A week ago, Big Think released this video featuring philosopher Daniel Dennett talking about the four biggest ideas in philosophy. Today, we learned that he passed away at age 82. The New York Times obituary for Dennett reads: “Espousing his ideas in best sellers, he insisted that religion was an illusion, free will was a fantasy and evolution could only be explained by natural selection.” “Mr. Dennett combined a wide range of knowledge with an easy, often playful writing style to reach a lay public, avoiding the impenetrable concepts and turgid prose of many other contemporary philosophers. Beyond his more than 20 books and scores of essays, his writings even made their way into the theater and onto the concert stage.”
Above, Dennett, a long-time philosophy professor at Tufts University, outlines the “four eras he evolved through on his own journey as a philosopher: classical philosophy, evolutionary theory, memetic theory, and the intentional stance. Each stage added depth to his perspective and understanding… Dennett’s key takeaway is a request for philosophers to reevaluate their methodologies, urging modern-day thinkers to embrace the insights offered by new scientific discoveries. By combining the existential and theoretical viewpoints of philosophers with the analytical and evidential perspective of scientists, we can begin to fully and accurately interpret the world around us.”
To help you delve a little deeper into Daniel Dennett’s world, we’ve also posted below a vintage TED video where the philosopher discusses the illusion of consciousness. We would also encourage you to explore the Dennett items in the Relateds below.
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Philosophy thoughts are incompatible with others concepts, when we have no words for our satisfaction and the situation we worried what to do at the time we looks such knowledge and we are sure we can find out the solution, but now it’s not possible, thou I think it’s venise and material matter covering,as a human being we should be accept philosophy and this is a good decision by the real realising person, and their opinions we never denied and we sure,we can able to get results
I am an artist, very early on I realized that I an dealing with illusions, whether it is about after image or that colour can conjure up a smell! So Mr. Dennet’s talk did not go anywhere near far enough for me. In my research, in order to understand how I can make illusions and how I conjure up images in my brain it has been fun working out how our the brain does it. How it is done is a no brainer! No Magic! Unfortunately the lecture did not delve in to mechanisms of recognition and awareness. Of course we all hear that reality is different for each one of us. But the reeducation and development of our realities is on going, but why? So many interesting avenues. Happy hunting.
The idea that we need technology to alert us to technology feeding us falsehoods is so circular — and then, on top of that, to state that we then need laws in order to prevent this experience of being presented with counterfeit info just pushes us even further into the jaws of government babysitting. There are societies that are much more secure in their grasp of their own mental malleability, that they have learned, starting at a very young age, how to meet the challenges of those (and “that” in the case of non-human info-seeders) who would incorrectly inform them. That’s the real test. Bring back some of the older education models and begin looking toward the future adding new models.