8 ms·

Unlike most of you, I strongly disliked Dennett's philosophy. But he seemed like a wonderful human, and he always made me think.

atentaten 2y ago
What do you dislike about it?
- foldr 2y ago
  Dennett and Fodor had a lot of amusing (though sometimes rather bitter) exchanges. Here's a review by Fodor that gives a critical perspective on some of Dennett's work: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n05/jerry-fodor/why-would-mother-nature-bother https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n05/jerry-fodor/why-woul...
  - pdonis 2y ago
    I found Dennett's responses to Fodor to be spot on. I think Fodor simply could not grasp what Dennett was actually talking about--and Fodor was not the only one.
    - foldr 2y ago
      Dennett's response concedes all of Fodor's main points and proceeds via innuendo and ad hominem. But there you have it. Dennett was important and influential, and is worth reading, but his appeal as a philosopher has always been a mystery to me.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        > Dennett's response concedes all of Fodor's main points and proceeds via innuendo and ad hominem I strongly disagree, but I doubt we'll resolve that here. > his appeal as a philosopher has always been a mystery to me. Not to me, but again, we won't resolve that here. We agree that he was important and influential, and that's what matters for this discussion in his memory.
      - _akhe 2y ago
        Dennett is a mainstream eliminitavist, his appeal is that he removes extra fluff around philosophical concepts like consciousness and the brain. In a world where half the consciousness gurus are talking about unproven quantum stuff, souls, ghosts, aliens, gods, we need a Dennett to keep us grounded in reality as we ponder these mysteries that nobody knows the answers to. His only weakness was occasionally indulging in speculation himself (like his Multiple Drafts) - he was better at eliminating speculation rather than offering it, regarding consciousness at least. I highly recommend his talks on Closer To Truth (on YouTube) and all those videos actually.
        dudinax 2y ago
        Dennett wasn't particularly good at speculating, but then almost nobody is.
        pdonis 2y ago
        > Dennett is a mainstream eliminitavist He is often described that way, and even used the term himself sometimes, but he was not (and was careful to say that he was not) an eliminativist about everything. For example, he was not an eliminitavist about consciousness or free will. He believed those things are real--they just aren't like what many people think they are like; they don't have the properties that many people think they have. With regard to consciousness and free will, Dennett was a physicalist: he believed consciousness and free will are physical processes that obey physical laws. That does place limitations on what consciousness and free will can do, and I think an unwillingness to accept those limitations, to accept that those limited concepts of consciousness and free will are the only ones we can actually have, drove a lot of the opposition to Dennett, though his opponents did not explicitly admit it.
        _akhe 2y ago
        > he's not eliminative with consciousness Feel like he is though, second only to maybe Michael Shermer, or AI investors (zing!) The definition: > Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist. There's no way I'll find the video, but he said at one point in some interview almost exactly this: That most of the mental states we think we have don't really exist. I think it's also in his book Consciousness Explained (1991), but I didn't read it so can't be sure. I always thought this is what upset people so much about Dennett - the apparent total denial of experience. Yet this is an incredibly slippery slope! Anyone familiar with Chalmers' Hard Problem should intuit that there are "primitives" of experience that when put together make up the total experience. I agree that the Hard Problem is an accurate assessment of the issue, but given this "primitives" concept I agree with eliminativism in that "most" of the mental states we believe we have never existed, we were somehow "filled in". I'll namedrop 3 more philosophers: John Searle (Berkeley), Donald Hoffman (Irvine), Colin McGinn (London, Oxford) - all of whom have excellent content on YouTube that will blow your mind, and these are maybe the best I've heard from on the subject.
giraffe_lady 2y ago
[flagged]
- dmd 2y ago
  https://twitter.com/danieldennett/status/1149146365852704768 https://twitter.com/danieldennett/status/1149146365852704768
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    cool
- runarberg 2y ago
  Not that I’m aware of, and it seems unlikely. You may be thinking of his agent John Brockman who was indeed involved. The only connection I found after 10 min of googling was when Dan Dennett went with other clients of Brockman (Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins; I know, weird trio, but this was back in 2002, well before Dawkins’ outing as a right wing weirdo) that attended a TED conference at Epstein’s island in 2002. https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-science-eugenics-sexual-abuse-researchers.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-science... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/18/private-jets-parties-and-eugenics-jeffrey-epsteins-bizarre-world-of-scientists https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/18/private-jets...
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - runarberg 2y ago
      This is well before Dawkins was an active Eugenicist and before it was known that he was an Islamophobe. Also while Pinker certainly has problematic views on colonialism and class, as well as suffering from euro-centrism, I wouldn’t claim he is in scientific racism. Also this is in 2002 and Pinker hasn’t come out as a liberal democrat (i.e. capitalist ideolog) either. I think it was only in 2005 when he first sided with an anti-feminist on the gender equality issue (aside, that anti-feminist was ultra-capitalist Lawrence Summer, who was also involved with Epstein). I think the only connection here is with Brockman, however, Brockman represented a lot of successful science writers, including in addition to Dennet, Pinker and Dawkins: Jared Diamond, Daniel Kahneman, David Gelernter, Brian Greene, Marc Hauser, Alan Guth, Jordan Pollack, Jaron Lanier, Lee Smolin, Martin Rees, Craig Venter, John Maddox, Chris Anderson, and Rupert Sheldrake.

atentaten 2y ago

What do you dislike about it?

foldr 2y ago
Dennett and Fodor had a lot of amusing (though sometimes rather bitter) exchanges. Here's a review by Fodor that gives a critical perspective on some of Dennett's work: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n05/jerry-fodor/why-would-mother-nature-bother https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n05/jerry-fodor/why-woul...
- pdonis 2y ago
  I found Dennett's responses to Fodor to be spot on. I think Fodor simply could not grasp what Dennett was actually talking about--and Fodor was not the only one.
  - foldr 2y ago
    Dennett's response concedes all of Fodor's main points and proceeds via innuendo and ad hominem. But there you have it. Dennett was important and influential, and is worth reading, but his appeal as a philosopher has always been a mystery to me.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > Dennett's response concedes all of Fodor's main points and proceeds via innuendo and ad hominem I strongly disagree, but I doubt we'll resolve that here. > his appeal as a philosopher has always been a mystery to me. Not to me, but again, we won't resolve that here. We agree that he was important and influential, and that's what matters for this discussion in his memory.
    - _akhe 2y ago
      Dennett is a mainstream eliminitavist, his appeal is that he removes extra fluff around philosophical concepts like consciousness and the brain. In a world where half the consciousness gurus are talking about unproven quantum stuff, souls, ghosts, aliens, gods, we need a Dennett to keep us grounded in reality as we ponder these mysteries that nobody knows the answers to. His only weakness was occasionally indulging in speculation himself (like his Multiple Drafts) - he was better at eliminating speculation rather than offering it, regarding consciousness at least. I highly recommend his talks on Closer To Truth (on YouTube) and all those videos actually.
      - dudinax 2y ago
        Dennett wasn't particularly good at speculating, but then almost nobody is.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        > Dennett is a mainstream eliminitavist He is often described that way, and even used the term himself sometimes, but he was not (and was careful to say that he was not) an eliminativist about everything. For example, he was not an eliminitavist about consciousness or free will. He believed those things are real--they just aren't like what many people think they are like; they don't have the properties that many people think they have. With regard to consciousness and free will, Dennett was a physicalist: he believed consciousness and free will are physical processes that obey physical laws. That does place limitations on what consciousness and free will can do, and I think an unwillingness to accept those limitations, to accept that those limited concepts of consciousness and free will are the only ones we can actually have, drove a lot of the opposition to Dennett, though his opponents did not explicitly admit it.
        _akhe 2y ago
        > he's not eliminative with consciousness Feel like he is though, second only to maybe Michael Shermer, or AI investors (zing!) The definition: > Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist. There's no way I'll find the video, but he said at one point in some interview almost exactly this: That most of the mental states we think we have don't really exist. I think it's also in his book Consciousness Explained (1991), but I didn't read it so can't be sure. I always thought this is what upset people so much about Dennett - the apparent total denial of experience. Yet this is an incredibly slippery slope! Anyone familiar with Chalmers' Hard Problem should intuit that there are "primitives" of experience that when put together make up the total experience. I agree that the Hard Problem is an accurate assessment of the issue, but given this "primitives" concept I agree with eliminativism in that "most" of the mental states we believe we have never existed, we were somehow "filled in". I'll namedrop 3 more philosophers: John Searle (Berkeley), Donald Hoffman (Irvine), Colin McGinn (London, Oxford) - all of whom have excellent content on YouTube that will blow your mind, and these are maybe the best I've heard from on the subject.

giraffe_lady 2y ago

[flagged]

dmd 2y ago
https://twitter.com/danieldennett/status/1149146365852704768 https://twitter.com/danieldennett/status/1149146365852704768
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  cool
runarberg 2y ago
Not that I’m aware of, and it seems unlikely. You may be thinking of his agent John Brockman who was indeed involved. The only connection I found after 10 min of googling was when Dan Dennett went with other clients of Brockman (Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins; I know, weird trio, but this was back in 2002, well before Dawkins’ outing as a right wing weirdo) that attended a TED conference at Epstein’s island in 2002. https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-science-eugenics-sexual-abuse-researchers.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-science... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/18/private-jets-parties-and-eugenics-jeffrey-epsteins-bizarre-world-of-scientists https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/18/private-jets...
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - runarberg 2y ago
    This is well before Dawkins was an active Eugenicist and before it was known that he was an Islamophobe. Also while Pinker certainly has problematic views on colonialism and class, as well as suffering from euro-centrism, I wouldn’t claim he is in scientific racism. Also this is in 2002 and Pinker hasn’t come out as a liberal democrat (i.e. capitalist ideolog) either. I think it was only in 2005 when he first sided with an anti-feminist on the gender equality issue (aside, that anti-feminist was ultra-capitalist Lawrence Summer, who was also involved with Epstein). I think the only connection here is with Brockman, however, Brockman represented a lot of successful science writers, including in addition to Dennet, Pinker and Dawkins: Jared Diamond, Daniel Kahneman, David Gelernter, Brian Greene, Marc Hauser, Alan Guth, Jordan Pollack, Jaron Lanier, Lee Smolin, Martin Rees, Craig Venter, John Maddox, Chris Anderson, and Rupert Sheldrake.