Dan Dennett
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Philosopher
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Claims by Dan Dennett (20 of 25)
Calling compatibilism theology was a strategic error
Compatibilism is the opposite of theology: it is an attempt to look at what matters, examine terms and meanings, and recognize that ancient ideology gets in the way of clear thinking, so you cannot just trust tradition and everyday word meanings; characterizing compatibilism as theology was an unwise, deliberate insult that revealed a misunderstanding of what compatibilism is.
Luther's 'I can do no other' refutes libertarian responsibility
Luther's declaration 'I can do no other' shows that responsibility does not require an undetermined choice: Luther is not ducking responsibility but saying he was determined to do this, yet it is still a free decision; it is a crazy fantasy to insist there must have been some earlier absolutely undetermined fork in his childhood for his action to count as responsible.
Authorship needn't be conscious of each step
The idea that a conscious author must be conscious of the creative process generating each word is an extraordinarily extreme and unlikely view of authorship; Mozart said tunes simply came to him and he wrote them down yet rightly claimed authorship, because he controlled the underlying brain processes not at the micro level but at a temporary macro level — just as Venus Williams must launch a return before it reaches full consciousness yet is not deluded in calling it a deliberate, planned act.
Coin flips give legitimate 'could have done otherwise'
A fair coin flip is not random but determined by the position of every particle in the visible universe, yet it could have been otherwise in an important sense — its outcome is uncaused in that it has no salient cause — so we use coin flips to implement 'could have done otherwise' when needed; in a deterministic world some coin tosses are random (uncalibrated) and some aren't (a calibrated mercury-bath flipper always comes up heads), all without touching determinism.
Harris is a compatibilist in all but name
Harris and Dennett are very close to agreement: Harris agrees determinism and moral responsibility are compatible, agrees a system of law and justified punishment is compatible with determinism, and rejects libertarian free will and agent causation — so Harris is, in Dennett's view, a compatibilist in all but name.
Two senses of consciousness existence
There are diplomatic choice points where one can say either 'consciousness exists, it just isn't what you think it is' or 'consciousness doesn't exist' — these look doctrinally opposed but are two ways of dealing with the same issue: if consciousness means a mysterious, magical, ultimately insoluble problem then it doesn't exist, but in a more presentable sense it of course exists; the same dual strategy applies to free will.
Free agents distinguished by usurpable degrees of freedom
What removes freedom from someone is if their degrees of freedom don't exist, are mechanically blocked, or have been usurped by another agent (the marionette and puppeteer case); since determinism and indeterminism make no difference to whether degrees of freedom are blocked or usurped, they make no difference to the categorization that grounds moral responsibility.
Free will is controllable degrees of freedom
Free will is best understood through the engineering notion of degrees of freedom and control theory: humans have uncountably many degrees of freedom and, crucially, the competence to control that complexity and be moved by reasons on any topic; free will is the capacity to respond to circumstances with all the degrees of freedom needed to do the right thing, and this has nothing to do with determinism or indeterminism.
Two distinct conceptions of free will exist
There are two largely independent themes about what free will is: one holds it to be incompatible with determinism, the other holds it to be the basis of moral responsibility; the second is the variety of free will worth wanting, and the first (libertarian, indeterminist, agent-causation free will) is a philosopher's fantasy not worth defending.
Agents act under the idea of freedom
As Kant said, agents act under the idea of freedom, and this is the only way an agent can operate: decision-making requires treating some things as fixed and some as not fixed, so it is no wonder that people impressed with this experience conclude they have utter freedom; but what they actually have and need is only the sense that in many very similar circumstances, differing by a few atoms, they would have made another decision.
Deterministic chess program could have done otherwise
A demonstrably deterministic chess program that loses can rightly be said to 'could have castled': it consults a pseudo-random number generator and got a one rather than a zero, so flipping a single bit would have produced the other choice — this is bad luck, not a design flaw, showing that an impeccably designed agent could still have done otherwise half the time or more, with determinism intact.
Neuroscience shows we're wired, not wired wrong
Contra the idea that neuroscience shows we're 'wired wrong,' what neuroscience actually shows is that we're wired; some people, like Whitman, are wired wrong, but the inference that therefore everyone is wired wrong is a mistaken extrapolation — like a mathematical induction gone wrong — because we can and do still distinguish those who are basically wired right from those who are wired wrong.
Responsible agents accept blame for luck-infused decisions
A signature feature of free responsible agency is that agents recognize they will be held responsible whether or not they were in complete control of their decision-making — and they cannot be in complete control, since chance, pseudo-randomness, and chaos infect every moment; when a toss-up decision works out you tend to retrospectively decorate it as something you determined, but you are really taking responsibility for a bit of lucky randomness, which does not disable you for free will.
Control of uncontrollable factors is the point of control
Harris's argument tries to remove the idea of control from the world, but of course we control things: a sailor cannot control the wind but can control the boat, and control theory starts from the premise that there are factors not in your control — the whole point of control is to respond to uncontrollable factors by doing the right thing, so the fact that you can't control your genes or environment is irrelevant to whether you control your actions.
Self-creation makes adults non-absolutely responsible
Moral education works and makes people into self-controlling autonomous adults; you are non-absolutely but practically responsible for who you are because 20-year-old you made 21-year-old you, which made 40-year-old you — just as someone who builds a robot that kills is responsible for it — so part of being an adult is recognizing a duty to maintain oneself as a reliable self-controller.
Punishment preserves common knowledge of expectations
Punishment is not merely for rehabilitation or individual deterrence but to preserve common, mutual knowledge of what to expect — like yellow and red cards in soccer, which enable a valued pastime; even with a Madoff-syndrome cure we would keep the threat of punishment so that people with the syndrome behave themselves, and notably most psychopaths never commit a crime because they are deterred by penalties.
Higher competence justifies higher condemnation
There is no paradox in holding competent agents more responsible: a Supreme Court justice who shoplifts is more condemnable than a poor kid because serious moral agents have taken on the obligation to be good, people are counting on them and making life-affecting plans based on their advertised competence, so it is particularly bad when they fail to live up to their own self-advertisement.
Drunk-driving shift shows wise expansion of responsibility
Society underwent a wise sea change: where drunk drivers were once routinely excused as not responsible, we now hold them doubly responsible and even hold bartenders and friends responsible for letting them get into that state — illustrating that moral education's goal is to inculcate the motive to become a reliable self-controller, which most people achieve and are rewarded for with the freedoms of citizenship.
Implacable law cannot codify mercy
The implacability of the law is an important feature: judges often temper justice with mercy, but there must not be a law instructing judges to do so under various circumstances, because that would subvert respect for the law; we do not want people to count on the mercy of their judges — we want them to be grateful when they receive it.
Law evolved by cultural selection
Law and order is a wonderful human artifact that was not so much intelligently designed by humans as it evolved by cultural evolution into a system whose value people can appreciate even when they cannot explain how the working parts function; its built-in excusing conditions are set at a pragmatic, non-metaphysical line determined by general facts about human nature, since setting the bar higher would excuse too many and erode respect for law while setting it lower would be too punitive.
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