Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Paperback)

by Daniel C. Dennett (Author) "The idea of Fate is older than philosophy itself, and since the dawn of the discipline philosophers have been trying to show what is wrong..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mother Nature, Dread Secret, Artificial Intelligence

Editorial Reviews

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) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (November 21, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262540428
• ISBN-13: 978-0262540421
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #342,535 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #90 in

  Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > Free Will & Determinism

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dissolved--but not entirely, March 10, 2001

By	J. Alfonso "JA" (New Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Compared to most philosophers and given the complexity of the arguments that he makes, Dennett is relatively easy to read and clear. Be warned though, if you are not used to reading philosophy, this probably will not be the easiest book to follow. If you are used to reading philosophy, particularly analytic philosophy, this book should be very easy for you to follow.

Dennett's approach to the problem of free will reminds me of Wittgenstein's approach to traditional philosophical problems. Wittgenstein claimed that the best approach to take with many philosophical questions is to "dissolve" rather than solve them. He held that certain questions cannot be asked or at best do not make sense. The job of the philosopher is to find those questions and expunge them (This is an oversimplification but it does at least capture some aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy). I will not lay out for you how exactly Dennett arrives at a "solution" in this book, but his method does resemble-- in some ways-- Wittgenstein's method.

One can only marvel at the way Dennett presents philosophical problems. His presentation is both humorous and thorough. While reading his critique of some people who have written on the topic of free will, I often laughed out laud, given his somewhat sardonic, but at the same time, apparently accurate characterization of those writings.

One last note, if you think similar to the reviewer who gave Dennett one star, be warned; Dennett is not going to directly answer the problem of how if the statement "everything that will happen necessarily will happen" is true free will exists, i.e., free will in the sense that I could have done otherwise. If you are expecting a direct answer to this, again, you could be disappointed. But then again, you could like what you read. Dennett might change your mind about what counts as free will and what counts as a valid response to the question of whether or not free will exists.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hardly disappointing and poor..., November 14, 2000

By A Customer

Daniel Dennett's _Elbow Room_ is a nicely written piece on the compatibility of determinism and free will. He notes that even if the world is deterministic, there is a certain amount of freedom (or elbow room) for man to operate within. The previous reviewer who stated that "you don't have to think about it very long to realize that free will can't exist in a deterministic [universe]" has apparently missed all of the philosophical work relating to "Compatibilism," which is the very idea that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive. Dennett presents a nice case for the plausibility of this viewpoint, pointing out why the scary thought experiments that others have created to make determinism seem so horrible cannot be reality. He also makes a clear distinction (that is sometimes blurred) between fatalism and determinism, and in questioning some underlying assumptions makes the idea of free will much more understandable. It may take some concentration to read (I am only beginning to study Philosophy and so had to read a number of sentences over before fully comprehending), but that hardly takes away from the quality of the book. Definitely recommended!

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dennett dissects the problem of free will., July 20, 1998

By A Customer

Nothing can make the free will problem an easy one--but Dennett convinces that it is not necessary to give up too much in denying pure, idealistic free will. He effectively disarms our greatest fears of determinism by demonstrating what it is not in a fascinating array of metaphors and analogies, some of which are truly poetic.

This book expounds that by oversimplifying the concept of causality, we have unnecessarily complicated the free will 'problem'. Free will is indeed real; however, it is not the fingerprint of a supernatural deity--it is a product of material reality.

If you are bothered by the suggestion that perhaps our will is not as free as it seems, this book should set your mind at ease. If you have surrendered to the jaws of determinism, this book will set you straight. Either way, once you turn the last page, you will feel neither threatened nor constrained that something caused you to read it.