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great interview with philosopher daniel dennett

People confuse determinism with fatalism. They’re two completely different notions
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Where's Franko when you need him!
 
And this is why I like Dennett!...
This view is called homuncular functionalism.

It’s not an infinite regress. It bottoms out with the neurons. Yes, you can think of an individual neuron as a little homunculus. It doesn’t help much, but you can do it. The point is that you take larger assemblages, cells, tissues, and the like. Then they begin to have individual tasks, larger projects. When you get to a high enough level, you’ve got homunculi that are really quite agent-like.

The self is the systems control of the whole body over time. If you’re doing things over an extended period of time, the self is your way to keep track of them. You have to be able to remember where you were so you can pick up the threads and continue after an interruption. So you have projects. And you have goals and fears and hopes.
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(Just one more...)

Reason: Think tanks like the Ethics and Public Policy Center and thinkers like Leon Kass and Irving Kristol seem very frightened about the moral implications of your project.

Dennett: They’re scared to death of this, and I think they’re just wrong. They’re clinging to a straw that won’t float. I don’t know whether it’s comic or tragic. The idea that they could save what they hold dear by making it magical, by embodying it in this little pearl of soul stuff, that’s superstitious thinking of the worst sort.

Reason: How would you comfort them?

Dennett: There, there. There, there. It’s not as scary as you think.
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LOL. :D I guess this is why he rubs some people the wrong way? Anyway, nice little summary for Christian regarding his god-morals.
 
Dennett: For many years I joined in the general battle against a homunculus or one big bunch of them. Then it hit me: Homunculi are fine as long as they’re stupid.
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:)

Thanks for the link, Ron.
 
Reason: So human beings are still selfish, but we have developed enlightened selfishness. We can understand the consequences of our actions and control them.

Dennett: There’s a Robert Frank quip in the book: It turns out that the way to seem moral is to be moral.

Reason: So morality evolves largely because people get more benefits than not out of it.

Dennett: Yes. Civilization is a good deal.
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I took a History and Philosophy of Science class in college. Fascinating class, taught by two professors, and a very odd pairing at that!

Anyway, one of the classroom exercises was to develop a "strategy" for interacting with one other person in the class. You either cooperated, or you defected. Points were awarded to people based on whether they cooperated or defected, based on what the other person did:

Both cooperate: both get one point
Both defect: both get no points
One person cooperates, the other defects: The cooperator gets no points, the defector gets two points

Point of the exercise was that an inherently "friendly" strategy (i.e. you're cooperative all the time, as long as the other person is also cooperative) resulted in the most points for everyone involved. People who occasionally defected, while they might make short-term gains, still did not earn as many points as pairs of people that had friendly strategies.

That case can be expanded to what Dennett is talking about here. Morality is good because civilization provides the maximum benefits for any given human. Defecting (being immoral), while it may give short-term gains, is not as beneficial to a person as morality is.

That was a great interview, good link. I think I got a better understanding of determinism/fatalism out of it.
 
dwb said:
I took a History and Philosophy of Science class in college. Fascinating class, taught by two professors, and a very odd pairing at that!

Anyway, one of the classroom exercises was to develop a "strategy" for interacting with one other person in the class. You either cooperated, or you defected. Points were awarded to people based on whether they cooperated or defected, based on what the other person did:

Both cooperate: both get one point
Both defect: both get no points
One person cooperates, the other defects: The cooperator gets no points, the defector gets two points

Point of the exercise was that an inherently "friendly" strategy (i.e. you're cooperative all the time, as long as the other person is also cooperative) resulted in the most points for everyone involved. People who occasionally defected, while they might make short-term gains, still did not earn as many points as pairs of people that had friendly strategies.

That case can be expanded to what Dennett is talking about here. Morality is good because civilization provides the maximum benefits for any given human. Defecting (being immoral), while it may give short-term gains, is not as beneficial to a person as morality is.

That was a great interview, good link. I think I got a better understanding of determinism/fatalism out of it.
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If I remember correctly there have been similar studies, where if both cooperate you get a big reward, if you dont you get a small one, but if you cooperate and the other person doesnt you get nothing. Slightly differnet, because there is no risk in not cooperating, but in that case people tended to not cooperate and rather take the garunteed small reward rather than trust the other person to take the chance.

I tend to think Dennett is living in a Kantesque land where he recognizes the value of scientific looks at behavior, but wants to justify conclusions about behavior arrived at in unscientific ways.
 
K-W said:


If I remember correctly there have been similar studies, where if both cooperate you get a big reward, if you dont you get a small one, but if you cooperate and the other person doesnt you get nothing. Slightly differnet, because there is no risk in not cooperating, but in that case people tended to not cooperate and rather take the garunteed small reward rather than trust the other person to take the chance.

I tend to think Dennett is living in a Kantesque land where he recognizes the value of scientific looks at behavior, but wants to justify conclusions about behavior arrived at in unscientific ways.
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This is game theory. The simplest case is "The Prisoner's Dilemna". It is a one-off situation where you are always better off selling the other person out. People in real life don't act that way. More complex game set-ups have been presented to try to figure out why. An important component is repeat contact. If you have to deal with the person multiple times, there is more motivation to act well towards them.

I recall one studied actually shoed that people would suffer a lessening of their own score in order to punish someone who let them down.
 
arcticpenguin said:
I recall one studied actually shoed that people would suffer a lessening of their own score in order to punish someone who let them down.
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Right. The motivation in repeated interactions is very different.

Other studies have shown that the most effective response to a defector is "tit-for-tat": they defect once, you defect once. Other responses, either more forgiving (tit for two tats) or less, are less successful overall.
 
dwb said:
I took a History and Philosophy of Science class in college. Fascinating class, taught by two professors, and a very odd pairing at that!

Anyway, one of the classroom exercises was to develop a "strategy" for interacting with one other person in the class. You either cooperated, or you defected. Points were awarded to people based on whether they cooperated or defected, based on what the other person did:

Both cooperate: both get one point
Both defect: both get no points
One person cooperates, the other defects: The cooperator gets no points, the defector gets two points

Point of the exercise was that an inherently "friendly" strategy (i.e. you're cooperative all the time, as long as the other person is also cooperative) resulted in the most points for everyone involved. People who occasionally defected, while they might make short-term gains, still did not earn as many points as pairs of people that had friendly strategies.

That case can be expanded to what Dennett is talking about here. Morality is good because civilization provides the maximum benefits for any given human. Defecting (being immoral), while it may give short-term gains, is not as beneficial to a person as morality is.

That was a great interview, good link. I think I got a better understanding of determinism/fatalism out of it.
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That's basically a summary of Plato's Gorgias. Well, there's more to it, actually. Socrates just offers a solution.
 
Is Dennet the brain in the jar guy? I remember reading an article about an experiment with a brain in a jar and a computer program mimicing the brain in the jar, and switching back and forth to control the body.... Is that this guy? The article was quite interesting.
 
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