Daniel Dennett @ Stanford on Free Will

A late addition. Not to be confused with Denis Dutton who's speaking at Stanford two nights later. Start time makes it easier to attend, though you should try to arrive by 6 p.m. to get a seat.

From the Stanford website:

The Evolution of 'Why' as the Key to Free Will

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 C. Dennett, the author of "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (Simon & Schuster, 1995), is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed the D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. He taught at UC Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since.

Author of over a dozen books, Dennett's most recent book "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," was published in 2006 by Viking Press. He is also the author of over 300 scholarly articles on various aspects of the mind, published in journals ranging from "Artificial Intelligence" and "Behavioral and Brain Sciences" to "Poetics Today" and the" Journal of Aesthetics" and "Art Criticism."

He is often linked with Dawkins, Harris, & Hitchins forming the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism.
Please see the Stanford website for more information.

After the talk, we might join the skeptics meetup at Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park for discussion.

Alternatively, we might chat with the Overcoming Bias Meetup members at Late Night. Check out their listing for more information.

TBC