Elbow Room

Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (1984) is a book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett, which discusses the philosophical issues of free will and determinism.

In 1983, Dennett delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford on the topic of free will. In 1984, these ideas were published in the book Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. In this book Daniel Dennett explored what it means for people to have free will. The title, Elbow Room, is a reference to the question: are we deterministic machines with no real freedom of action or do we in fact have some elbow room, some real choice in our behavior? (See free will and determinism.)

Determinism doesn't make humans equivalent to animals
A major task taken on by Dennett in Elbow Room is to clearly describe just what people are as biological entities and why they find the issue of free will to be of importance. In discussing what people are and why free will matters to us, Dennett makes use of an evolutionary perspective. Dennett describes the mechanical behavior of the digger wasp Sphex. This insect follows a series of genetically programmed steps in preparing for egg laying. If an experimenter interrupts one of these steps the wasp will repeat that step again. For an animal like a wasp, this process of repeating the same behavior can go on indefinitely, the wasp never seeming to notice what is going on. This is the type of mindless, pre-determined behavior that humans can avoid. Given the chance to repeat some futile behavior endlessly, people can notice the futility of it, and by an act of free will do something else. We can take this as an operational definition of what people mean by free will. Dennett points out the fact that as long as people see themselves as able to avoid futility, most people have seen enough of the free will issue. Dennett then invites all who are satisfied with this level of analysis to get on with living while he proceeds into the deeper hair-splitting aspects of the free will issue.

From a biological perspective, what is the difference between the wasp and a person? The person can, through interaction with his/her environment, construct an internal mental model of the situation and figure out a successful behavioral strategy. The wasp, with a much smaller brain and different genetic program, does not learn from its environment and instead is trapped in an endless and futile behavioral loop that is strictly determined by its genetic program. It is in this sense of people as animals with complex brains that can model reality and appear to choose among several possible behaviors that Dennett says we have free will.

Both determinism and indeterminism seem to rule out free will
The deeper philosophical issue of free will can be framed as a paradox. On one hand, we all feel like we have free will, a multitude of behavioral choices to select among. On the other hand, modern biology describes humans as mechanisms that follow all of the same deterministic rules as wasps or inanimate objects. How do we reconcile our feeling of free will with the idea that we are mechanical components of a mechanical universe?

What about determinism? When we say that a person chooses among several possible behaviors is there really a choice or does it just seem like there is a choice? Do people just (through the action of their more complex brains) simply have better behaviors than wasps, while still being totally mechanical in executing those behaviors? Dennett gives his definition of determinism on page one: All physical events are caused or determined by the sum total of all previous events. This definition dodges a question that many people feel should not be dodged: if we repeatedly replayed the universe from the same point in time would it always reach the same future? Since we have no way of performing this experiment, this question is a long-term classic in philosophy and physicists have tried to interpret the results of other experiments in various ways in order to figure out the answer to this question. Modern day physics-oriented philosophers have sometimes tried to answer the question of free will using the many-worlds interpretation according to which every time there is quantum indeterminacy each possibility occurs and new universes branch off. Since the 1920s, physicists have been trying to convince themselves that quantum indeterminacy can in some way explain free will. Dennett dismisses this idea as silly. How, he asks, can random resolutions of quantum-level events provide people with any control over their behavior?

Indeterminism is not a solution to the free will problem
Since Dennett wrote Elbow Room(1984) there has been a futile, but still on-going attempt by some physicists to answer this question by assuming that the brain is a device for controlling quantum indeterminacy so as to construct behavioral choice. Dennett argues that such efforts to salvage free will by finding a way out of the prison of determinism are wasted.

Control is the kind of freedom "worth wanting"
Dennett discusses many types of free will (1984). Many philosophers have claimed that determinism and free will are incompatible. What the physicists seem to be trying to construct is a type of free will that involves a way for brains to make use of quantum indeterminacy so as to make choices that alter the universe in our favor, or if there are multiple universes, to choose among the possible universes. Dennett suggests that we can have another kind of free will, a type of free will which we can be perfectly happy with even if it does not give us the power to act in more than one way at any given time. Dennett is able to accept determinism and free will at the same time. How so?

We have free will
The type of free will that Dennett thinks we have is finally stated clearly in the last chapter of the book: the power to be active agents, biological devices that respond to our environment with rational, desirable courses of action. Dennett has slowly, through the course of the book, stripped the idea of behavioral choice from the idea of free will. How can we have free will if we do not have indeterministic choice? Dennett emphasizes control over libertarian choice. If our mechanical brains are in control of our behavior and our brains produce good behaviors for us, then do we really need such choice? Is an illusion of behavioral choices just as good as actual choices? Is our sensation of having the freedom to execute more than one behavior at a given time really just an illusion? Dennett argues that choice exists in a general sense: that because we base our decisions on context, we limit our choices as the situation becomes more specific. In the most specific circumstance (actual events), there is only one choice left to us.

Determinism does not rule out moral responsibility
If people are determined to act as they do, then what about personal responsibility? How can we hold people responsible and punish them for their behaviors if they have no choice in how they behave? Dennett gives a two part answer to this question. First, we hold people responsible for their actions because we know from historical experience that this is an effective means to make people behave in a socially acceptable way. Second, holding people responsible only works when combined with the fact that people can be informed of the fact that they are being held responsible and respond to this state of affairs by controlling their behavior so as to avoid punishment. People who break the rules set by society and get punished may be behaving in the only way they can, but if we did not hold them accountable for their actions, people would behave even worse than they do with the threat of punishment. This is a totally utilitarian approach to the issue of responsibility: there is no need for moral indignation when people break the rules of proper behavior. Is it, then, moral to punish people who are unable to do other than break a rule? Yes, people have the right to come together and improve their condition by creating rules and enforcing them. We would be worse off if we did not do so. Again, an argument for utility.

Fatalism is destructive
One final issue: if people do not have real behavioral choices, why not collapse into fatalism? Again, Dennett's argument is that we may not have behavioral choice, but we do have control of our behavior. Dennett asks us to look around at the universe and ask, can I even conceive of beings whose will is freer than our own? For Dennett, the answer to this question is, no, not really. In Elbow Room, he tries to explain why all the attempts that people have tried to make to prove that people have libertarian choice have failed and are, in the final analysis, not really important anyhow. As humans, we are as much in control of our behavior as anything in the universe. As humans, we have the best chance to produce good behavior. We should be satisfied with what we have and not fret over our lack of libertarian free will.

Some complaints about Elbow Room relate to our intuitions about free will. Some say that Dennett's theory does not satisfactorily deal with the issue of why we feel so strongly that we do have behavioral choice. One answer to this question is that our sensation of having behavioral choice has been carefully selected by evolution. The well developed human sensation of having free will and being able to select among possible behaviors has strong survival value. People who lose the feeling that they can plan alternative behaviors and execute their choice of possible behaviors tend to become fatalistic and stop struggling for survival. According to Dennett, belief in free will is a necessary condition for having free will. When we are planning for the future and thinking about possible actions to take in the future, we are utilizing considerable amounts of biologically expensive resources (brain power). Evolution has designed us to feel strongly that all of our effort of planning pays off, that we control what we do. If this connection between our brains' efforts to model reality and predict the future and so make possible good outcomes is disconnected from our sense of self and our will, then fatalism and self-destructive behaviors are close at hand.

Alternative understanding of "Elbow room"

 * A human brain and a wasp's brain follow the same deterministic laws, although the human brain is much more complex. A human can stop doing an action and think up a better solution while a wasp continues its genetic programme step by step. Does this mean a human has free will while a wasp doesn't? Or just that the human brain is more complex?


 * A paradox: If we assume that a human is a more complex deterministic wasp then how can he or she have free will? Determinism suggests there is no free will. But if we come down to non-deterministic quantum-level events, will it make free will possible?


 * Free will is not possible, because the brain itself cannot knowingly use quantum-level events to make decisions.


 * People have free will in the sense that they can control their behaviors. They are free active agents being able to respond to our environment.


 * Punishment is a utilitarian issue, not a moral one. We punish criminals even if we realize their actions were deterministic.


 * If people know they have no choice then why don't they fall into fatalism? Because natural selection eliminates those who do. Free will and an illusion of planning choices is required for a human to survive.

Reference

 * Dennett, Daniel, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, 1984 (ISBN 0262540428)