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I knew him from a Ted talk he gave. He made a lot of sense to me with some of his proposals. I will watch anything Robert Sapolsky and I recognized him. He did sound unskilled in that debate. Learn to play both sides of the net I guess.
Dennett believed in compatibilism, the idea that free will can evolve in an otherwise deterministic universe. I don't share that view, but it's at least tenable until 'psychological/neuoscientific determinism' can be proven beyond doubt. People like to feel like their sense of agency is more than a mere illusion!
Daniel Kahneman, who wrote one of my favorite books ever in 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' and who shared a rough physical resemblance to Dennett, also happened to die about a month ago. RIP, both
Dennett believed in compatibilism, the idea that free will can evolve in an otherwise deterministic universe. I don't share that view, but it's at least tenable until 'psychological/neuoscientific determinism' can be proven beyond doubt. People like to feel like their sense of agency is more than a mere illusion!
Daniel Kahneman, who wrote one of my favorite books ever in 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' and who shared a rough physical resemblance to Dennett, also happened to die about a month ago. RIP, both
That's sad.
I have to say though he's a person who barely ever crossed my path. Caught him couple of times on you tube and that's it.
He could have written one of my favorite quotes about God:
"God is the little boy who sets fire to the anthill and laughs. God is one who pees in our Cheerios. God is the bully who kicks sand in your face on the playground. God is the snake that eats the bird eggs from the nest."
The 7th excerpt is about religion, and he expresses sympathy for the prosocial aspects of belonging to a congregation, while also lamenting the irrationality of a substantial chunk of religious dogma
ETA that a couple of them (the very first one especially) would be mind-blowing were it not for desensitization to the subject matter!
Last edited by Matt Marcinkiewicz; 05-10-2024 at 01:15 PM..
Dennett believed in compatibilism, the idea that free will can evolve in an otherwise deterministic universe. I don't share that view, but it's at least tenable until 'psychological/neuoscientific determinism' can be proven beyond doubt. People like to feel like their sense of agency is more than a mere illusion!
Compatibilism holds that causal determinism is true. It is no way incompatible with psychological determinism.
Compatibilism is simply the view that free will is stricly about us doing what we desire, and because we do that we have free will. Therefore, even though what we desire (and therefore what we do) is determined, the requirements of free will have been met. It differs from determinism-without-free-will only in that it says the requirements for free will have indeed been met.
Compatibilism is a view held by roughly 60% of professional philosophers as of the most recent phil papers survey (https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl). And, just to clarify, I'm not arguing that this is why compatibilism is true. I'm only illustrating that Dennett was by no means on the fringe for this view, as it outpaces any other free will view by about 4x.
Just to clarify, Dennett's specific view on free will involved much more than is required by compatibilism generally.
Last edited by Wittgenstein's Ghost; 05-22-2024 at 07:05 PM..
Compatibilism holds that causal determinism is true. It is no way incompatible with psychological determinism.
Compatibilism is simply the view that free will is stricly about us doing what we desire, and because we do that we have free will. Therefore, even though what we desire (and therefore what we do) is determined, the requirements of free will have been met. It differs from determinism-without-free-will only in that it says the requirements for free will have indeed been met.
Compatibilism is a view held by roughly 60% of professional philosophers as of the most recent phil papers survey (https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl). And, just to clarify, I'm not arguing that this is why compatibilism is true. I'm only illustrating that Dennett was by no means on the fringe for this view, as it outpaces any other free will view by about 4x.
Just to clarify, Dennett's specific view on free will involved much more than is required by compatibilism generally.
Psychological determinism is an atheist acknowledgment that despite the claims of illusion, WE EXIST as conscious beings. All the neuroscientific claims of illusion and denials of the homunculus are indirect denials of our existence because our consciousness IS our existence, NOT our body and brain. We are NOT mere processes in the brain that Dennet believed can be put in a machine with the same result. He did not think it would be mimicry (which it would be). We exist as conscious entities at the quantum level (pure BECs) separate from our body and brain. We have a will separate from the causal processes that manifest us.
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