Free Will, Deliberation, And Determinism In Daniel Dennett's Elbow Room

In Philosophy, one of the most controversial discussions is whether or not humans actually have free will to make the choices and do the actions that they desire to complete. In order to understand the argument, defining key terms like free will, deliberation, and determinism is vital. One Philosopher, Daniel Dennett, explores the topic and issues of free will and determinism in his 1984 book Elbow Room. I disagree with Dennett view and I believe that humans do not have free will. We are controlled by several things, like our evolutionary past and genetics, or environment, and they all play into determinism. Similarly to how humans do not have free will, robots as well do not have free will, partially due to the nature in which they are created.

He claims it would mean that previous and future events are already determined and that no one really controls or could be held totally responsible for their actions. Dennett furthers his discussion by mentioning other factors that could aid in controlling humans, like advertisements, and other factors that humans use to control themselves and others like prior knowledge (of things like gravity and wind) or knowing how to control a toy airplane when another person takes your control from it but is mimicking you (by continuing the motion you want the plane to go to because the mimicker will imitate you, thus you are indirectly controlling the plane). Near the end of the chapter Dennett states his side of the determinism argument by stating “ determinism does not in itself ‘erode control’...the past does not control us….the case that that heritage has tended to set us up as self-controllers- lucky us” (Dennett,

Dennett then goes on to discuss how “since deliberation surely presupposes that there are multiple possibilities to be decided amongst, determinism and deliberation are incompatible”(Dennett, 102) from a believer that determinism is true perspective. He later states that “Deliberation is (in general) effective in a deterministic but nonfatalistic world” (Dennett,106). Dennett then analyzes if events are avoidable in the face of determinism since “no event that actually has happened, is happening, or will happen is an event that was, is being, or will be avoided” (Dennett, 125). In the chapter titled “I Could Not Have Done Otherwise-So What,” Dennett address the ownership of actions in relation to being punished and robots free