Freedom Evolves

I just finished reading Daniel Dennett’s Freedom evolves. I was most curious about the last part, where he went into topics such as the development of ethics and morale, but was also fascinated by the beginning chapters, where he nicely illustrates how determinism does not imply inevitability.

However, I was quite a bit uneasy about the middle part, where he discusses at length various objections voiced to his views. The vocabulary of the arguments is rather reductionistic in nature, and the whole debate reminds me of the pre-heliocentric description of planetary motion in terms of epicycles; Choosing a ‘wrong’ perspective can obfuscate what is being analysed.

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