Freedom Evolves

Freedom Evolves Daniel Dennett 8/10

This was a difficult book to evaluate. It's a philosophical exercise by Dennett - an attempt to point out the inadequacies in a number of commonly held philosophical perspectives, and a best-guess amalgamation philosophy given the body of scientific knowledge at the time of the writing. I separate the book as such because I believe Dennett's goals were only half-met. He faltered a bit in his explanation of the shortcomings of common perspectives while he very reliably and intelligently presented his own view.

Two-thirds of Dennett's book was convincing, fairly clear, and for the most part sensible and comprehensible. Unfortunately (for him) it's the latter two-thirds of the book. Getting through the initial couple chapters proved to be particularly difficult for me...quite simply, Dennett spent a lot of time trying to support determinism by using examples that were completely inadequate. In attempting to provide simple examples to prove his point he lost some of the inherent complexity that is human life. For example, Dennett uses a "game" called Conway's game of life (link). Conway's game of life shows us that in a limited plane patterns of amazing complexity can arise. Conceivably, notes Dennett, given a large enough plane we could mimic the functionality of any computer system. Naturally, this is the case: despite their apparent complexity, computer processors are simple extremely fast at processing 1s and 0s: that is, on and off. A processor simply reacts to strings of electrical current that is either on or off. The data on your hard drive is stored similarly: a byte (1/1024 of a kilobyte, which is 1/1024 of a megabyte, to gigabyte, etc) is 8 bits, and a bit is just a 0 or 1 value.

Anyway, the fact that a simple system can reach extraordinary levels of complexity does not mean it can be used comparatively with the "real-life" system. Dennett's argument is that in a fixed system everything behaves in a predictable and unchanging manner: this is a solid argument. The disconnect takes place when you try to prove that our universe is a fixed system.

Despite all my argumentation on the matter, my real opinion is that the discussion is a waste of time. Whether or not life is deterministic or indeterministic is truly unimportant, and should not have a real bearing on how we live our lives. This is Dennett's conclusion and while I don't agree entirely with the means, it is an end I can fully support.