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."

But Dennett has his admirers too. The New York Times Book Review selected his Consciousness Explained as one of the 10 best books of 1991. The Wall Street Journal raved about 1995’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, and declared that Dennett "does one of the things philosophers are supposed to be good at: clearing up conceptual muddles in the sciences." Zoologist Matt Ridley, author of The Origins of Virtue, hails him as the "ebullient, pugnacious and ever pithy sage of Boston."

Born in 1942, Daniel Dennett studied philosophy at Harvard University and Oxford University. His philosophical views can be traced most clearly to the influence of his Oxford teacher, philosopher Gilbert Ryle. Ryle famously attacked Cartesian mind-body dualism, dismissing it as the doctrine of "the ghost in the machine." Dennett is now the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

Dennett has spent his intellectual career trying to extend the Enlightenment project of putting philosophy and morality on a scientific and naturalistic basis. In a sense, Dennett is updating David Hume in the light of Darwin’s theory of evolution. In doing so, he provides us with fascinating new ways to think about the meaning
of choice, the value of morality, and how the evolution of the human brain and its capabilities has made us more free.

Indeed, Dennett argues that human freedom is dramatically expanding. Language and culture, especially when abetted by modern science and technology, enable us to increase the range of our choices. As our understanding of our genes and brains increases, he believes we will increase our freedom rather than limit it. We will be able to prevent and cure more diseases, improve our social institutions, and even enhance human capabilities. He says that we defend freedom, especially political freedom, because among other things it enables people to make better and better choices over time. As important, Dennett maintains that to whatever extent we were ever at the mercy of our genes and biological evolution, we no longer are. Instead our genes are now at the mercy of our brains.
Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey interviewed Dennett in February.

Exerpt:

"It is supposed to be a Golden Age after all, the society mankind will enjoy if ever man becomes sane and mature: no doubt they have laws and institutions similar to ours, which they keep as a last resort, should all else fail, the way a wise man packs a first-aid kit before he goes camping. But our society is like a man who is in constant ill health, constantly in the hospital emergency room. To us, the medicine we need to prevent the body politic from dissolving into anarchy is something we must endure every hour of every day. A healthy society, such as only might exist in a future whose moral standard is higher than our own, such distempers would be rare. Men might be wise enough to be glad to avoid even the appearance of pirating another man's ideas, rather than trying to edge as close to the minimum limit as the law allows. Since they life forever, and will never escape each other's censure, never forget a wrong, it would behoove them to settle all difference privately, and before they become inflamed."

The following is an exchange between John C Wright and Rafal Smigrodzki regarding intellectual property laws in the Golden Oecumene and some comments on future standards of morality:

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried."
- Winston Churchill

"It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge."
- Lord Acton

Is it possible to catalogue every human idea? Japan-based researcher Darryl Macer thinks so, and last month he proposed in the journal Nature to count the number of human ideas and map them. This plan, while a clever attention grabber, will not succeed and demonstrates a worrisome mode of thinking.

Macer, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, writes that "although the human mind appears to be infinitely complex ... I would propose that the number of ideas that human beings have is finite, and call for a project to map the ideas of the human mind."

"My law makes the Bush policy on stem-cell research irrelevant in California," the Democratic California state senator told the committee. More than a year ago, President Bush restricted all federally funded scientists to use 78 existing stem-cell lines for their research. But California now welcomes state and privately funded researchers who step outside that rule. And other states may follow its lead. It's not often that a senator from a state legislature poses a direct challenge to the president of the United States. But Ortiz, who lost her mother to ovarian cancer three years ago, says she felt perfectly confident about her position. "I have a commitment to cancer research," she told ABCNEWS.com. "California will protect science and research while the rest of the country is still questioning."...

September 11 was quickly followed by calls from some lawmakers and business leaders for a more robust national identification system: ID cards that possess sophisticated biometric data, making them harder to forge than today's driver's licenses. Privacy advocates are strongly opposed, arguing that such cards, while enabling the government to track individuals and access personal data, would do little to separate the innocent citizen from the walking security threat. For now, the Bush administration is cool to the idea, but it's not hard to envision the Department of Homeland Security re-examining the concept if further terrorist attacks occur. More than 30 countries, from Italy to Malaysia, have already introduced "smart" ID cards. If you're eventually issued a national card, it will likely incorporate several of the technologies shown here, combined to make the card readable by both high- and low-tech devices.

Orwell's nightmare vision of technology wedded to tyranny was fatally flawed.
1984, that dreaded Orwellian year, has finally arrived. The phenomenon George Orwell predicted reached full bloom around 1989, and has been straggling to completion ever since. Few people noticed, however, because of a simple error in Orwell’s prediction. His analysis was right, but he got the sign wrong.

Despite protests by academicians and citizen activists, Japan has launched a compulsory identification system that will assign each of its Japanese citizens an 11-digit identification number.

My country is the world and my religion is to do good.
- Thomas Paine

How the globalization of fear will make us all better people.

Lately, various observers have proclaimed "the death of distance." A bit melodramatic, maybe, but it's true that, in an age of airplanes and optical fibers, the world seems pretty small. For that matter, distance has been in decline for millenniums. Ever since boats were first paddled and wagon wheels first turned, physical separation has become less and less of an obstacle to commerce and communication.

Unfortunately, distance has also become less of an obstacle to mayhem. Any vehicle that can carry merchants and merchandise can carry warriors and weapons. Germs can hitch a ride, too. The black death that ravaged Europe in the 14th century seems to have started in Asia and followed trade routes west. In general, the march of progress has brought fresh reasons to fear what lies beyond the horizon.

As distance enters its death throes, this sort of fear will have a richer grounding than ever. New conduits of harm will flourish. The current scare about millennium-eve terrorism is just one small example.

But cheer up! The coming globalization of fear isn't entirely regrettable. It could actually make us, in a sense, better people, more sensitive to suffering around the world. The 21st century may even witness what you could call the death--or at least the decline--of moral distance.

The Transparent Society
By David Brin
Copyright 1998