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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: New book on Free Will....
Message-ID: <188@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 5-Feb-85 19:48:33 EST
Article-I.D.: ubvax.188
Posted: Tue Feb  5 19:48:33 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Feb-85 10:46:20 EST
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Elbow Room is an MIT press book by Daniel Dennett,
who I guess is probably most well known for co-authoring
The Mind's I with Doug Hofstadter.

Dennett is a specialist in philosophy of mind and
cognitive science.  He's known for most strongly opposing
dualist theories of mind/body separation, pushing instead
the point of view that the mind is just a more complex
computer, with specialized modules for specific perceptual
operations and generalized modules for goal-directed action.
The human mind is a higher form of a self-regulating, goal-
directed machine.

The book is subtitled, "the varieties of free will worth having,"
which describes most of the book.  It's primarily devoted to
tearing down the anecdotes and horror stories philosophers use
to prove that we have no free will or self-control.  Basically,
it suggests that the amount of "free" will we have depends on
the amount of free will we want and expect to have in normal life.

And the amount of self-control we have depends on whether we can
realistically pick out an agent of control over us in the external
world (i.e. another being like ourselves, not "God" or "fate", etc.).
Philosophers to the contrary, such agents practically don't exist
(Political philosophers to the contrary too).  People who claim
they do exist are just telling ghost stories for educated audiences.

(Occam's razor: don't multiply entities beyond necessity -- really
applies here well.  Strange that philosophers ignore it so much.)

Dennett quotes Robert Nozick at the beginning of his chapter on
self-control: "Just because determinism is true doesn't mean
thermostats don't control temperature."

The book was great.  It really shuts up the pseudo-philosophers
among us.  Elbow Room is another step in American philosophy's road
back to naturalism and common sense.  It's a fine book.

Tony Wuersch