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Showing posts with label Daniel Dennett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daniel Dennett. Show all posts

Tuesday, 4 June 2013

Daniel Dennett - Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

Posted on 07:27 by Unknown
After a long and distinguished career in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, evolution and artificial intelligence, philosopher Daniel Dennett has picked up a number of mental tools along the way to help him reason his way through various interesting and thought-provoking conceptual puzzles and questions.

And nice guy that he is, he has taken the time to write a whole book about them to share with the rest of the world. These intuition pumps can be deployed to deal with a myriad of different scenarios, from the mundane to the highly abstract and philosophical, and no matter what kind of work you do or what kind of circles you run in, chances are these tools are going to make your life easier and more interesting.




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Posted in Daniel Dennett, logic, philosophy | No comments

Thursday, 31 May 2012

Daniel Dennett - How to Tell If You're an Atheist

Posted on 08:09 by Unknown
The human mind is both beautiful and frustrating. We have minds that can contemplate the meaning of infinity and consciousness, on the one hand, and we can be blind to what's right in front of us, we can lie to ourselves, we can simultaneously embrace mutually exclusive beliefs, and we can be in complete denial about the most obvious of things, especially when those things have something challenging to say about our identity.

There's a clinical condition called anosognosia. Patients with this condition have suffered some sort of disability, but are completely unaware of it (you can watch V.S. Ramachandran to learn more). But it doesn't have to be only a medical condition. Anosognosia, or some variation thereof, affects us all in various ways and to varying degrees. At bottom, it's a question of self-knowledge and whether our beliefs about ourselves are consistent with the available evidence.

So, philosopher Daniel Dennett started to wonder about a possibly related condition: atheism-denial :)  Are you one? If you're not sure, here's how you can tell (and learn some philosophy along the way, like the use-mention fallacy, thanks to the funny examples he uses to make various conceptual points). And before you dismiss the idea, just consider that if there's a good chance your own pastor (rabbi, mula, swami, take your pick) might be an atheist, maybe you are too...


You know what I would be surprised to find? A redneck atheist :)
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Posted in Daniel Dennett, ethics, mind, philosophy, religion | No comments

Wednesday, 14 March 2012

The Secret You

Posted on 07:26 by Unknown
What does it mean to be you? How is it that the physical matter making up the many neurons in your brain somehow produce your subjective, conscious experience? Are your neurons themselves conscious? While we're at it, what exactly is consciousness? Where does your sense of self come from? Do you actually have a self? Can you be made to experience your self from outside your body? Can your consciousness be transferred to an inanimate object, or to someone else's body? If you are your consciousness somehow, do you get to consciously make your own choices, or are these determined by factors over which you have no conscious awareness and control?

Those are just some of the fascinating questions that Marcus du Sautoy explores in the following mind-bending documentary that gets right to the intersection of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience:



For more, check out the Brainspotting tag.
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Posted in Brainspotting, Daniel Dennett, Descartes, documentary, free will, mind, Optical illusion, philosophy, science | No comments

Thursday, 28 July 2011

50 Renowned Academics on God

Posted on 11:37 by Unknown
The title kind of says it all. The following video shows excerpts from presentations, lectures, interviews and debates in which world-leading intellectuals (scientists and philosophers mainly, including various Nobel Laureates) speak on their thoughts concerning the existence of God or the supernatural.

And as you might be able to predict, intellectual sophistication and education is normally inversely proportional to religious belief :)



The speakers, in order of appearance:

1. Lawrence Krauss, World-Renowned Physicist
2. Robert Coleman Richardson, Nobel Laureate in Physics
3. Richard Feynman, World-Renowned Physicist, Nobel Laureate in Physics
4. Simon Blackburn, Cambridge Professor of Philosophy
5. Colin Blakemore, World-Renowned Oxford Professor of Neuroscience
6. Steven Pinker, World-Renowned Harvard Professor of Psychology
7. Alan Guth, World-Renowned MIT Professor of Physics
8. Noam Chomsky, World-Renowned MIT Professor of Linguistics
9. Nicolaas Bloembergen, Nobel Laureate in Physics
10. Peter Atkins, World-Renowned Oxford Professor of Chemistry
11. Oliver Sacks, World-Renowned Neurologist, Columbia University
12. Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal
13. Sir John Gurdon, Pioneering Developmental Biologist, Cambridge
14. Sir Bertrand Russell, World-Renowned Philosopher, Nobel Laureate
15. Stephen Hawking, World-Renowned Cambridge Theoretical Physicist
16. Riccardo Giacconi, Nobel Laureate in Physics
17. Ned Block, NYU Professor of Philosophy
18. Gerard ‘t Hooft, Nobel Laureate in Physics
19. Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford Professor of Mathematics
20. James Watson, Co-discoverer of DNA, Nobel Laureate
21. Colin McGinn, Professor of Philosophy, Miami University
22. Sir Patrick Bateson, Cambridge Professor of Ethology
23. Sir David Attenborough, World-Renowned Broadcaster and Naturalist
24. Martinus Veltman, Nobel Laureate in Physics
25. Pascal Boyer, Professor of Anthropology
26. Partha Dasgupta, Cambridge Professor of Economics
27. AC Grayling, Birkbeck Professor of Philosophy
28. Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in Physics
29. John Searle, Berkeley Professor of Philosophy
30. Brian Cox, Particle Physicist (Large Hadron Collider, CERN)
31. Herbert Kroemer, Nobel Laureate in Physics
32. Rebecca Goldstein, Professor of Philosophy
33. Michael Tooley, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado
34. Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
35. Leonard Susskind, Stanford Professor of Theoretical Physics
36. Quentin Skinner, Professor of History (Cambridge)
37. Theodor W. Hänsch, Nobel Laureate in Physics
38. Mark Balaguer, CSU Professor of Philosophy
39. Richard Ernst, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
40. Alan Macfarlane, Cambridge Professor of Anthropology
41. Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson, Princeton Research Scientist
42. Douglas Osheroff, Nobel Laureate in Physics
43. Hubert Dreyfus, Berkeley Professor of Philosophy
44. Lord Colin Renfrew, World-Renowned Archaeologist, Cambridge
45. Carl Sagan, World-Renowned Astronomer
46. Peter Singer, World-Renowned Bioethicist, Princeton
47. Rudolph Marcus, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
48. Robert Foley, Cambridge Professor of Human Evolution
49. Daniel Dennett, Tufts Professor of Philosophy
50. Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics

Bet you were expecting Dawkins and Hitchens in there, weren't you? :)
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Posted in Brian Cox, Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, David Attenborough, John Searle, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Peter Singer, philosophy, religion, Richard Feynman, science, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Steven Weinberg | No comments
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