Daniel Dennett: The evolution of 'Why?'
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The Evolution of "Why?"
With Bjørn Vassnes
We human beings are the only living things that can represent, transmit and criticize reasons for doing things and making things. This creates a perspective for us that we can then use to interpret all the rest of the life on the planet, cautiously. Mother Nature's reasons are not just like our reasons. It is our evolved capacity to ask, and answer, Why-questions that gives us, in the end, the kinds of free will worth wanting, the kinds that no other animal has.
Daniel Dennett is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University i Massachusetts, USA. He is the world's leading philosopher on evolution in relation to biology, humans, and religion. His most recent book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006) has spawned controversies in the US. He has also authored the books Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), which shows how the idea of Darwininan evolution has an incredible strength in transforming almost everything that we believed or knew about nature, the world, life, and being human, and Freedom Evolves (2003), which discusses free will in light of evolution and effectively dismisses the misconception that evolution leads to genetic determinism.
