to choose what we want to want. Some wants and criteria are innate, such as what smells good or bad. However, given a set of such innate parameters, the brain can generate and play out options, then select an option that adequately meets criteria, or generate further options. This process is closely tied to voluntary attentional manipulation in working memory, more commonly thought of as deliberation or imagination. Imagination is where the action is in free will. -/- - See more at: http://philosophycommons.typepad.com/flickers_of_freedom/2013/12/peter-tses-the-neural-basis-of-free -will-an-overview.html#sthash.Y5NvKvYd.dpuf. (shrink)

Helen Steward argues that determinism is incompatible with agency itself--not only the special human variety of agency, but also powers which can be accorded to animal agents. She offers a distinctive, non-dualistic version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.

_Can attitudes like those that have seemed welded to indeterminism and free will_ _actually go with determinism? Is it not a contradiction to suppose so? The little_ _Oxford University Press book_ _How Free Are You?_ _in its first edition, much_ _translated, was a summary of the indigestible or anyway not widely digested_.

Daniel C. Dennett is a brilliant polemicist, famous for challenging unexamined orthodoxies. Over the last thirty years, he has played a major role in expanding our understanding of consciousness, developmental psychology, and evolutionary theory. And with such groundbreaking, critically acclaimed books as Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist), he has reached a huge general and professional audience. In this new book, Dennett shows that evolution is the key to resolving the ancient problems (...) of moral and political freedom. Like the planet's atmosphere on which life depends, the conditions on which our freedom depends had to evolve, and like the atmosphere, they continue to evolve-and could be extinguished. According to Dennett, biology provides the perspective from which we can distinguish the varieties of freedom that matter. Throughout the history of life on this planet, an interacting web and internal and external conditions have provided the frameworks for the design of agents that are more free than their parts-from the unwitting gropings of the simplest life forms to the more informed activities of animals to the moral dilemmas that confront human beings living in societies. As in his previous books, Dennett weaves a richly detailed narrative enlivened by analogies as entertaining as they are challenging. Here is the story of how we came to be different from all other creatures, how our early ancestors mindlessly created human culture, and then, how culture gave us our minds, our visions, our moral problems-in a nutshell, our freedom. (shrink)

The term ‘naturalism’ has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed ‘naturalists’ from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing ‘supernatural’, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the (...) ‘human spirit’ (Krikorian 1944, Kim 2003). (shrink)