12 ms·

Daniel Dennett: The Normal Well-Tempered Mind

147 points by X4 13y ago

aheilbut 13y ago
Minsky talked about the 'society of mind' involving competition between many autonomous modules a very long time ago; funny that he isn't even mentioned. The brain-as-computer analogy needs more qualification than it is usually given. When one says that, people tend to think of a computer very abstractly; as some Turing-machine like substrate on which one can run any computation. The brain isn't like that at all; it's built out of all kinds of ASICs that have evolved for very specific functions. The reality is probably much closer to 19th century phrenology than 50s cybernetics.
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  > The brain isn't like that at all; it's built out of all kinds of ASICs that have evolved for very specific functions. That turns out not to be the case. There are some specialized modules, but stroke studies have shown that massive damage to specific functions can often be recovered by retraining. It seems that particular parts of the brain are especially good at learning particular jobs, and that when they learn a job they somehow suppress redundant learning by other regions. Much of the apparent specialization of the brain is very possibly an optimization process, akin to a computer cluster that automatically assigns I/O jobs to nodes near the mass storage.
  - scotty79 13y ago
    I believe that optimizations observed are almost purely function of brain activity. Any boosts genes provide to specific regions are quantitative not qualitative in nature.
    - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
      In the cerebral cortex, I agree. It seems like any handy chunk of cortex with enough connections can learn a task. Outside the cortex there are dedicated organs within the brain: circadian rhythym generators, the locus ceruleus, the hippocampus, and many others.
  - Figs 13y ago
    Maybe it'd be more interesting to think of it like an FPGA that can run a Verilog JIT compiler and reprogram itself when damage occurs or new information changes priorities?
- scotty79 13y ago
  Then how do you explain that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy One case, demonstrated by Smith & Sugar, 1975; A. Smith 1987, demonstrated that one patient with this procedure had completed college, attended graduate school and scored above average on intelligence tests. Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor after the procedure, and minimal changes in cognitive function overall.
  - aheilbut 13y ago
    The brain has bilateral symmetry. Don't try that trick cutting along a different axis. Also, they don't talk much about motor function and vision.
- X4 13y ago
  More meat for the AI warriors is found on Minsky's homepage: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/ http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/
cdcarter 13y ago
If you'd like to read more of Dennett's (newer) understandings in a more cohesive form, check out The Intuition Pump. He talks less about his mistakes but more about how his new ideas really mesh with science and real ethics.
Afforess 13y ago
You begin to think about the normal well-tempered mind, in effect, the well-organized mind, as an achievement, not as the base state As an aside, Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? Even "insane" people are just experiencing delusions ontop of reality - the constructs from their mind are mundane in a sense because while they aren't real, they are sane. Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is, that philosophers cant even prove anything besides solipsism exists, or how meaningless life is. I've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought. And of course I'm sure plenty of you will say sure life has purpose, or solipsism is too narrow because it isn't useful to use as a worldview. Because you're all sane. ;)
- cgore 13y ago
  Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. You don't seem insane, so they are left with the assumption that you must be a liar. When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever.
  - loup-vaillant 13y ago
    > If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. By the way, Dennett talked about the reverse: how the Church itself lies: more specifically, priests won't try and correct the beliefs of their parishioners (like, such and such depiction of a miracle was actually just a symbol), lest they destroy their faith altogether.
    - saraid216 13y ago
awaxman11 13y ago
2nd time in one week that Dennett has popped up on HN (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6374470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6374470) Philosophy of mind is a very interesting topic as computers become more and more 'human' like. Dug up an essay I wrote freshman year on one of his books called Consciousness Explained - funny to look back at old writings: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g3t7ntwy782m005/Dennett%20Paper%20%28Spring%20%2708%29.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/s/g3t7ntwy782m005/Dennett%20Paper%20...
- X4 13y ago
  Thanks for sharing.
themodelplumber 13y ago
"You [use a highlighter and] break the whole article down into two or three or four or thirty-two sub articles that are basically ideas...and this looks like a regress, but it's only a finite regress, because you this gigantic article and you break it down into a group of simpler, more obvious points, and you keep going until you arrive at the end, and that's a great way of reading about cognitive science without wanting to stab yourself."
javajosh 13y ago
The strange thing to me is that our minds aren't really that great at studying and describing themselves. You'd think that a mind interested in how minds worked would happily examine itself in whatever level of detail it wanted. One could hope that someone like Dennett could just close his eyes, sit back, and directly observe the answer to all of his most pressing questions. Why doesn't that seem to be possible?
- lnanek2 13y ago
  Why would it be? Evolution is mostly driven by getting enough calories and mates. If your brain needed to be twice as big and needed twice the calories to perform self introspection, for example, it would probably be selected against by evolution since the gain wouldn't be worth the cost. It would be like running a debugger in production. Kills the performance.
  - javajosh 13y ago
    I'm not saying that we should be introspective in lieu of reproducing. It's not an all or nothing thing. BTW that same line of argument could be made against philosophy or even large portions of science, but clearly people can (and do) think about things that don't have an evolutionary advantage. But for some reason, direct knowledge (and manipulation) of our own minds is curiously out-of-reach.
    - guelo 13y ago
      Abstract thinking about their environment allowed our ape ancestors to be more adaptable and plan ahead, thus increasing their chances of surviving to procreate.
    - PeterisP 13y ago
      Larger brain by itself is a very strong evolutionary disadvantage - it consumes a lot of calories, and in humans it hampers childbirth which in out natural state is very deadly already. There is a strong pressure for us to have a brain that's "barely just enough" capable for the functions that increase survivability.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
SapphireSun 13y ago
I really like this conception of brains working as internally competing and cooperating ferral units. I'll have to give it some more thought in the morning. I do have an entreaty for you though: In this era of high throughput computing, elegant biotechnology, and the coming of the BRAIN initiative from the national level, I believe the best way to attack the problems of mind/brain right now is hard work and the scientific method. We need more data and we need to analyze it. We're hiring developers for eyewire.org - a game to map the brain by crowd sourcing/gamifying the analysis of electron micrographs of stained retinal slices from mice. We're developing the tools to map the connectome. For real. The PI for my lab, Dr. Sebastian Seung, is mentioned in this article, and I love working with him. There are other absolutely incredible people working here too that will blow your mind. Send an email to support at eyewire dot org if you want in or email me personally (see link in my profile) if you want more details. (I won't be able to get back to you instantly - I'm totally swamped, but if you're hired, based on my experiences so far, it'll be worth the wait). Here are two fun explanatory videos from TED/TEDx: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0 - Sebastian Seung talking connectomes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gKt8iT08Zc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gKt8iT08Zc - Amy Robinson talking EyeWire Thanks for reading. I hope this post isn't too far out of our community norms - I don't see too many (large) job postings in the comments, but I felt like this article is the perfect place to find someone willing and able to provide much needed help (I'm the only web developer / aspiring neuroscientist there right now). :) If I'm taking up too much space, let me know and I'll condense it.
- jnbiche 13y ago
  Looks like an amazing project. I think crowdsourcing is vastly underutilized for tasks like this. May I make a suggestion re: the web site? In the home/registration page, it would be very helpful to link to some kind of description of the project, even if it's just one paragraph. Better yet, include that short description on the page itself. As things stand now, I go to the sign-up page, but if I want to have any idea what the project involves before I sign up, I have to leave your site and go google the project (fortunately, there's an excellent Wikipedia article about the project). Best of luck with your project and finding some good job candidates. If I were in a position to relocate, I'd apply for the job.
stiff 13y ago
Nothing new in the philosophy departments: thousands of words and nothing to say at all that would be connected to reality. I heard he cites some experimental works sometimes, but his own work seems still to be in this good old tradition of medieval scholasticism of thinking very hard what "ought to be", he even personifies neurons and throws in some "emergence". Missing is only some chaos theory and Goedels theorem, but Plato is there, so maybe this makes up for it. Worst is that he will inspire hundreds of cranks to do similar attempts at "explaining how brain works" and people doing real research will receive still more letters with "revolutionary" ideas of no use. On the topic of the brain, I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher.
- RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  > I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher. The way you get data is by asking questions, and the way you get questions to ask is by following hunches. Don't be so quick to throw away the playful turning-over of ideas that necessarily precedes rigorous analysis.
- betageek 13y ago
  I assume this is just a troll, anyone who doesn't know who Daniel Dennett is should peruse his CV sometime http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettdcv.htm http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettdcv.htm
  - stiff 13y ago
    I know "who he is". Do I have to agree with him because he is a professor? Every piece of his writing I saw used the most complicated language possible and the largest amount of digressions to in the end convey nothing concrete whatsoever and this is all the more true of this article. Moreover I think one can not make any serious contribution to cognitive science using the methodology he uses and that what he is doing is akin to people trying to explain "what gravity is" before Galileo came, abandoned the question, and used equations to predict effects of gravity instead. If I am wrong, I seriously would love an explanation of why do you think so. As others have said Marvin Minsky, who I by the way respect way more than Dennett because in his prime he actually did do real research, had this idea of a "community of agents" thirty years ago or more, in fact he several time claimed that if only he would receive the money to hire programmers he would produce revolutionary AI programs in a matter of months. How this is looked upon by more mainstream scientists one can guess. To me the whole theory is as vague as saying that the brain is made up of cooperating parts. Does any of this lead to testable scientific predictions?
hoffcoder 13y ago
"...and I suspect that a more free-wheeling, anarchic organization is the secret of our greater capacities of creativity, imagination, thinking outside the box and all that, and the price we pay for it is our susceptibility to obsessions, mental illnesses, delusions and smaller problems." Great observation! Isn't it true that the geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted with mental abnormalities? Take the most brilliant mathematicians, engineers, scientists; so many of them faced such problems. There indeed seems to be some connection between the mind's capacity to innovate and create and its capacity to suffer delusions and obsessions. Take examples of Gödel, Turing, Tesla, Hemingway, etc. http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/mad-genius.htm http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/mad-geniu...
- diydsp 13y ago
  >geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted Maybe so, but don't forget, there is no "normal" human being. We create the criteria of genius, normal and mental illness all in order to fulfill our social needs. It's possible we categorize certain individuals as genius and afflicted just so we can deny them the fruits of their labor. It's possible we create the concept of normalcy just so we can leverage techniques of mass manufacturing and social control. It's possible that innovation without being identified as a genius is a smart way to escape the disadvantages of being labelled afflicted. It's possible Dennett's newest change-of-mind is just an update to the fairy tale that tells those in charge how to handle workers for the maximum effect and least disruption. After all, who wants anarchic disruptions in the social order? We want reliable electrical networks and food delivery, not creative, experimental protests. So instead of heeding the words directly of those with insight, appeal to their ego, call them geniuses, strip their innovations to the bare minimum and label them as crazy or problematic to keep them separated safely from others. (cough) Torvalds (cough) RMS.
  - hoffcoder 13y ago
    Maybe so. Even though I am not aware of any studies of this kind of a link between insanity and genius, the kinds of afflictions I am talking about are not imaginary. They are real mental disorders like OCD, bipolar disorder etc.
dwaltrip 13y ago
I was slightly confused the format of seemingly disconnected subsections, but I can't really complain because each section was quite interesting on its own. While we are on the topic, if anyone has any great recommendations for entry level philosophy/ethics books, I would love to hear them.
- pfortuny 13y ago
  Not joking: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a very interesting read, albeit in an (obviously) old way of writing. But I think this is a must if you want to read about ethics. At least the Western notion.
  - dwaltrip 13y ago
    Just did some background reading about that work. It does seem to be quite important, at the very least because so much has been influenced by it. Although in some other readings regarding Aristotle's political theories, I had a hard time getting past his views on slaves.
- gjm11 13y ago
  > recommendations for entry level philosophy/ethics books Nice (but opinionated and now ~50y old) overview: Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy". Long but extremely readable. Not necessarily very reliable. Ethics specifically: Peter Singer's "Practical ethics". Note that Singer thinks that we (in the affluent West) should all be giving a lot more than most of us do to help less well-off people, and that non-human animals' welfare is much more important than most people treat it as, and he's quite persuasive. So reading his work might be bad for your financial and/or gastronomic well-being (but if so, you will consider that that's for the best). Not all that entry-level but full of clever things and exceptionally clear (in approximately the way that maths/physics/computing people value clear thinking extra-highly): Gary Drescher's "Good and Real". Subtitle is "demystifying paradoxes from physics to ethics". Just for fun: Quine's "Quiddities: an intermittently philosophical dictionary". Not really a dictionary, but a collection of short essays and remarks in alphabetical order of (single-word) subject. Quine was an absolutely first-rank philosopher, though he's not in particularly serious mode here. Not at all entry-level (in terms of how hard you need to think; I don't think much expert philosophical knowledge is needed) but extraordinarily good and highly relevant to questions of ethics, though it's more about questions of personal identity: Derek Parfit's "Reasons and persons". He's more recently written a large two-volume work on ethics, which I haven't read.
scotty79 13y ago
Whenever I hear about "free will" I wonder if that's just Judeochristian narrative or do other cultures also have same idea featured so prominently.
Millennium 13y ago
If "the normal well-tempered mind" is an achievement, rather than the base state, then can it really be called normal at all?
ideonexus 13y ago
One bit of additional info on this topic. To understand how and why neurons are independent, you need to understand how a baby's brain grows into its body by producing an overabundance of neurons and then "pruning" the ones that aren't used. So neurons are subject to natural selection as we grow: http://mxplx.com/Meme/922/ http://mxplx.com/Meme/922/
mugwumpjissom 13y ago
http://www.dhamma.org/ http://www.dhamma.org/

147 points by X4 13y ago

Minsky talked about the 'society of mind' involving competition between many autonomous modules a very long time ago; funny that he isn't even mentioned. The brain-as-computer analogy needs more qualification than it is usually given. When one says that, people tend to think of a computer very abstractly; as some Turing-machine like substrate on which one can run any computation. The brain isn't like that at all; it's built out of all kinds of ASICs that have evolved for very specific functions. The reality is probably much closer to 19th century phrenology than 50s cybernetics.

Daniel_Newby 13y ago
> The brain isn't like that at all; it's built out of all kinds of ASICs that have evolved for very specific functions. That turns out not to be the case. There are some specialized modules, but stroke studies have shown that massive damage to specific functions can often be recovered by retraining. It seems that particular parts of the brain are especially good at learning particular jobs, and that when they learn a job they somehow suppress redundant learning by other regions. Much of the apparent specialization of the brain is very possibly an optimization process, akin to a computer cluster that automatically assigns I/O jobs to nodes near the mass storage.
- scotty79 13y ago
  I believe that optimizations observed are almost purely function of brain activity. Any boosts genes provide to specific regions are quantitative not qualitative in nature.
  - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    In the cerebral cortex, I agree. It seems like any handy chunk of cortex with enough connections can learn a task. Outside the cortex there are dedicated organs within the brain: circadian rhythym generators, the locus ceruleus, the hippocampus, and many others.
- Figs 13y ago
  Maybe it'd be more interesting to think of it like an FPGA that can run a Verilog JIT compiler and reprogram itself when damage occurs or new information changes priorities?
scotty79 13y ago
Then how do you explain that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy One case, demonstrated by Smith & Sugar, 1975; A. Smith 1987, demonstrated that one patient with this procedure had completed college, attended graduate school and scored above average on intelligence tests. Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor after the procedure, and minimal changes in cognitive function overall.
- aheilbut 13y ago
  The brain has bilateral symmetry. Don't try that trick cutting along a different axis. Also, they don't talk much about motor function and vision.
X4 13y ago
More meat for the AI warriors is found on Minsky's homepage: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/ http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/

cdcarter 13y ago

If you'd like to read more of Dennett's (newer) understandings in a more cohesive form, check out The Intuition Pump. He talks less about his mistakes but more about how his new ideas really mesh with science and real ethics.

Afforess 13y ago

You begin to think about the normal well-tempered mind, in effect, the well-organized mind, as an achievement, not as the base state As an aside, Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? Even "insane" people are just experiencing delusions ontop of reality - the constructs from their mind are mundane in a sense because while they aren't real, they are sane. Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is, that philosophers cant even prove anything besides solipsism exists, or how meaningless life is. I've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought. And of course I'm sure plenty of you will say sure life has purpose, or solipsism is too narrow because it isn't useful to use as a worldview. Because you're all sane. ;)

cgore 13y ago
Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. You don't seem insane, so they are left with the assumption that you must be a liar. When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever.
- loup-vaillant 13y ago
  > If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. By the way, Dennett talked about the reverse: how the Church itself lies: more specifically, priests won't try and correct the beliefs of their parishioners (like, such and such depiction of a miracle was actually just a symbol), lest they destroy their faith altogether.
  - saraid216 13y ago

awaxman11 13y ago

2nd time in one week that Dennett has popped up on HN (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6374470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6374470) Philosophy of mind is a very interesting topic as computers become more and more 'human' like. Dug up an essay I wrote freshman year on one of his books called Consciousness Explained - funny to look back at old writings: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g3t7ntwy782m005/Dennett%20Paper%20%28Spring%20%2708%29.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/s/g3t7ntwy782m005/Dennett%20Paper%20...

X4 13y ago
Thanks for sharing.

themodelplumber 13y ago

"You [use a highlighter and] break the whole article down into two or three or four or thirty-two sub articles that are basically ideas...and this looks like a regress, but it's only a finite regress, because you this gigantic article and you break it down into a group of simpler, more obvious points, and you keep going until you arrive at the end, and that's a great way of reading about cognitive science without wanting to stab yourself."

javajosh 13y ago

The strange thing to me is that our minds aren't really that great at studying and describing themselves. You'd think that a mind interested in how minds worked would happily examine itself in whatever level of detail it wanted. One could hope that someone like Dennett could just close his eyes, sit back, and directly observe the answer to all of his most pressing questions. Why doesn't that seem to be possible?

lnanek2 13y ago
Why would it be? Evolution is mostly driven by getting enough calories and mates. If your brain needed to be twice as big and needed twice the calories to perform self introspection, for example, it would probably be selected against by evolution since the gain wouldn't be worth the cost. It would be like running a debugger in production. Kills the performance.
- javajosh 13y ago
  I'm not saying that we should be introspective in lieu of reproducing. It's not an all or nothing thing. BTW that same line of argument could be made against philosophy or even large portions of science, but clearly people can (and do) think about things that don't have an evolutionary advantage. But for some reason, direct knowledge (and manipulation) of our own minds is curiously out-of-reach.
  - guelo 13y ago
    Abstract thinking about their environment allowed our ape ancestors to be more adaptable and plan ahead, thus increasing their chances of surviving to procreate.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    Larger brain by itself is a very strong evolutionary disadvantage - it consumes a lot of calories, and in humans it hampers childbirth which in out natural state is very deadly already. There is a strong pressure for us to have a brain that's "barely just enough" capable for the functions that increase survivability.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

SapphireSun 13y ago

I really like this conception of brains working as internally competing and cooperating ferral units. I'll have to give it some more thought in the morning. I do have an entreaty for you though: In this era of high throughput computing, elegant biotechnology, and the coming of the BRAIN initiative from the national level, I believe the best way to attack the problems of mind/brain right now is hard work and the scientific method. We need more data and we need to analyze it. We're hiring developers for eyewire.org - a game to map the brain by crowd sourcing/gamifying the analysis of electron micrographs of stained retinal slices from mice. We're developing the tools to map the connectome. For real. The PI for my lab, Dr. Sebastian Seung, is mentioned in this article, and I love working with him. There are other absolutely incredible people working here too that will blow your mind. Send an email to support at eyewire dot org if you want in or email me personally (see link in my profile) if you want more details. (I won't be able to get back to you instantly - I'm totally swamped, but if you're hired, based on my experiences so far, it'll be worth the wait). Here are two fun explanatory videos from TED/TEDx: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0 - Sebastian Seung talking connectomes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gKt8iT08Zc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gKt8iT08Zc - Amy Robinson talking EyeWire Thanks for reading. I hope this post isn't too far out of our community norms - I don't see too many (large) job postings in the comments, but I felt like this article is the perfect place to find someone willing and able to provide much needed help (I'm the only web developer / aspiring neuroscientist there right now). :) If I'm taking up too much space, let me know and I'll condense it.

jnbiche 13y ago
Looks like an amazing project. I think crowdsourcing is vastly underutilized for tasks like this. May I make a suggestion re: the web site? In the home/registration page, it would be very helpful to link to some kind of description of the project, even if it's just one paragraph. Better yet, include that short description on the page itself. As things stand now, I go to the sign-up page, but if I want to have any idea what the project involves before I sign up, I have to leave your site and go google the project (fortunately, there's an excellent Wikipedia article about the project). Best of luck with your project and finding some good job candidates. If I were in a position to relocate, I'd apply for the job.

stiff 13y ago

Nothing new in the philosophy departments: thousands of words and nothing to say at all that would be connected to reality. I heard he cites some experimental works sometimes, but his own work seems still to be in this good old tradition of medieval scholasticism of thinking very hard what "ought to be", he even personifies neurons and throws in some "emergence". Missing is only some chaos theory and Goedels theorem, but Plato is there, so maybe this makes up for it. Worst is that he will inspire hundreds of cranks to do similar attempts at "explaining how brain works" and people doing real research will receive still more letters with "revolutionary" ideas of no use. On the topic of the brain, I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago
> I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher. The way you get data is by asking questions, and the way you get questions to ask is by following hunches. Don't be so quick to throw away the playful turning-over of ideas that necessarily precedes rigorous analysis.
betageek 13y ago
I assume this is just a troll, anyone who doesn't know who Daniel Dennett is should peruse his CV sometime http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettdcv.htm http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettdcv.htm
- stiff 13y ago
  I know "who he is". Do I have to agree with him because he is a professor? Every piece of his writing I saw used the most complicated language possible and the largest amount of digressions to in the end convey nothing concrete whatsoever and this is all the more true of this article. Moreover I think one can not make any serious contribution to cognitive science using the methodology he uses and that what he is doing is akin to people trying to explain "what gravity is" before Galileo came, abandoned the question, and used equations to predict effects of gravity instead. If I am wrong, I seriously would love an explanation of why do you think so. As others have said Marvin Minsky, who I by the way respect way more than Dennett because in his prime he actually did do real research, had this idea of a "community of agents" thirty years ago or more, in fact he several time claimed that if only he would receive the money to hire programmers he would produce revolutionary AI programs in a matter of months. How this is looked upon by more mainstream scientists one can guess. To me the whole theory is as vague as saying that the brain is made up of cooperating parts. Does any of this lead to testable scientific predictions?

hoffcoder 13y ago

"...and I suspect that a more free-wheeling, anarchic organization is the secret of our greater capacities of creativity, imagination, thinking outside the box and all that, and the price we pay for it is our susceptibility to obsessions, mental illnesses, delusions and smaller problems." Great observation! Isn't it true that the geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted with mental abnormalities? Take the most brilliant mathematicians, engineers, scientists; so many of them faced such problems. There indeed seems to be some connection between the mind's capacity to innovate and create and its capacity to suffer delusions and obsessions. Take examples of Gödel, Turing, Tesla, Hemingway, etc. http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/mad-genius.htm http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/mad-geniu...

diydsp 13y ago
>geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted Maybe so, but don't forget, there is no "normal" human being. We create the criteria of genius, normal and mental illness all in order to fulfill our social needs. It's possible we categorize certain individuals as genius and afflicted just so we can deny them the fruits of their labor. It's possible we create the concept of normalcy just so we can leverage techniques of mass manufacturing and social control. It's possible that innovation without being identified as a genius is a smart way to escape the disadvantages of being labelled afflicted. It's possible Dennett's newest change-of-mind is just an update to the fairy tale that tells those in charge how to handle workers for the maximum effect and least disruption. After all, who wants anarchic disruptions in the social order? We want reliable electrical networks and food delivery, not creative, experimental protests. So instead of heeding the words directly of those with insight, appeal to their ego, call them geniuses, strip their innovations to the bare minimum and label them as crazy or problematic to keep them separated safely from others. (cough) Torvalds (cough) RMS.
- hoffcoder 13y ago
  Maybe so. Even though I am not aware of any studies of this kind of a link between insanity and genius, the kinds of afflictions I am talking about are not imaginary. They are real mental disorders like OCD, bipolar disorder etc.

dwaltrip 13y ago

I was slightly confused the format of seemingly disconnected subsections, but I can't really complain because each section was quite interesting on its own. While we are on the topic, if anyone has any great recommendations for entry level philosophy/ethics books, I would love to hear them.

pfortuny 13y ago
Not joking: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a very interesting read, albeit in an (obviously) old way of writing. But I think this is a must if you want to read about ethics. At least the Western notion.
- dwaltrip 13y ago
  Just did some background reading about that work. It does seem to be quite important, at the very least because so much has been influenced by it. Although in some other readings regarding Aristotle's political theories, I had a hard time getting past his views on slaves.
gjm11 13y ago
> recommendations for entry level philosophy/ethics books Nice (but opinionated and now ~50y old) overview: Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy". Long but extremely readable. Not necessarily very reliable. Ethics specifically: Peter Singer's "Practical ethics". Note that Singer thinks that we (in the affluent West) should all be giving a lot more than most of us do to help less well-off people, and that non-human animals' welfare is much more important than most people treat it as, and he's quite persuasive. So reading his work might be bad for your financial and/or gastronomic well-being (but if so, you will consider that that's for the best). Not all that entry-level but full of clever things and exceptionally clear (in approximately the way that maths/physics/computing people value clear thinking extra-highly): Gary Drescher's "Good and Real". Subtitle is "demystifying paradoxes from physics to ethics". Just for fun: Quine's "Quiddities: an intermittently philosophical dictionary". Not really a dictionary, but a collection of short essays and remarks in alphabetical order of (single-word) subject. Quine was an absolutely first-rank philosopher, though he's not in particularly serious mode here. Not at all entry-level (in terms of how hard you need to think; I don't think much expert philosophical knowledge is needed) but extraordinarily good and highly relevant to questions of ethics, though it's more about questions of personal identity: Derek Parfit's "Reasons and persons". He's more recently written a large two-volume work on ethics, which I haven't read.

scotty79 13y ago

Whenever I hear about "free will" I wonder if that's just Judeochristian narrative or do other cultures also have same idea featured so prominently.

Millennium 13y ago

If "the normal well-tempered mind" is an achievement, rather than the base state, then can it really be called normal at all?

ideonexus 13y ago

One bit of additional info on this topic. To understand how and why neurons are independent, you need to understand how a baby's brain grows into its body by producing an overabundance of neurons and then "pruning" the ones that aren't used. So neurons are subject to natural selection as we grow: http://mxplx.com/Meme/922/ http://mxplx.com/Meme/922/

mugwumpjissom 13y ago

http://www.dhamma.org/ http://www.dhamma.org/