[−]
  • Search
Share Organize Explore

has ALL you need!

A community for book lovers to create their own bookshelves, share and explore books.

Sign Up for FREE!
Blog this item

Freedom Evolves

By Daniel C. Dennett

Paperback | 9780140283891

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.

1 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

Improve data of this book

Prices Change currency & sellers

ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780140283891 Paperback $18.60 -- Amazon US
£8.99 £6.99 Amazon UK
¥2329.00 ¥2096.00 Amazon JP
€14.12 €14.12 Amazon FR
-- €13.9 Amazon DE
Other editions →

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.