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This is a summary for purposes of the Secular Humanist Society Book Club Meeting, April 17, 2008, at the Muhlenberg Public Library . Freedom Evolves By Daniel C. Dennett American philosopher Daniel Dennett discusse s ways of looking at life which get us a bette r purchase on issue s of free will and responsibility than traditional philosophy. He be lieves that “c oncern about free will is the driving force behind most of the r esistence to materialism generally and neo -D arwinism in particular” and he discusse s ways of analyzing the issues which he thinks should alleviate that c oncern. His analysis is infor med by modern scie nce, including the social science s, giving us insight into conte mporary approaches in a very accessible book. There is a conver sation so conventional that everyone, from high school student to philosophy professor, has joined in at some time. There are two inc ompatible but widely - held premises: (1) If someone knew where every atom was at a single moment in time, and all the physical laws about their moveme nts, he could know everything that was going to happen in advance, illustrating that free will is illusory. (2) We know that we have free will and that we exerc ise it at least some of the time. And y ou’re still fr ustrated if you stop and think about it, right? And you’re still looking to quantum uncertainty (whic h you don’t really understand, either) as a way out, right? Dennett shows us ways of looking at the issue s that are genuinely useful. For example, it is ge nerally assumed that determinism implies inevitability, but he illustrate s that is not the case. Taking a generally accepted definition of a deter ministic universe as one with precise regularitie s, he give s us a very ele mentary model showing how a universe with such regulari tie s can permit meaningful self - design just one organizational level up. Imagine a simple two -dimensional grid, each box in it either fille d in / empty, or on/off, as you like. These “ pixels” live in a world strictly determined by rule s that require them to turn on or off from moment to moment based on which, if any, of the ir side s are adjacent to other s that are on. You can run through as many moments of time as you want under these physical rules, preferably on a computer so the y could be truly vast numb ers of changes. Eventually, you will see patterns emerge as the little boxes c luster in loose groups. (This is partly a result of having rules based on the physical relationships of the boxes; i.e., which boxes share which side s with each other -- a good mode l for 1 systems of life activity.) Certain clusters appear to move ar ound the grid over time without losing their ide ntity. The cluster s can appear to be eating each other , knocking each other apart or living happily together while supporting differe nt pre sidential candidates (ok, that last one has been disputed). Computers have run through se emingly endless numbers of these in both 2 -dimensional and 3 -dime nsional systems. Among the simpler results that can be se en in eve n 2 -dimensional models is t hat certain clusters of boxe s c an persist , and can evolve to become safer from c lusters that tend to knock them apart . F or example , they get “ behind” other clusters that function like walls. What they have done is develop in suc h a way as to avoid ge tting knoc ked apart under certain circumstances. (To put it in more conventional Darwinian language , they survive better than some because their characteristics make them more fit for their environment.) It’s very unmy sterious. Dennett reports that this system has create d stunningly more comple x patte rns, de pending on initial conditions and rules. In this simple syste m (which here inc ludes diagrams making them even clearer), the “ lucky ” clusters developed what could be technically described as a kind of “avoida nce be havior ”. That is the unused root of the word inevitable, which means “ unavoidable”. So, even in a world which is “ determine d” in the classic sense, many things at a higher level of design and organization are not inevitable or unavoidable. We avoid things every moment of our lives , and will continue to do so whether the ultimate nature of the world turns out to be de terministic or not. We are off the hook we put ourse lves on. We don’t have to e stablish whether the universe is ultimately deter mini stic or indeterministic to meaningfully assert free will. Our comple x nature s aren’t fixed because we have evolved to be entities that c hange their natures in re sponse to interactions with the rest of the world . The Darwinian algorithms of evolution are substrate-neutral ; they are about the e ffects of differential replication with mutation wherever it occur s, in whatever medium. Those would include, for example, evolution of proteins, or DNA or different types of ethical systems which are like extende d meme s. The term “meme” r efers to information that is transmitted horizontally from one mind to another, words, ideas, image s, etc. , as opposed to something inherited vertically through generations. Unlike systems of morality which are suppose d to origi nate from pure utilitarian calculation or the word of G od, or some other tr aditional source, evolutionary theorists recognize that c ulture itself must obey the constraints of evolution by natural selection. He make s a good case for the c laim that an evolu tionary analysis supports, rather than 2 subverts, morality. Perhaps most importantly, it relie s on re alistic models of how people behave. Analyz ing the deve lopment of morality in a Darwinian way leads to many fr uitful ideas. We read a lot nowadays about where you are in your head, an impor tant issue since we began learning a little about brain anatomy and function. De nnett shows that many issue s about free will and re sponsibility have stumbled on shrinking the “I” to an imaginary place where some ultimate ce ntral consciousness , the decider, watc hes everything in its brain as in a theater, or settles in some part of the brain that does not include every part that is active in our decision making , suc h as the unconscious and preconscious. We can deal be tter with free will and our own moral responsibility when we recognize that we are our entire minds. He also disc usse s the insights of how different essential func tions of huma n moral and e thical life deve lop in an evolutionary way answering Cui bono? (Who be nefits?) “The point of morality is manife stly not restricted to ‘the good of the specie s’ or ‘the survival of our ge nes’ or anything like that ,” he write s. Darwin’s levels of genetic selection : natural selec tion, unconscious selection, methodical selec tion, all just special cases of natural selection, have now added gene tic engineering . Perhaps the most important for us as humans is meme tic selection. A word, an idea, a tune or image are often spread across the globe at electronic speed. But even befor e today, with genetic e ngine ering a hot topic, memetic engineering has bee n a major human e nterprise: “ the attempt to design and spread (discuss consc iously and attempt to persuade each other of) whole systems of human culture, e thical theorie s, political ideologie s, systems of justice and governme nt, a c ornucopia of c ompeting designs for living in social groups. Memetic e ngineering is a very recent sophistication in the history of evolution on this planet, but it is still several millennia older than gen etic engineering; among its first well known produc ts are Plato’s Republic and Aristotle ’s Politics.” We now must secur e the most fundamental concept of a re sponsible moral agent who choose s freely for considered reasons and may be he ld morally accountab le for the acts chosen. At the end of a very chatty book, he concludes, “Human culture supported the evolution of minds power ful e nough to capture the reasons for things and make the m our r easons. We are not perfectly rational agents, but the social are na we live in sustains proc esse s of dynamic interaction that both require and permit the rene wal and endorseme nt of our reasons, making us into age nts that can take responsibility for our acts. Our autonomy doe s not depe nd on anything like the miraculous suspension of causation but rather on the integrity of the processes of e ducation and mutual sharing of knowle dge .” 3