Western Philosophy

A Comparative Study of the Relationship between Determinism and Free Will in the Physicalist Evolutionary Thoughts of Daniel Dennett and Mulla Sadra

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD Student in Ethics, Department of Ethics, University of Qom, Qom, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Department of Ethics, University of Qom, Qom, Iran

10.30479/wp.2025.20967.1113

Abstract

Even though Mulla Sadra believes in the soul and Daniel Dennett is a physicalist, they have a significant analytical similarity regarding the permissibility of voluntary behavior within the scope of necessity arising from monopoly. By accepting knowledge and necessity as the real attributes of the soul, Mulla Sadra builds the initial foundation of his thought. Among the types of agency, he considers manifestative agency to be appropriate for the issuance of the will itself. Daniel Dennett, a neuroscientist and evolutionary physicist who justifies all human activities based on the information hidden in DNA, the human genome, and the electrochemical processes in the fractal chain of the brain and nerves, introduces freedom of will, awareness, love, and other similar internal matters as part of a purely physical identity. Unlike Mulla Sadra, in line with his evolutionary thought, he negates the description of science as a necessary attribute of a moral agent, and then by proposing the law of the Evolution Theory, that is, the rule of “natural selection”, he explains science as a valuable gift of natural selection and an accidental attribute for man and introduces it as a condition for the issuance of the will – which in his opinion is one of the other products of natural selection – although the steps of its formation cannot be accurately identified. The critical point in Dennett’s idea is his belief in the gradual formation of mental qualities and agency based on natural selection. According to Mulla Sadra’s approach, free will is an existential attribute arising from within self-awareness. Extending the subtleties of the evolutionary process proposed by Dennett to the Sadrian integrated body-soul analysis will add to the richness of Mulla Sadra’s theory.

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Main Subjects

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Western Philosophy
Volume 4, Issue 2 - Serial Number 14
July 2025
Pages 43-60