Hooray! You have added the first book to your bookshelf. Check it out now!
[−]
  • Search Digit-count Valid ISBN Invalid ISBN Valid Barcode Invalid Barcode
Blog this item

Freedom Evolves

By Daniel C. Dennett

(8)

| Paperback | 9780140283891

Like Freedom Evolves?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Sign up for free

Book Description

Daniel C. Dennett is a brilliant polemicist, famous for challenging unexamined orthodoxies. Over the last thirty years, he has played a major role in expanding our understanding of consciousness, developmental psychology, and evolutionary theory. And with such groundbreaking, critically acclaimed boContinue

Daniel C. Dennett is a brilliant polemicist, famous for challenging unexamined orthodoxies. Over the last thirty years, he has played a major role in expanding our understanding of consciousness, developmental psychology, and evolutionary theory. And with such groundbreaking, critically acclaimed books as Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist), he has reached a huge general and professional audience.

In this new book, Dennett shows that evolution is the key to resolving the ancient problems of moral and political freedom. Like the planet's atmosphere on which life depends, the conditions on which our freedom depends had to evolve, and like the atmosphere, they continue to evolve-and could be extinguished. According to Dennett, biology provides the perspective from which we can distinguish the varieties of freedom that matter. Throughout the history of life on this planet, an interacting web and internal and external conditions have provided the frameworks for the design of agents that are more free than their parts-from the unwitting gropings of the simplest life forms to the more informed activities of animals to the moral dilemmas that confront human beings living in societies.

As in his previous books, Dennett weaves a richly detailed narrative enlivened by analogies as entertaining as they are challenging. Here is the story of how we came to be different from all other creatures, how our early ancestors mindlessly created human culture, and then, how culture gave us our minds, our visions, our moral problems-in a nutshell, our freedom.

Critics

  • Is there a ghost in the machine?

    If, in a state of background quiescence, you momentarily decide to perform some small manual gesture - flicking, say, at a fly or assuaging an itch - this will, of course, have its neural cost. Circuits will be activated, synapses bridged, potential ... (read full critics)

    spectator published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

1 Review

Login or Sign Up to write a review

  • "One widespread tradition has it that we human beings are responsible agents, captains of our fate, because what we really are are souls, immaterial and immortal clumps of Godstuff that inhabit and control our material bodies rather like spectral puppeteers. It is our souls that are the source of al ... (continue)

    "One widespread tradition has it that we human beings are responsible agents, captains of our fate, because what we really are are souls, immaterial and immortal clumps of Godstuff that inhabit and control our material bodies rather like spectral puppeteers. It is our souls that are the source of all meaning, and the locus of all our suffering, our joy, our glory and shame. But this idea of immaterial souls, capable of defying the laws of physics, has outlived its credibility thanks to the advance of the natural sciences. Many people think the implications of this are dreadful: We don't really have 'free will' and nothing really matters. The aim of this book is to show why they are wrong."

    Is this helpful?

    Leebeck said on Feb 29, 2008 | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (8)
    • 5 stars
    • 4 stars
    • 3 stars
    • 2 stars
    • 1 star
  • English Books
  • Paperback 368 Pages
  • Edition: New Ed
  • ISBN-10: 0140283897
  • ISBN-13: 9780140283891
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
  • Pub date: Feb 26, 2004
  • Dimensions: 1290 mm x 774 mm x 129 mm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Hardcover and eBook
  • In other languages: other languages Libri Italiani
Improve data of this book

Prices Change currency & sellers

ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780140283891 Paperback $17.69 $13.68 The Book Depository
Other editions →
+ 1 copy tradable: →
Added to Shelf Added to Wish List

Inline Translation Mode

Left click to navigate, right click to translate.

inline translation guide

or close

Inline translation is not ready for this page yet.

Inline translation mode.

Share this page with your friends.

The viewport has not loaded.