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Dennett bumps into Buridan's ass

Daniel Dennett discusses freedom (which might be called "phenomenal freedom" in contrast to "noumenal determinism") in terms of our ability to avoid something that is present or is approaching us. This is a natural way of characterizing things by someone who has spent very much time thinking about how our present capacities have originated from evolution, and precious little time reflecting on his own desires.  But he misses glaringly important features of human freedom by relying upon such a mediocre example to deflate what he thinks are over-inflated accounts of human freedom.   For liberty does not so much consist in our ability to avoid that which is heading menacingly toward us (e.g., angry bison, bad tenure review) as it is our ability to adhere to a goal that is not yet on our visible horizon and to invent new ways of attaining it (e.g., I wish to-teach, to-know science, to-be well-liked by my friends). Look at the incredibly diverse fields of mathematics: practical reason is just as creative.  And free choice consists of judging the alternative actions we imagine by comparing them to the something greater than either of them, something we desire even though it cannot imagined.  In fact, it is precisely because this something more that we desire is more that we are able to imagine that we are able to imagine new things.


To suppose that freedom consists essentially of choosing between two already existent options is to imagine that we are like Buridan's ass, placed between two bales of hay.  I propose, however, that it is the one assumes freedom is like that who is really being asinine.

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