Chapter 5 of Dennett’s book lays out the case for a naturalized understanding of evolutionary design. How could an unguided process produce the enormous complexity of biological life we find on earth?

Dennett first expands a straightforward notion of possibility into 4 separate ways possibility could be understood. Leveraging this richer notion of possibility, he then attempts to show how the extensive diversity on this planet is possible on naturalism. Overall, his treatment is helpful and he offers some very rich ideas to support his response. He is attempting to continue to break down what he sees as an entrenched adherence to essentialism of one sort or another and provide a non-essentialist case for diversity through possibility.

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