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Fun and Games in Fantasyland
Daniel Dennett commentary on Fodor, “Against Darwinism” January 29, 2007
The tragedy of a priori selectionism: Dennett and Gould on adaptationism
Jeremy C. Ahouse | PhilPapers
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea | Open Culture
Why did so many find Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection so subversive and disconcerting straight from the beginning? American philosopher Daniel Dennett explains.
Brains, Computers, and Minds
Harvard Mind/Brain/Behavior - 2009 Distinguished Lecture Series with Professor Daniel Dennett (video)
Dan Dennett on our consciousness | Video on TED.com
Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us.
Interview with Daniel Dennett. | Nirmukta
Dr. Dennett is a philosopher first although his ideas are strongly influenced by and develop on scientific ideas. His books have a way of cutting through the philosophical jargon, to present clear ways of thinking about fascinating subjects. He offers examples and analogies that help to make these areas of thought, ranging from consciousness to religion, accessible to all. I recently had the chance to ask him some questions for Nirmukta. Here is that interview:
Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet and funny--an evolutionary riddle
Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are. (TED)
Daniel Dennett: Is science showing that we don't have free will?
A public lecture by Daniel C. Dennett, Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. In his lecture, Professor Daniel Dennett discussed some of the current work in psychology bearing on this question. He also drew on Hume, Darwin and Turing, three Enlightenment heroes.
"Folk Psychology and Phenomenal Consciousness" by Justin Sytsma
Powerpoint with audio lecture
Philosopher discusses the evolution of free will
Professor Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University posed this question while presenting a Presidential Lecture in the Humanities and Arts last week to a packed audience in Braun Hall.
Philosophy Now
"What makes a philosopher? In the first of a two-part mini-epic, Daniel C. Dennett contemplates a life of the mind - his own. Part 1: The pre-professional years."
Reason Magazine - Freedom Evolves
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Dennett also points out that human freedom is dramatically expanding. Birds, like most
earthly organisms, live as their ancestors did, and their range of choices is determined
by the stately processes of biological evolution. People, on the other hand, are no longer
tethered to evolutionary change. Language and culture, especially modern science and
technology, enable us to dramatically increase the range of our choices. If you don't
believe it, just think about the much smaller range of opportunities open to Americans
100 years ago.
As our understanding of our genes and brains increases, instead of limiting our freedom,
it will dramatically increase it. We will be able to prevent and cure more diseases,
improve our social institutions, and even enhance human capabilities. We defend freedom,
especially political freedom, because, among other things, it enables people to make better
and better choices over time. To whatever extent we were ever at the mercy of our genes, we
no longer are. Instead our genes are now at the mercy of our brains.
Dennett, Consciousness Explained: Three Theses
"Dennett has various targets in his book; they all seem to get lumped together, but in fact some seem distinct from others. Here are three that it might be useful to distinguish." Curtis Brown
Dennett on the "Cartesian Theater"
"The central "Cartesian" claim Dennett targets is that there is a specific location in the brain "arrival at which is the necessary and sufficient condition for conscious experience" (p. 106). His argument consists mainly in denying that there's always a fact of the matter about when, exactly, an experience occurs, if one considers events at very small time scales (on the order of tenths of a second). He appears to draw from this argument what seems to be the fairly radical anti-"Cartesian" conclusion that there are, in general, no definitive facts of the matter about the flow of conscious experiences independent of the changing "narratives" we construct about them." The Splintered Mind
The Theater of the Mind
Notes on Dennett and Cartesian theater
Daniel Dennett Multiple-Drafts Model of Consciousness (1991)
Discussion Board on Dennett's thesis
Multiple Drafts: An eternal golden braid?
Response to Glicksohn and Salter in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 18, no. 4, 1995, pp. 810-11.
"We have learned that the issues we raised are very difficult to think about clearly, and what "works" for one thinker falls flat for another, and leads yet another astray. So it is particularly useful to get these re-expressions of points we have tried to make. Both commentaries help by proposing further details for the Multiple Drafts Model, and asking good questions. They either directly clarify, or force us to clarify, our own account. They also both demonstrate how hard it is for even sympathetic commentators always to avoid the very habits of thought the Multiple Drafts Model was designed to combat. While acknowledging and expanding on their positive contributions, we must sound a few relatively minor alarms. "
Daniel Dennett's theory of consciousness - the intentional stance and multiple drafts.
" Dennett is the great demystifier of consciousness. According to him there is, in the final analysis, nothing fundamentally inexplicable about the way we attribute intentions and conscious feelings to people. We often attribute feelings or intentions metaphorically to non-human things, after all. We might say our car is a bit tired today, or that our pot plant is thirsty. At the end of the day, our attitude to other human beings is just a version - a much more sophisticated version - of the same strategy. Attributing intentions to human animals makes it much easier to work out what their behaviour is likely to be. It pays us, in short, to adopt the intentional stance when trying to understand human beings. "
Multiple Drafts
"Dennett maintains that cognitive discriminations need only be made once. The information does not then need to travel to any special area of the brain in order to become conscious. Without the 'theatre', there is no need for such a 'presentation' to take place." - Philosophy, et cetera
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