Elbow Room by Den Dennett

[Angrboda]

It's probably been 20 years since I read it, so I don't remember it at all well. However, my recollection of it was that he wasn't so much trying to argue for a specific view of free will as he was trying to clear away some of the brambles clogging up common viewpoints on the question. To my recollection, he did exceedingly well on that score. However, if you're looking for a definitive argument from Dennett in Elbow Room, I think you'll be disappointed. I think, given that he covers a range of possible meanings, my take on it was that the book was more a primer to prepare you for thinking about the question. This is probably why he came back to the question with a book length treatment in Freedom Evolves, which to my mind is a rather flawed work. (And others have commented that they found the reading and following Dennett's argument there difficult. I imagine this is in part due to his argument involving some equivocation on the main point; he tries to sneak teleology into his argument through the back door of adaptationist language, and to my mind, that's simply unworkable.)