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Full Idea
If a brain implant would compel you to perform an action which you in fact freely choose, then you are free, but couldn't have done otherwise.
Gist of Idea
You can be free even though force would have prevented you doing otherwise
Source
report of Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §6.1) by PG - Db (ideas)
Book Ref
Dennett,Daniel C.: 'Elbow Room - Free will worth wanting' [MIT 1999], p.132
| 3791 | Awareness of thought is a step beyond awareness of the world [Dennett] |
| 3794 | Foreknowledge permits control [Dennett] |
| 3795 | Causal theories require the "right" sort of link (usually unspecified) [Dennett] |
| 3796 | The active self is a fiction created because we are ignorant of our motivations [Dennett] |
| 3798 | An overexamined life is as bad as an unexamined one [Dennett] |
| 3797 | I am the sum total of what I directly control [Dennett] |
| 3800 | You can be free even though force would have prevented you doing otherwise [Dennett, by PG] |
| 3801 | Rationality requires the assumption that things are either for better or worse [Dennett] |
| 3802 | Why pronounce impossible what you cannot imagine? [Dennett] |
| 3803 | Can we conceive of a being with a will freer than our own? [Dennett] |