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Resources

Freedom Evolves

Category Library

Title

Freedom Evolves

Author(s)

Dennett, Daniel C.

Year

2004

Publisher

Penguin

Number of pages

347

How can humans make genuinely independent choices if we are just a cluster of cells and genes in a world determined by scientific laws?

Here, Daniel Dennett provides an impassioned defense of free will. But rather than freedom being an eternal, unchanging condition of our existence, in reality, he reveals, it has evolved: just like life on the planet and the air we breathe. Evolution is the key to resolving this greatest of philosophical questions - and to understanding our place in the world as uniquely free agents.

Dennett shows that far from there being an incompatibility between contemporary science and the traditional vision of freedom and morality, it is only recently that science has advanced to the point where we can see how we came to have our unique kind of freedom.