Dennett is a compatibilist about freedom, but a compatibilist can be a creationist and believe that we have immaterial souls. Dennett will have none of that. He's a supercompatibilist. He not only grants that determinism may be true, he is also an ''uncompromising'' materialist, one who holds that every phenomenon in the universe is wholly physical or material. He is also committed to a completely ''naturalistic'' approach to the problem: one that rules out the existence of anything that would be classified as supernatural from the perspective of the natural sciences. And he thinks that everything about us can be explained within the framework of the theory of evolution. His claim, then, is that the existence of human freedom, free choice, free action, free will is entirely compatible with materialism, naturalism, determinism and the theory of evolution.

Is this plausible? Yes. Given that Dennett is talking only about C-freedom, I'm sure he's right. I'm sure he's right that all the freedom of choice and action and will that we actually have is a product of evolution. But his rhetoric is all wrong. He stands forth as the lone ranger of hard truth, the indomitable, beleaguered word-warrior fighting a vast rampant dragon of misguided and aggressive orthodoxy. But most philosophers (and a host of others) fully agree with him that determinism may be true and that a materialist, naturalistic, evolutionary approach is best, and find it obvious that C-freedom is compatible with all these things. They also know that there is no way in which the falsity of determinism -- the existence of truly random or indeterministic occurrences in the universe -- could help to give us greater freedom of will or moral responsibility (many have been beguiled by this last idea, though it doesn't take much thought to see that it won't work).

As for the basic story of how evolution gives rise to C-freedom, Dennettian free will, it's just the story of how we evolved, period. It has no special extra features. So if you already accept the general idea that we are products of evolution, you don't really have to look any farther to accept that C-freedom evolved. How does the story go? Well, it's obvious (looking across living species rather than backward in time) that we have more freedom than a chemically switched bacterium, or a clam that clams up by reflex when something strikes its shell, or a clever rat. We have more freedom than a bird that is as free as a bird, or a dog (even a very smart dog standing at the point of bifurcation of a raging river watching his master and mistress being carried away equidistantly down the two channels, looking agitatedly from side to side before plunging in after one or the other), or a smart chimpanzee. And we have more freedom, we take it, than a small child.

How so? It's simply that we have evolved into self-conscious, self-monitoring agents, language users, with all that that entails. We are creatures who are able to reflect consciously and deliberately on alternative courses of action before choosing between them. We are also creatures who live in complex societies, creatures whom evolution has endowed with natural concern for others, a conscience, a moral sense (Dennett gives a useful summary of how genuine moral feelings can evolve in a world of ''selfish'' genes, following Robert Trivers, Robert Frank and others).

What is most striking, perhaps, is that our evolution into self-conscious agents has had the consequence that we find it impossible not to believe that we are radically free and responsible in our choices and actions, even if we're not: even if determinism is true and we have only C-freedom. And there is a peculiar respect, noted by Kant and Sartre, among others, in which we can seem to be rendered truly free for all the everyday purposes of life simply by believing that we are. Dennett makes this point, citing Dumbo the elephant, who was able to fly (at least in the first instance) only because he believed he had a magic feather that conferred the power of flight.