

Elbow Room
The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Narrator: Don Hagen
Unabridged: 9 hr 54 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Ascent Audio
Published: 01/01/2016
Categories: Nonfiction, Self-help, Personal Growth, Philosophy, Free Will & Determinism
Synopsis
Dennett tackles the question of free will in a highly original and witty manner, drawing on the theories and concepts of fields that range from physics and evolutionary biology to engineering, automata theory, and artificial intelligence. He 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" in which they are often enmeshed -- imaginary agents and bogeymen, including the Peremptory Puppeteer, the Nefarious Neurosurgeon, and the Cosmic Child Whose Dolls We Are. Putting sociobiology in its rightful place, he concludes that we can have free will and science too. He explores reason, control and self-control, the meaning of "can" and "could have done otherwise," responsibility and punishment, and why we would want free will in the first place. A fresh reading of Dennett's book shows how much it can still contribute to current discussions of free will.
This edition includes as its afterword Dennett's 2012 Erasmus Prize essay.