Shaun Maxwell - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Shaun Maxwell
The Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease, 1997
... Evolving the mind: on the nature of matter and the origin of consciousness. Auteur(s) : CAIRN... more ... Evolving the mind: on the nature of matter and the origin of consciousness. Auteur(s) : CAIRNS SMITH Date de parution: 01-1996 Langue : ANGLAIS 338p. ...
Essays in Philosophy, 2005
Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett's pervious work. It aims to sup... more Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett's pervious work. It aims to support and extend the compatiblist account of free will he set out in Elbow Room (1984), now that he has fulfilled that book's promissory notes with Consciousness Explained (1991a) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). In the first third of the new book Dennett develops compatibalist accounts of his key concepts by extending the analysis of non-human agents presented in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. The remainder of Freedom Evolves is an attempt to show that if concepts like determinism and freedom are conceived as suggested, conscious free will and moral responsibility turn out to be natural phenomena; like all the other traits that make humans distinct, they are the products of multiple levels and kinds of natural selection. One consequence of the debt that this book bears to its predecessors is that those familiar with Dennett's corpus will find fewer new ideas in this book than in the major texts that preceded it. That said, even for philosophical foes, Freedom Evolves is a rewarding text, full of fascinating stories and the usual sparkling wit. Dennett's compatibilism assumes that randomness is irrelevant to the sort of freedom we hope we have. In a deterministic or indeterministic world, what we want, when we say "I want to be free" or "I want to have free choice" is to be able to use information to best achieve our goals. We expect that in otherwise identical external circumstances, one agent can act differently from another, and in so doing demonstrate a degree of autonomy, a certain freedom. Dennett describes those able to act in ways that overcome hindrances as having "evitable" relations to these obstacles (2003: 56). Death, in a given situation, may be inevitable for one but evitable for another because the latter can extract more information from the same patterns, or respond to the same information in a different way. Such differences in outcome only require there be physical difference between token agents to realize the differences in cognitive and physical capacities.
Essays in Philosophy, 2005
Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett’s pervious work. It aims to sup... more Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett’s pervious work. It aims to support and extend the compatiblist account of free will he set out in Elbow Room (1984), now that he has fulfilled that book’s promissory notes with Consciousness Explained (1991a) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995). In the first third of the new book Dennett develops compatibalist accounts of his key concepts by extending the analysis of non-human agents presented in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. The remainder of Freedom Evolves is an attempt to show that if concepts like determinism and freedom are conceived as suggested, conscious free will and moral responsibility turn out to be natural phenomena; like all the other traits that make humans distinct, they are the products of multiple levels and kinds of natural selection. One consequence of the debt that this book bears to its predecessors is that those familiar with Dennett’s corpus will find fewer new ideas in this book than in the major texts that preceded it. That said, even for philosophical foes, Freedom Evolves is a rewarding text, full of fascinating stories and the usual sparkling wit.
Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett’s pervious work. It aims to sup... more Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett’s pervious work. It aims to support and extend the compatiblist account of free will he set out in Elbow Room (1984), now that he has fulfilled that book’s promissory notes with Consciousness Explained (1991a) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995). In the first third of the new book Dennett develops compatibalist accounts of his key concepts by extending the analysis of non-human agents presented in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. The remainder of Freedom Evolves is an attempt to show that if concepts like determinism and freedom are conceived as suggested, conscious free will and moral responsibility turn out to be natural phenomena; like all the other traits that make humans distinct, they are the products of multiple levels and kinds of natural selection. One consequence of the debt that this book bears to its predecessors is that those familiar with Dennett’s corpus will find fewer new ideas in this book than in the major t...
The Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease, 1997
... Evolving the mind: on the nature of matter and the origin of consciousness. Auteur(s) : CAIRN... more ... Evolving the mind: on the nature of matter and the origin of consciousness. Auteur(s) : CAIRNS SMITH Date de parution: 01-1996 Langue : ANGLAIS 338p. ...
Essays in Philosophy, 2005
Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett's pervious work. It aims to sup... more Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett's pervious work. It aims to support and extend the compatiblist account of free will he set out in Elbow Room (1984), now that he has fulfilled that book's promissory notes with Consciousness Explained (1991a) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). In the first third of the new book Dennett develops compatibalist accounts of his key concepts by extending the analysis of non-human agents presented in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. The remainder of Freedom Evolves is an attempt to show that if concepts like determinism and freedom are conceived as suggested, conscious free will and moral responsibility turn out to be natural phenomena; like all the other traits that make humans distinct, they are the products of multiple levels and kinds of natural selection. One consequence of the debt that this book bears to its predecessors is that those familiar with Dennett's corpus will find fewer new ideas in this book than in the major texts that preceded it. That said, even for philosophical foes, Freedom Evolves is a rewarding text, full of fascinating stories and the usual sparkling wit. Dennett's compatibilism assumes that randomness is irrelevant to the sort of freedom we hope we have. In a deterministic or indeterministic world, what we want, when we say "I want to be free" or "I want to have free choice" is to be able to use information to best achieve our goals. We expect that in otherwise identical external circumstances, one agent can act differently from another, and in so doing demonstrate a degree of autonomy, a certain freedom. Dennett describes those able to act in ways that overcome hindrances as having "evitable" relations to these obstacles (2003: 56). Death, in a given situation, may be inevitable for one but evitable for another because the latter can extract more information from the same patterns, or respond to the same information in a different way. Such differences in outcome only require there be physical difference between token agents to realize the differences in cognitive and physical capacities.
Essays in Philosophy, 2005
Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett’s pervious work. It aims to sup... more Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett’s pervious work. It aims to support and extend the compatiblist account of free will he set out in Elbow Room (1984), now that he has fulfilled that book’s promissory notes with Consciousness Explained (1991a) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995). In the first third of the new book Dennett develops compatibalist accounts of his key concepts by extending the analysis of non-human agents presented in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. The remainder of Freedom Evolves is an attempt to show that if concepts like determinism and freedom are conceived as suggested, conscious free will and moral responsibility turn out to be natural phenomena; like all the other traits that make humans distinct, they are the products of multiple levels and kinds of natural selection. One consequence of the debt that this book bears to its predecessors is that those familiar with Dennett’s corpus will find fewer new ideas in this book than in the major texts that preceded it. That said, even for philosophical foes, Freedom Evolves is a rewarding text, full of fascinating stories and the usual sparkling wit.
Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett’s pervious work. It aims to sup... more Freedom Evolves draws together themes from much of Daniel Dennett’s pervious work. It aims to support and extend the compatiblist account of free will he set out in Elbow Room (1984), now that he has fulfilled that book’s promissory notes with Consciousness Explained (1991a) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995). In the first third of the new book Dennett develops compatibalist accounts of his key concepts by extending the analysis of non-human agents presented in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. The remainder of Freedom Evolves is an attempt to show that if concepts like determinism and freedom are conceived as suggested, conscious free will and moral responsibility turn out to be natural phenomena; like all the other traits that make humans distinct, they are the products of multiple levels and kinds of natural selection. One consequence of the debt that this book bears to its predecessors is that those familiar with Dennett’s corpus will find fewer new ideas in this book than in the major t...