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Elbow room:

the varieties of free will worth wanting
Front Cover
17 Reviews
Oxford University Press, 1984 - Free will and determinism - 200 pages
Anyone who has wondered if free will is just an illusion or has asked 'could I have chosen otherwise?' after performing some rash deed will find this book an absorbing discussion of an endlessly fascinating subject. Daniel Dennett, whose previous books include Brainstorms and (with Douglas Hofstadter) The Mind's I, tackles the free will problem in a highly original and witty manner, drawing on the theories and concepts of several fields usually ignored by philosophers; not just physics and evolutionary biology, but engineering, automata theory, and artificial intelligence. In Elbow Room, Dennett shows how the classical formulations of the problem in philosophy depend on misuses of imagination, and he disentangles the philosophical problems of real interest from the "family of anxieties' they get enmeshed in - imaginary agents, bogeymen, and dire prospects that seem to threaten our freedom. Putting sociobiology in its rightful place, he concludes that we can have free will and science too. Elbow Room begins by showing how we can be "moved by reasons" without being exempt from physical causation. It goes on to analyze concepts of control and self-control-concepts often skimped by philosophers but which are central to the questions of free will and determinism. A chapter on "self-made selves" discusses the idea of self or agent to see how it can be kept from disappearing under the onslaught of science. Dennett then sees what can be made of the notion of acting under the idea of freedomdoes the elbow room we think we have really exist? What is an opportunity, and how can anything in our futures be "up to us"? He investigates the meaning of "can" and "could have done otherwise," and asks why we want free will in the first place. We are wise, Dennett notes, to want free will, but that in itself raises a host of questions about responsibility. In a final chapter, he takes up the problem of how anyone can ever be guilty, and what the rationale is for holding people responsible and even, on occasion, punishing them.
  

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Review: Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting

User Review - Goodreads

"Elbow Room", to my knowledge, is Dennett's first book on free will and where he lays the foundation for his compatibilist project. There are many things to remark about the book, from his approach to ...

Review: Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting

User Review  - Marie-Claude Plourde - Goodreads

A must-read on the philosophical issue of freewill. Read full review

All 8 reviews »

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Contents

The Bogeymen
7
Overview
17
Semantic Engines Perpetual Motion Machines and a Defective
26
Reflection Language and Consciousness
34
Community Communication and Transcendence
43
Control and SelfControl
50
Agentless Control and Our Concept of Causation
57
The Uses of Disorder
66
Overview
100
Designing the Perfect Deliberator
107
Real Opportunities
115
Avoid Avoidable Inevitable
123
Could Have Done Otherwise
131
What We Care About
139
Why Do We Want Free WHIP
153
The Dread Secret Denied
165

SelfMade Selves
74
The Art of SelfDefinition
81
Trying Our Luck
92
Bibliography
173
Index
185
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
Daniel Clement Dennett
Limited preview - 1984

Common terms and phrases

action actually agent apparently argument behavior believe brain causal caused chapter circumstances claim cognitive compatibilist concept conscious consider course creatures Dawkins decision deliberation Dennett Descartes designed desires determinism is true deterministic discussion effect elbow room environment epistemic epistemic possibility Evolutionarily Stable Strategy fact free will problem freedom future Geiger counters genuine happen hence Hofstadter human idea illusion imagine instance interests intuition pump Inwagen Jones Jules and Jim look luck lucky manifest image means metaphysical moral move never nihilism Nozick occasion one's oneself otherwise ourselves particular pattern person philosophers physical possible prediction principle pseudo-random quantum mechanics question random rational rationale real opportunities reason Resistentialism responsible robot Ryle seems self-control semantic engine sense simply Slote someone sort Sphex sphexish strategy Strawson Suppose theory thought experiment tion traditional trajectory trying vision wasp

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References from web pages

JSTOR: Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting.
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. DANIEL C. DEN- NEWT. Cambridge: MIT/Bradford Books, 1984. Pp. x, 200. Dennett's Elbow Room originated ...
links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0031-8205(198706)47%3A4%3C674%3AERTVOF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L

Elbow Room -- The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting -- Daniel C ...
Search for. Author/Title, Keyword, Title, Author, Publisher, ISBN, Featured Books. in. All Scholarly Subjects, Scholarly & General Subjects ...
www.frontlist.com/ detail/ 0262540428

A Random Universe: Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth ...
I've been reading Dan Dennett's Elbow Room, The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting for the last week or so, and I have very mixed feelings. ...
a-random-universe.blogspot.com/ 2006/ 03/ elbow-room-varieties-of-free-will.html

Discussion: Is Libertarian Free Will Worth Wanting?
Philosophical. 1nvestigatioti.r. 13:3. July 1990. ISSN 0190-0536 $2.50. Discussion:. Is Libertarian Free Will Worth Wanting? Saul. Smilansky, ...
www.blackwell-synergy.com/ doi/ abs/ 10.1111/ j.1467-9205.1990.tb00083.x

Elbow Room - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (1984) is a book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett, which discusses the philosophical issues ...
en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Elbow_Room

Daniel Dennett
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting [Review by Danny Yee]; Kinds of Minds [aka "Dennett for Beginners"]; A whole bunch of papers from the ...
cscs.umich.edu/ ~crshalizi/ notebooks/ dennett.html

Dennett , Daniel Clement
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. Cambridge,. MA: MIT Press/A Bradford Book. Dennett, dc (1987). The Intentional Stance. ...
http-server.carleton.ca/ ~abrook/ papers/ 2006-Dennett-EncPhil.pdf

Daniel Dennett
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. Cambridge, Mass., Bradford Books/MIT Press and Oxford Un. Press. Dennett, D. (1987). ...
www.ffst.hr/ ENCYCLOPAEDIA/ Daniel-English.htm

Elbow Room - The MIT Press
In Elbow Room, Dennett shows how the classical formulations of the problem in philosophy depend on misuses of imagination, and he disentangles the ...
mitpress.mit.edu/ catalog/ item/ default.asp?ttype=2& tid=7512

On Dennett and the Natural Sciences of Free Will
Dennett, dc: 1984, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, MIT Press,. Cambridge, MA. Dennett, dc: 1987, The Intentional Stance, MIT Press, ...
people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/ gmm32/ MAMELI_FREEWILL_2003.pdf

About the author (1984)

Daniel C. Dennett is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Elbow Room is an expanded version of the John Locke Lectures which he gave at Oxford University in 1983.

Bibliographic information

QR code for Elbow room
TitleElbow room: the varieties of free will worth wanting
A Bradford book
AuthorDANIEL C. DENNETT
Edition6
PublisherOxford University Press, 1984
ISBN0198247907, 9780198247906
Length200 pages
  
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