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Freedom Evolves Daniel C. Dennett

Freedom Evolves By Daniel C. Dennett

Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett


£7.40
Condition - Very Good
Only 3 left

Freedom Evolves Summary

Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett

Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers yes! Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original
arguments-drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy-that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally. In Freedom Evolves, Dennett seeks to place ethics on the foundation it deserves: a realistic, naturalistic, potentially unified vision of our place in nature.

Freedom Evolves Reviews

Dennett has taken on really big issues, made them clear, dealt with them seriously and given us much on which to reflect. . . . Crisp and critically insightful. -The Washington Post Book World

One of the most original thinkers of our time. -Science

Dennett stands as the sharpest, cleverest, most stylish prober of how issues of human consciousness interconnect today with evolutionary theory. -The Philadelphia Inquirer

A serious book with a brilliant message. -Matt Ridley, The Sunday Telegraph

About Daniel C. Dennett

Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Freedom Evolves (Viking) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea, is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He lives with his wife in North Andover, Massachusetts, and has a daughter, a son, and a grandson. He was born in Boston in 1942, the son of a historian by the same name, and received his BA in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed his D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. He taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, and the Ecole Normal Superieure in Paris. His first book, Content and Consciousness, published in 1969, followed by Brainstorms (1978), Elbow Room (1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), and Kinds of Minds (1996). He coedited The Mind's I with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981. He is the author of more than a hundred scholarly articles on various aspects on the mind, published in journals ranging from Artificial Intelligence and Behavioral and Brain Sciences to Poetics Today and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. His most recent book is Brainchildren: A Collection of Essays 1984-1996 (MIT Press and Penguin, 1998).He gave the John Locke Lectures at Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987.

Table of Contents

freedom evolvesPreface

Chapter 1: Natural Freedom
Learning What We Are
I Am Who I Am
The Air We Breathe
Dumbo's Magic Feather and the Peril of Paulina

Chapter 2: A Tool For Thinking About Determinism
Some Useful Oversimplifications
From Physics to Design in Conway's Life World
Can We Get The Deus ex Machina?
From Slow-motion Avoidance to Star Wars
The Birth of Evitability

Chapter 3: Thinking About Determinism
Possible Worlds
Causation
Austin's Putt
A Computer Chess Marathon
Events without Causes in a Deterministic Universe
Will the Future Be Like the Past?

Chapter 4: A Hearing For Libertarianism
The Appeal of Libertarianism
Where Should We Put the Much-needed Gap?
Kane's Model of Indeterministic Decision-making
If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything
Beware of Prime Mammals
How Can It Be Up to Me?

Chapter 5: Where Does All The Design Come From?
Early Days
The Prisoner's Dilemma
E Pluribus Unum?
Digression: The Threat of Genetic Determinism
Degrees of Freedom and the Search for Truth

Chapter 6: The Evolution Of Open Minds
How Cultural Symbionts Turn Primates into Persons
The Diversity of Darwinian Explanations
Nice Tools, but You Still Have to Use Them

Chapter 7: The Evolution Of Moral Agency
Benselfishness
Being Good in Order to Seem Good
Learning to Deal with Yourself
Our Costly Merit Badges

Chapter 8: Are You Out Of The Loop?
Drawing the Wrong Moral
Whenever the Spirit Moves You
A Mind-writer's View
A Self of One's Own

Chapter 9: Bootstrapping Ourselves Free
How We Captured Reasons and Made Them Our Own
Psychic Engineering and the Arms Race of Rationality
With a Little Help from My Friends
Autonomy, Brainwashing, and Education

Chapter 10: The Future Of Human Freedom
Holding the Line against Creeping Exculpation
Thanks, I Needed That
Are We Freer Than We Want to Be?
Human Freedom Is Fragile

Bibliography
Index

Additional information

GOR003383289
9780142003848
0142003840
Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Penguin Putnam Inc
20040127
368
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Freedom Evolves