Elbow Room (book)

Last updated
Elbow Room
Elbow Room - The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting.jpg
Author Daniel C. Dennett
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Subject Free will
Publisher MIT Press
Publication date
1984
Media typePrint
ISBN 0-262-04077-8
OCLC 10753084
123.5 19
LC Class BJ1461 .D426 1984
Preceded by The Mind's I  
Followed by The Intentional Stance  

Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting is a 1984 book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett, in which Dennett discusses the philosophical issues of free will and determinism.

Daniel Dennett American philosopher

Daniel Clement Dennett III is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.

Philosophy Study of general and fundamental questions

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. The term was probably coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. Classic philosophical questions include: Is it possible to know anything and to prove it? What is most real? Philosophers also pose more practical and concrete questions such as: Is there a best way to live? Is it better to be just or unjust? Do humans have free will?

Free will Ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints

Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.

Contents

In 1983, Dennett delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford on the topic of free will. In 1984, these ideas were published in the book Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. In this book Daniel Dennett explored what it means for people to have free will. The title, Elbow Room, is a reference to the question: "Are we deterministic machines with no real freedom of action or do we in fact have some elbow room, some real choice in our behavior?".

University of Oxford university in Oxford, United Kingdom

The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation after the University of Bologna. It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two ‘ancient universities’ are frequently jointly called ’Oxbridge’. The history and influence of the University of Oxford has made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Synopsis

Determinism doesn't make humans equivalent to animals

A major task taken on by Dennett in Elbow Room is to clearly describe just what people are as biological entities and why they find the issue of free will to be of significance. In discussing what people are and why free will matters to them, Dennett makes use of an evolutionary perspective. Dennett describes the mechanical behavior of the digger wasp Sphex . This insect follows a series of genetically programmed steps in preparing for egg laying. If an experimenter interrupts one of these steps the wasp will repeat that step again. For an animal like a wasp, this process of repeating the same behavior can go on indefinitely, the wasp never seeming to notice what is going on. This is the type of mindless, pre-determined behavior that humans can avoid. Given the chance to repeat some futile behavior endlessly, people can notice the futility of it, and by an act of free will do something else. We can take this as an operational definition of what people mean by free will. Dennett points out the fact that as long as people see themselves as able to avoid futility, most people have seen enough of the free will issue. Dennett then invites all who are satisfied with this level of analysis to get on with living while he proceeds into the deeper hair-splitting aspects of the free will issue.

Biology is the natural science that studies life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical processes, molecular interactions, physiological mechanisms, development and evolution. Despite the complexity of the science, there are certain unifying concepts that consolidate it into a single, coherent field. Biology recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity, and evolution as the engine that propels the creation and extinction of species. Living organisms are open systems that survive by transforming energy and decreasing their local entropy to maintain a stable and vital condition defined as homeostasis.

Evolution change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations

Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes that are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Different characteristics tend to exist within any given population as a result of mutation, genetic recombination and other sources of genetic variation. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or rare within a population. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms and molecules.

Wasp Members of the order Hymenoptera which are not ants nor bees

A wasp is any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant. The Apocrita have a common evolutionary ancestor and form a clade; wasps as a group do not form a clade, but are paraphyletic with respect to bees and ants.

From a biological perspective, what is the difference between the wasp and a person? The person can, through interaction with his or her environment, construct an internal mental model of the situation and figure out a successful behavioral strategy. The wasp, with a much smaller brain and different genetic program, does not learn from its environment and instead is trapped in an endless and futile behavioral loop that is strictly determined by its genetic program. It is in this sense of people as animals with complex brains that can model reality and appear to choose among several possible behaviors that Dennett says we have free will.

Both determinism and indeterminism seem to rule out free will

The deeper philosophical issue of free will can be framed as a paradox. On one hand, we all feel like we have free will, a multitude of behavioral choices to select among. On the other hand, modern biology generally investigates humans as though the processes at work in them follow the same biological principles as those in wasps. How do we reconcile our feeling of free will with the idea that we might be mechanical components of a mechanical universe?

Paradox Statement that apparently contradicts itself

A paradox is a logical statement that seems to contradict itself. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to an apparently-self-contradictory or logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time.

Mechanics is the area of science concerned with the behaviour of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effects of the bodies on their environment. The scientific discipline has its origins in Ancient Greece with the writings of Aristotle and Archimedes. During the early modern period, scientists such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton laid the foundation for what is now known as classical mechanics. It is a branch of classical physics that deals with particles that are either at rest or are moving with velocities significantly less than the speed of light. It can also be defined as a branch of science which deals with the motion of and forces on objects. The field is yet less widely understood in terms of quantum theory.

Universe Universe events since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago

The Universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. While the spatial size of the entire Universe is unknown, it is possible to measure the size of the observable universe, which is currently estimated to be 93 billion light-years in diameter. In various multiverse hypotheses, a universe is one of many causally disconnected constituent parts of a larger multiverse, which itself comprises all of space and time and its contents.

What about determinism? When we say that a person chooses among several possible behaviors is there really a choice or does it just seem like there is a choice? Do people just (through the action of their more complex brains) simply have better behaviors than wasps, while still being totally mechanical in executing those behaviors? Dennett gives his definition of determinism on page one: All physical events are caused or determined by the sum total of all previous events. This definition dodges a question that many people feel should not be dodged: if we repeatedly replayed the universe from the same point in time would it always reach the same future? Since we have no way of performing this experiment, this question is a long-term classic in philosophy and physicists have tried to interpret the results of other experiments in various ways in order to figure out the answer to this question. Modern day physics-oriented philosophers have sometimes tried to answer the question of free will using the many-worlds interpretation, according to which every time there is quantum indeterminacy each possibility occurs and new universes branch off. Since the 1920s, physicists have been trying to convince themselves that quantum indeterminacy can in some way explain free will. Dennett suggests that this idea is silly. How, he asks, can random resolutions of quantum-level events provide people with any control over their behavior?

Determinism is the philosophical belief that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism or randomness. Determinism is often contrasted with free will.

Many-worlds interpretation interpretation of quantum mechanics which denies the collapse of the wavefunction

The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and that there is no wavefunction collapse. This implies that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in some "world" or universe. In contrast to some other interpretations, such as the Copenhagen interpretation, the evolution of reality as a whole in MWI in is rigidly deterministic. Many-worlds is also referred to as the relative state formulation or the Everett interpretation, after the physicist Hugh Everett who first proposed it in 1957. The formulation was popularized and named many-worlds by Bryce DeWitt in the 1960s and 1970s.

Quantum indeterminacy is the apparent necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system, that has become one of the characteristics of the standard description of quantum physics. Prior to quantum physics, it was thought that

Indeterminism is not a solution to the free will problem

Since Dennett wrote Elbow Room (1984) there has been an ongoing attempt by some scientists to answer this question by suggesting that the brain is a device for controlling quantum indeterminacy so as to construct behavioral choice. Dennett argues that such efforts to salvage free will by finding a way out of the prison of determinism are wasted. [ citation needed ]

Control is the kind of freedom "worth wanting"

Dennett discusses many types of free will (1984). Many philosophers have claimed that determinism and free will are incompatible. What the physicists seem to be trying to construct is a type of free will that involves a way for brains to make use of quantum indeterminacy so as to make choices that alter the universe in our favor, or if there are multiple universes, to choose among the possible universes. Dennett suggests that we can have another kind of free will, a type of free will which we can be perfectly happy with even if it does not give us the power to act in more than one way at any given time. Dennett is able to accept determinism and free will at the same time. How so?

We have free will

The type of free will that Dennett thinks we have is finally stated clearly in the last chapter of the book: the power to be active agents, biological devices that respond to our environment with rational, desirable courses of action. Dennett has slowly, through the course of the book, stripped the idea of behavioral choice from his idea of free will. How can we have free will if we do not have indeterministic choice? Dennett emphasizes control over libertarian choice. If our hypothetically mechanical brains are in control of our behavior and our brains produce good behaviors for us, then do we really need such choice? Is an illusion of behavioral choices just as good as actual choices? Is our sensation of having the freedom to execute more than one behavior at a given time really just an illusion? Dennett argues that choice exists in a general sense: that because we base our decisions on context, we limit our options as the situation becomes more specific. In the most specific circumstance (actual events), he suggests there is only one option left to us.[ citation needed ]

"It is this contrast between the stable and the chaotic that grounds our division of the world into the enduring and salient features of the world, and those features that we must treat statistically or probabilistically. And this division of the world is not just our division; it is, for instance, mother nature's division as well. Since for all mother nature knows (or could know) it is possible that these insects will cross paths (sometime, somewhere) with insectivorous birds, they had better be designed with some avoidance machinery. This endows them with a certain power that will serve well (in general)." [1]

Determinism does not rule out moral responsibility

If people are determined to act as they do, then what about personal responsibility? How can we hold people responsible and punish them for their behaviors if they have no choice in how they behave? Dennett gives a two-part answer to this question:

First, we hold people responsible for their actions because we know from historical experience that this is an effective means to make people behave in a socially acceptable way. Second, holding people responsible only works when combined with the fact that people can be informed of the fact that they are being held responsible and respond to this state of affairs by controlling their behavior so as to avoid punishment. People who break the rules set by society and get punished may be behaving in the only way they can, but if we did not hold them accountable for their actions, people would behave even worse than they do with the threat of punishment. This is a totally utilitarian approach to the issue of responsibility. Expressing moral indignation when people break the rules of proper behaviour is only useful to the extent that it contributes to dissuading such behaviour. Again, an argument from utility. Is it, then, moral to punish people who are unable to do other than break a rule? Yes, people have the right to come together and improve their condition by creating rules and enforcing them. We would be worse off if we did not do so. Again, an argument from utility.

Fatalism is destructive

One final issue: if people do not have real behavioral choices, why not collapse into fatalism? Again, Dennett's argument is that we may not have behavioral choice, but we do have control of our behavior. Dennett asks us to look around at the universe and ask, can I even conceive of beings whose will is freer than our own? For Dennett, the answer to this question is, no, not really. In Elbow Room, he tries to explain why all the attempts that people have tried to make to prove that people have libertarian choice have failed and are, in the final analysis, not really important anyhow. As humans, we are as much in control of our behavior as anything in the universe. As humans, we have the best chance to produce good behavior. We should be satisfied with what we have and not fret over our lack of libertarian free will.

Some complaints about Elbow Room relate to our intuitions about free will. Some say[ who? ] that Dennett's theory does not satisfactorily deal with the issue of why we feel so strongly that we do have behavioral choice. One answer to this question is the result of selection on individuals to live harmoniously in society. But one doesn't have to be free to achieve that goal. Another answer is that it tells us (our brains) whether we're doing something or someone else is doing something to us (e.g. shaking arm). But, again one does not have to be free to make such a distinction. A final answer to this question is that our sensation of having behavioral choice has been carefully selected by evolution. The well-developed human sensation of having free will and being able to select among possible behaviors has strong survival value. People who lose the feeling that they can plan alternative behaviors and execute their choice of possible behaviors tend to become fatalistic and stop struggling for survival. According to Dennett, belief in free will is a necessary condition for having free will. When we are planning for the future and thinking about possible actions to take in the future, we are utilizing considerable amounts of biologically expensive resources (brain power). Evolution has designed us to feel strongly that all of our effort of planning pays off, that we control what we do. If this connection between our brains' efforts to model reality and predict the future and so make possible good outcomes is disconnected from our sense of self and our will, then fatalism and self-destructive behaviors are close at hand. However, the same effect is attainted if, despite not believing in the control free will gives, we believe that does not prevent us to live as fully as our bodies allow us to and to try harder to achieve things if we think we have agency.

Related Research Articles

The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a program cannot be shown to have a "mind", "understanding" or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. The argument was first presented by philosopher John Searle in his paper, "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 1980. It has been widely discussed in the years since. The centerpiece of the argument is a thought experiment known as the Chinese room.

In physics, hidden-variable theories are held by some physicists who argue that the state of a physical system, as formulated by quantum mechanics, does not give a complete description for the system. An example would be that quantum mechanics is ultimately incomplete, and that a complete theory would provide descriptive categories to account for all observable behavior and thus avoid any indeterminism. In another version, the hidden-variables are inaccessible to us and thus in principle not detectable. The existence of indeterminacy for some measurements is a characteristic of prevalent interpretations of quantum mechanics; moreover, bounds for indeterminacy can be expressed in a quantitative form by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

A deterministic system is a conceptual model of the philosophical doctrine of determinism applied to a system for understanding everything that has and will occur in the system, based on the physical outcomes of causality. In a deterministic system, every action, or cause, produces a reaction, or effect, and every reaction, in turn, becomes the cause of subsequent reactions. The totality of these cascading events can theoretically show exactly how the system will exist at any moment in time.

Incompatibilism view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have a free will; that there is a dichotomy between determinism and free will where philosophers must choose one or the other

Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that persons have a free will; that there is a dichotomy between determinism and free will where philosophers must choose one or the other. This view is pursued in at least three ways: libertarians deny that the universe is deterministic, the hard determinists deny that any free will exists, and pessimistic incompatibilists deny both that the universe is determined and that free will exists.

Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent. Compatibilists believe freedom can be present or absent in situations for reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics. They define free will as freedom to act according to one's motives.

Indeterminism is the idea that events are not caused, or not caused deterministically.

Libertarianism (metaphysics)

Libertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism, which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics. In particular, libertarianism, which is an incompatibilist position, argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe and that agents have free will, and that, therefore, determinism is false. One of the first clear formulations of libertarianism is found in John Duns Scotus; in theological context metaphysical libertarianism was notably defended by Jesuit authors like Luis de Molina and Francisco Suárez against rather compatibilist Thomist Báñezianism. Other important metaphysical libertarians in the early modern period were René Descartes, George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Reid. Roderick Chisholm was a prominent defender of libertarianism in the 20th century, and contemporary libertarians include Robert Kane, Peter van Inwagen and Robert Nozick.

Hard determinism

Hard determinism is a view on free will which holds that determinism is true, and that it is incompatible with free will, and, therefore, that free will does not exist. Although hard determinism generally refers to nomological determinism, it can also be a position taken with respect to other forms of determinism that necessitate the future in its entirety. Hard determinism is contrasted with soft determinism, which is a compatibilist form of determinism, holding that free will may exist despite determinism. It is also contrasted with metaphysical libertarianism, the other major form of incompatibilism which holds that free will exists and determinism is false.

Predeterminism is the idea that all events are determined in advance. Predeterminism is the philosophy that all events of history, past, present and future, have been already decided or are already known, including human actions.

Robert Hilary Kane is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently on phased retirement.

Artificial intelligence has close connections with philosophy because both share several concepts and these include intelligence, action, consciousness, epistemology, and even free will. Furthermore, the technology is concerned with the creation of artificial animals or artificial people so the discipline is of considerable interest to philosophers. These factors contributed to the emergence of the philosophy of artificial intelligence. Some scholars argue that the AI community's dismissal of philosophy is detrimental.

The free will theorem of John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen states that if we have a free will in the sense that our choices are not a function of the past, then, subject to certain assumptions, so must some elementary particles. Conway and Kochen's paper was published in Foundations of Physics in 2006. In 2009 they published a stronger version of the theorem in the Notices of the AMS. Later Kochen elaborated some details.

An intuition pump is a thought experiment structured to allow the thinker to use their intuition to develop an answer to a problem.

In philosophy, moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission performed or neglected in accordance with one's moral obligations. Deciding what counts as "morally obligatory" is a principal concern of ethics.

Indeterminacy, in philosophy, can refer both to common scientific and mathematical concepts of uncertainty and their implications and to another kind of indeterminacy deriving from the nature of definition or meaning. It is related to deconstructionism and to Nietzsche's criticism of the Kantian noumenon.

Superdeterminism hypothetical class of theories that evade Bells theorem by virtue of being completely deterministic

In quantum mechanics, superdeterminism is a hypothetical class of theories that evade Bell's theorem by virtue of being completely deterministic. It is conceivable that someone could exploit this loophole to construct a local hidden variable theory that reproduces the predictions of quantum mechanics. Superdeterminists do not recognize the existence of genuine chances or possibilities anywhere in the cosmos.

<i>Big Picture</i> (magazine)

The Big Picture series provides teachers and post-16 students with up-to-date information on research findings in biology and medicine, and the social and ethical implications of this research. Published by the Wellcome Trust as a free educational resource, each issue is available for free electronically. The website provides free resources for teachers and online activities for students, including lesson ideas, animations, image galleries and short videos. As of 2016, the print subscription has been discontinued and replaced with online only.

<i>Brief Answers to the Big Questions</i> 2018 popular science book by Stephen Hawking

Brief Answers to the Big Questions is a popular-science book written by physicist Stephen Hawking, and published by Hodder & Stoughton (Hardcover) and Bantam Books (Paperback) on 16 October 2018. The book examines some of the universe's greatest mysteries, and promotes the view that science is very important in helping to solve problems on planet Earth. The publisher describes the book as "a selection of [Hawking's] most profound, accessible, and timely reflections from his personal archive", and included, according to a book reviewer, drawing upon "half a million or so words" from his essays, lectures and keynote speeches. The book was incomplete at the time of the author's passing in March 2018, but was completed with “his academic colleagues, his family and the Stephen Hawking Estate”. A foreword to the book was written by Eddie Redmayne, Oscar-winning actor who portrayed Stephen Hawking in the 2014 film, The Theory of Everything; an introduction by Kip Thorne, Nobel-prize winning physicist; and an afterword by Lucy Hawking, the author's daughter. A portion of the royalties from the book are to go to the Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Stephen Hawking Foundation.

References

  1. ↑ Dennett, Daniel C. (1984). Elbow room : the varieties of free will worth wanting . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. p. 152. ISBN   0-262-04077-8.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.