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Elbow Room
- The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
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Publisher's summary
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.
Dennett tackles the question of free will in a highly original and witty manner, drawing on the theories and concepts of fields that range from physics and evolutionary biology to engineering, automata theory, and artificial intelligence. He shows how the classical formulations of the problem in philosophy depend on misuses of imagination, and he disentangles the philosophical problems of real interest from the "family of anxieties" in which they are often enmeshed - imaginary agents and bogeymen, including the Peremptory Puppeteer, the Nefarious Neurosurgeon, and the Cosmic Child Whose Dolls We Are.
Putting sociobiology in its rightful place, he concludes that we can have free will and science, too. He explores reason, control and self-control, the meaning of "can" and "could have done otherwise", responsibility and punishment, and why we would want free will in the first place. A fresh listening of Dennett's book shows how much it can still contribute to current discussions of free will.
This edition includes as its afterword Dennett's 2012 Erasmus Prize essay.
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By: Douglas Axe
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The Devil's Delusion
- Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions
- By: David Berlinski
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Militant atheism is on the rise. In recent years, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have produced a steady stream of best-selling books denigrating religious belief. These authors are merely the leading edge of a larger movement that includes much of the scientific community. In response, mathematician David Berlinski, himself a secular Jew, delivers a biting defense of religious thought.
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Riddled With Problems
- By Ben on 11-01-13
By: David Berlinski
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The Experience of God
- Being, Consciousness, Bliss
- By: David Bentley Hart
- Narrated by: Tom Pile
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion "God" frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word "God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths.
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The clearest thinking I have heard in ages.
- By Carlos Miranda on 06-17-15
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Epistemology
- An Audio Guide
- By: Robert M. Martin
- Narrated by: Richard Aspel
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge. Without knowledge, scientific enquiry is meaningless and we can’t analyse the world around us. But what exactly is knowledge and how do we obtain it? Should we trust our senses? When is belief knowledge? Presuming no prior experience, Robert Martin covers everything in the topic from scepticism and induction to Kant’s transcendentalism. Clear and readable, this audiobook is essential for philosophy students and a much needed introduction for the general reader.
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Going to hear it again
- By R Durero on 08-02-14
By: Robert M. Martin
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Aquinas
- An Audio Guide
- By: Edward Feser
- Narrated by: Adrian Mulraney
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the history of Western thought, St Thomas Aquinas established the foundations for much of modern philosophy of religion, and is famous for his arguments for the existence of God. In this cogent and multifaceted introduction to the great saint's work, Edward Feser argues that you cannot fully understand Aquinas' philosophy without his theology, and vice-versa. He covers Aquinas' thoughts on the soul, natural law, metaphysics, and more.
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Excellent book marred by faulty pronunciation
- By Charles on 09-13-15
By: Edward Feser
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Being Logical
- A Guide to Good Thinking
- By: D.Q. McInerny
- Narrated by: Al Kessel
- Length: 3 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Logic is synonymous with reason, judgment, sense, wisdom, and sanity. Being logical is the ability to create concise and reasoned arguments - arguments that build from given premises, using evidence, to a genuine conclusion. But mastering logical thinking also requires studying and understanding illogical thinking, both to sharpen one's own skills and to protect against incoherent or deliberately misleading reasoning. Elegant, pithy, and precise, Being Logical breaks logic down to its essentials through clear analysis, accessible examples, and focused insights.
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Very Easy To Absorb
- By Patrick A. Blank on 04-02-20
By: D.Q. McInerny
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The Problems of Philosophy
- By: Bertrand Russell
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Problems of Philosophy discusses Bertrand Russell's views on philosophy and the problems that arise in the field. Russell's views focus on knowledge rather than the metaphysical realm of philosophy. The Problems with Philosophy revolves around the central question that Russell asks in his opening line of Chapter 1 - Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?
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Either be smart or be not smart
- By Gary on 01-18-18
By: Bertrand Russell
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Irrationality
- A History of the Dark Side of Reason
- By: Justin E. H. Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.
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A good brain workout
- By ThomasC on 04-09-19
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Moral Tribes
- Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
- By: Joshua Greene
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.
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Good Science, Bad Philosophy
- By Jacob on 10-27-16
By: Joshua Greene
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There Is a God
- How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
- By: Antony Flew, Roy Abraham Varghese - contributor
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In There Is a God, one of the world's preeminent atheists discloses how his commitment to "follow the argument wherever it leads" led him to a belief in God as Creator. This is a compelling and refreshingly open-minded argument that will forever change the atheism debate.
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Disappointing
- By Rebekah Hull on 08-03-21
By: Antony Flew, and others
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The only other review was so bad that I wrote this
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Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
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I knew I was going to like this book
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Some pockets of wisdom but mostly self-gloating
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Confuses Consciousness with Ego
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The only other review was so bad that I wrote this
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Great Reader Actually Enhances A Great Book!
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I knew I was going to like this book
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Some pockets of wisdom but mostly self-gloating
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In a book that is both groundbreaking and accessible, Daniel C. Dennett, whom Chet Raymo of The Boston Globe calls "one of the most provocative thinkers on the planet", focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, showing how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe. Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and then extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions, challenging the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day.
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Sky Hooks need not apply.
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Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
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First coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation. Susan Blackmore shows that once our distant ancestors acquired the crucial ability to imitate, a second kind of natural selection began, a survival of the fittest amongst competing ideas and behaviors. Ideas and behaviors that proved most adaptive-making tools, for example, or using language - survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as many minds as possible.
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memes are gut bacteria, not godlike puppet masters
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Loved it
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Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Rottweiler" for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky). Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes.
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Dangerous Religion
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Caught in the Pulpit
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Listen to Linda, skip Daniel Dennett
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The wonder of flight. The science of evolution. From both, Richard Dawkins weaves a fascinating account of how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies. Have you ever dreamt you could fly? Or imagined what it would be like to glide and swoop through the sky like a bird? Do you let your mind soar to unknown, magical spaces?
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The Meaning of it All
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In this collection of lectures that Richard Feynman originally gave in 1963, unpublished during his lifetime, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist discusses several of the ultimate questions of science. What is the nature of the tension between science and religious faith? Why does uncertainty play such a crucial role in the scientific imagination? Is this really a scientific age?
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Meh....
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What I Believe
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Remarkably relevant, beautifully written, and filled with wit and wisdom, these three essays by Bertrand Russell allow the listener to test the concepts of the good life, morality, the existence of God, Christianity, and human nature. "What I Believe" was used prominently in the 1940 New York court proceedings in which Russell was judicially declared "unfit" to teach philosophy at City College of New York. "Why I Am Not a Christian" concludes that churches throughout history have retarded progress and states that we should instead "look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in." Finally, "A Free Man's Worship", perhaps the most famous single essay written by Russell, considers whether humans operate from free will.
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Excellent Logic
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One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.
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The Self That Wasn't There
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Enlightenment Now
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Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
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We live in the best of all times
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Making Sense
- Conversations on Consciousness, Morality, and the Future of Humanity
- By: Sam Harris
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- Length: 22 hrs and 26 mins
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Sam Harris—neuroscientist, philosopher, and bestselling author—has been exploring some of the most important questions about the human mind, society, and current events on his podcast, Making Sense. For Harris, honest conversation, no matter how difficult or controversial, represents the only path to moral and intellectual progress. This audiobook includes talks with Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glen Loury, on topics that range from the nature of consciousness and free will, to politics and extremism, to living ethically.
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Audiobook review (just a podcast collection)
- By Amazon Customer on 12-21-20
By: Sam Harris
What listeners say about Elbow Room
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- Great product
- 12-11-23
You will be disappointed
The description made me so excited, because it sounds like a really interesting and deep book.
Boy was I let down. The author try’s way to hard to fill his pages with really big words. It takes him a whole chapter to ramble on about what could easily be expressed in a few sentences.
I’ve been listening to it for 3.5 hours now and I can’t tel you a single point that has been made.
The narrator almost whistles with ever s sound.
It is free after all. So I’m not so disappointed.
But I was for sure let down.
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- Brandon B.
- 03-09-16
Good points but rambling
This book successfully convinced me to accept compatibilism at least to some degree. However it overall felt rambling and not focused. The author could have built a more direct case. Felt like this could have been slimmed down to a focused long essay.
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- Mjfavale
- 12-13-22
Good effort, but a fail
Summary:
Dennet's project in this book is to give an account for compatibilism - that human beings are both constrained by deterministic forces but also free. His main approach is to try to show us that we don't have to give up our commitment to scientific principles - that is, determinism - in order to be free "in the ways that matter to us", and that our fears that determinism makes us puppets are unfounded. In his words, these fears are "bugbears", or scary illusions.
The Good:
Dennet, like his fellows Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris, should be praised for his "plain English" philosophy and accessible style. No one is going to be frustrated by obscure references or terminology here. Any high schooler could understand his argument and clip through the book at an easy pace.
The Bad:
The other side of this stylistic coin is what some (including me) will find grating. His tone is avuncular and at times condescending, with too many unhelpful digressions. Some may find this Oxonian style charming, others won't.
The Ugly:
Causality is a key, indispensable concept in discussions of free will. Dennet fails to address this in a satisfying way. He doesn't simply fail to unpack the nuance and complexity of causality (anything like Hume's crucial analysis is absent here), he fails to address it at anything beyond an elementary level.
What is truly perplexing is that he fails to distinguish between ultimate and proximate causes - a sophomoric error. For him, the fact that we have interests, deliberate between options, make choices is enough to demonstrate that we have free will. For example, Dennet uses the case of wanting to cross the Atlantic Ocean. He can't simply translocate at will (his choices are constrained), but he can make choices and act in ways to get around this (call a travel agent and buy plane tickets). Another example he appeals to is that of the Mars Rover. Because of the extreme distance, direct control of the Rover is impossible for NASA engineers, so they have programmed it with a certain amount of autonomy, constrained by over-arching goals. Why Dennet doesn't see that this is demonstrating the exact opposite of what he wants it to is baffling.
He invokes the concepts of interests, agency, and intentionality as a way to render the existence of free will plausible, like a sooth-sayer invokes spirits to make his predictions about the future plausible. But he leaves these concepts unexplored and therefore unexplained. Why are our choices free? Because we have agency that allows us to pursue our interests, says Dennet. Why does he say we have agency? Because we make choices. (The question of why we have the interests we do is safely left unasked.) This scholastic, circular reasoning is deeply disappointing coming from someone of Dennet's credentials. He might as well be a spiritualist who invokes a soul to explain free will, something I assume, to his credit, Dennet would balk at. But it amounts to the same thing. He simply ignores any discussion about the ultimate causes - social, psychological, biological, or physical - that constrain and determine our interests and therefore our making those choices, that is, our agency. Why does he want to cross the ocean, or speak at that conference, or make that pay check, or eat, or survive, or procreate, rather than not do any of these things? For a professional philosopher of his reknown, this omission is nothing sort of shocking. One is compelled to ask, is Dennet hoodwinking us, or has it simply never occurred to him to investigate these deeper causes? There is no indication of an answer in this book.
Ultimately, and unfortunately, Dennet fails in his goals. He doesn't give a full or fair account of what deterministic accounts of our behavior are actually proposing. Is he not aware of them? Does he not understand them? Or does he think they are so irrelevant that they are beneath his regard? Based on this book, we simply don't know. Additionally, he fails to give any convincing account as to what free will actually means, beyond the banal and superficial definition that it entails making choices. Well of course, Mr. Dennet, but what does it mean to make a choice? What's going on in our minds that accounts for making a decision? What are the causes and constraints of those factors in our minds (and, antecedently, our brains) that account for decision-making? Dennet explains all these away - which are in reality the crux and meat of the matter - with a wave of the hand.
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