Comment Dennet: Freedom Evolves (Score 1) 608
This is exactly the main point in D. Dennet's "Freedom Evolves".
His argument (if a book in philosophy can be summarized in a few bullet points):
- Even in a strictly deterministic world (like Conway's Game of Life) you can design "avoiders"
- These simple creatures and their universe is 100% deterministic, but still they are best described by referring to things like their "senses", "defenses" and "self-preservation".
- Even if the universe is 100% deterministic at the atomic level, natural selection favors organisms that collect information about the world and react to it
- determinism and an evolved sense of free will may very well co-exist. In fact, the evolution of a brain that thinks that it's a free agent would not happen in a non-deterministic universe.