Four Billion Years Ago, there was no freedom on our planet, because there was no life. What kinds of freedom
have evolved since the origin of life? Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? If you are
free, are you responsible for being free, or just lucky? In Freedom Evolves, Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Darwin's
Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained, sets out to answer these questions, showing how we, alone among the
animals, have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. In a series of strikingly original arguments drawing
on evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy, he demonstrates that if we accept Darwin's
reasoning, we can build from the simplest life forms all the way up to the best and deepest human thoughts on questions
of morality and meaning, ethics and freedom.
Many people assume that determinism implies inevitability. Dennett shows that it doesn't. Many think indeterminism
can give us agents some freedom, some elbow room, that we just couldn't have in a deterministic universe. Dennett
shows that it can't. Many think that in a deterministic world, there are no real options, only apparent options.
This is false, according to Dennett. He investigates the way human culture has made possible the evolution of cooperation
and ethical norms, and shows how our problems of self-control create self-deception and lead us into bargaining
with our future selves, creating in the process the mature self that can take responsibility for its actions. As
in his previous books, Dennett weaves a richly detailed narrative enlivened by an array of provocative formulations
and analogies as entertaining as they are challenging. Freedom Evolves does not seek to replace traditional work
on ethics with some Darwinian alternative, but rather to place ethics on the foundation it deserves: a realistic,
naturalistic, potentially unified vision of our place in nature.
Table of Contents
Ch. 1. Natural Freedom
Ch. 2. A Tool for Thinking about Determinism
Ch. 3. Thinking about Determinism
Ch. 4. A Hearing for Libertarianism
Ch. 5. Where does all the Design Come From?
Ch. 6. The Evolution of Open Minds
Ch. 7. The Evolution of Moral Agency
Ch. 8. Are You Out of the Loop?
Ch. 9. Bootstrapping Ourselves Free
Ch. 10. The Future of Human Freedom
