Örvitinn

Fylkið og frjáls vilji

Fórum að sjá matrix í boði CCP á föstudagskvöldið. Myndin var ágæt en ég varð samt fyrir vonbrigðum. Verst þótti mér dans og ástaratriðið í fyrri hálfleik. Nenni nú samt ekki að rökstyðja það hér og nú.

Frjáls vilji er þema myndarinnar, hér er áhugavert viðtal við heimspekinginn Daniel Dennett um það efni.

Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Yes, declares the controversial philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. "Human freedom," he writes in his important new book Freedom Evolves (Viking), "is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species, us."

One might think that Dennett’s ringing endorsement of the reality of human freedom would make him popular with other intellectuals. It doesn’t. On the right, the conservative Weekly Standard denounces him as "a vigorous evangelist for evolutionary psychology." The neoconservative journal The Public Interest has called him "an evolutionary fundamentalist." That view was shared by the late left-wing evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould, who disparaged Dennett as a "Darwinian fundamentalist." Gould’s scientific collaborator Niles Eldredge concurs, dismissing him as an "ultra-Darwinian." The liberal American Prospect accuses him of "cybernetic totalism."

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