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Elbow Room
- The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
- De: Daniel C Dennett
- Narrado por: Don Hagen
- Duración: 9 h y 54 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 60
In this landmark 1984 work on free will, Daniel Dennett makes a case for compatibilism. His aim, as he writes in the preface to this new edition, was a cleanup job, "saving everything that mattered about the everyday concept of free will while jettisoning the impediments". In Elbow Room, Dennett argues that the varieties of free will worth wanting - those that underwrite moral and artistic responsibility - are not threatened by advances in science but distinguished, explained, and justified in detail.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good points but rambling
- De Brandon B. en 03-09-16
- Elbow Room
- The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
- De: Daniel C Dennett
- Narrado por: Don Hagen
Boring sophistry denying the obvious
Revisado: 01-26-25
I've heard Sam Harris and Sapolsky's takes (anti free will/incompatibilist) and found them convincing. They are also extremely clear and engaging. You can feel the well-intentioned honesty in their writing. It's funny and it carries you along. The Sapolsky/Dennett debate on Youtube seemed to just be them arguing about semantics: they agree that the universe is deterministic, and then just disagree over whether "intelligent self control" (which does of course exist) should be termed "free will".
Dennett, in this book, takes hours and hours (even at 2.5 speed) to say we have the free will of a sufficiently complex deterministic robot. He talks about how we start out with the luck of what nature/nurture gets us (fair enough -- Sapolsky/Harris agree), but then implies that, at some moment, after making enough decisions, we somehow magically acquire skill and responsibility and agency. What possible accumulation of mechanistic complexity could transform into its opposite?
He talks about choice and opportunity and decisions but they're all terms that could apply to domino-bots just as well, which he acknowledges. It's utterly a "wretched subterfuge" to call this free will -- and incredibly boring to boot. Listening to long, rambling thought experiments in this book trying to establish that the term should be used in this silly, neutered way was like listening in on a Soviet bureaucratic meeting over whether to change the logo for the provincial people's group or whatever. Spoiler: they kept it gray. It's just a term with a lot of historical baggage, divorced from the meaning most people hold it to have. It's not worth arguing about, and if a sufficiently complex deterministic domino-bot can have "free will", what's the point of keeping the term?
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From Bacteria to Bach and Back
- The Evolution of Minds
- De: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrado por: Tom Perkins
- Duración: 15 h y 44 m
- Versión completa
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General4 out of 5 stars 875
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 752
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Historia4 out of 5 stars 745
What is human consciousness, and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The only other review was so bad that I wrote this
- De Adam en 02-13-17
- From Bacteria to Bach and Back
- The Evolution of Minds
- De: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrado por: Tom Perkins
Best intro/overview for materialism
Revisado: 01-18-25
This was epic, highly recommended to anyone curious about materialism. Covers just about everything. Narrator ... sounds ... a bit! Like ... William ... Shatner! so I deducted a star, but other than that, perfect. The two "strange inversions of reasoning" were especially powerful. Dennett has had a lot to say over his career and this seems like a great summary. Now on to consciousness explained and Keith Frankish.
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Neurotheology
- How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality
- De: Andrew Newberg
- Narrado por: David Stickney
- Duración: 12 h y 26 m
- Versión completa
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General4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Narración:4.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Historia4.5 out of 5 stars 15
In this book, Andrew Newberg explores the latest findings of neurotheology, the multidisciplinary field linking neuroscience with religious and spiritual phenomena. He investigates some of the most controversial - and potentially transformative - implications of a neurotheological approach for the truth claims of religion and our understanding of minds and brains. Newberg leads listeners on a tour through key intersections of neuroscience and theology, including the potential evolutionary basis of religion.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Why we get the Most High
- De max racey en 08-23-24
- Neurotheology
- How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality
- De: Andrew Newberg
- Narrado por: David Stickney
Well executed summary of discipline in infancy
Revisado: 03-15-22
I think the author did a good job with the facts at his disposal, but I kind of wish there were more. This book kind of reads like a list of promises about what neurotheology might do in future rather than a list of past accomplishments. I would recommend watching or reading some of Andrew Newberg's interviews before getting this, and knowing that they contain about eighty percent of what's in the full book.
The most interesting thing I got out of this (and yes, it was in the freely available interviews too) was that the mystical experience of oneness (which the author says is the most unitive of the spiritual experiences he's studied, and thus the most interesting to him) tends to be associated with a partial deactivation of the part of the brain that generates a sense of self, which suggests at least to me that it's an artifact of diminished brain function rather than accessing some super special external thing. More like having your left hand go numb than realizing it never existed, or has temporarily vanished. Of course, you could make the case that seeing that you're not separate from everything that's not you is mystical, but there's something more special about uniting with some Ground of Being I'd say. Though I guess you could say if you can unite with it, it's not just the perfectly stupid meaningless matter materialism makes it out to be.
Overall I'd recommend the book, but be aware you'll be listening to a lot of carefully phrased statements of potential more than being enlightened about spirituality by science as the ambitious tagline promises. Or maybe the tagline is just saying you'll be told how science "can" enlighten us, sometime in the indeterminate future, not be thusly enlightened by the book?
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