Lecture 14, 2019
“Autonomy, Consciousness, and Freedom”
Daniel C. Dennett
Tufts University
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Abstract
Free will is best understood as a particularly powerful - but vulnerable - ability to control
oneself. This autonomy is independent of both determinism and indeterminism. Causation
and control are not the same thing, as examples of remote control and ballistic trajectories
reveal. Sam Harris has said. "A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings." He is right; loving
your strings involves protecting them from those who would turn you into a puppet, and
for this you need to preserve the privacy of your thinking. The appreciation of privacy has
been inflated by many into a desire for absolute unpredictability, which is not required for
the one variety of free will worth wanting.
Preferred citation
Dennett, Daniel C. “Autonomy, Consciousness, and Freedom.” The Amherst
Lecture in Philosophy 14 (2019): 1–22. <http://www.amherstlecture.org/dennett2019/>.
