One of the reasons that some philosophers and, indeed, common sense itself, finds it difficult to accept Dennett’s naturalism, though it is clearly correct, is that Dennett’s naturalism is anti-intuitive. We feel as if our experience of the world and all its chance, will, and complexity cannot jibe with any version of determinism. Of course, it turns out that determinism and meaning, freedom, chance, etc., are fully compatible. But, dammit, it still seems like the aren’t anyway. An interesting place to try and re-train your intuition is a website Dennett mentions in Freedom Evolves. There you can play the game Life, where a simple arrangement of ‘cells’, given simple rules and made to be ‘live’ or ‘dead’, generate something very complicated and autonomous out of something that isn’t. Try playing it. You’ll wonder why you ever thought that that ghost was running stuff in your head in the first place. We are mechanisms friends, but very cool ones, and it is going to be OK.
