Daniel Dennett | Johns Hopkins Natural Philosophy Forum Distinguished Lecture, 2023

The Johns Hopkins Natural Philosophy Forum sponsors an annual Distinguished Lecture, to be given by a scientist or philosopher working on illuminating the fundamental structure of reality. The 2022-23 lecture was given on February 6, 2023, by Daniel Dennett of Tufts University, on "How, When, and Why Can We Trust Our Brains?"
Abstract: If we didn’t think we could trust our brains, we wouldn’t bother with inquiries
like this. But our brains are composed of cells that don’t know much of anything and there’s no magical Self in the control room. Can we bootstrap our way to a well-grounded conviction that we know at least much of what we think we know?
naturalphilosophyhopkins.org/
ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/
@hopkinsnaturalphilosophyforum
#science #philosophy #naturalphilosophy #johnshopkins #consciousness #mind #brain

[@BadMannerKorea]

Sad to see you go. Rest in peace.

[@Human_Evolution-]

I do not want to live in a world without Dennett.

[@JimBalter]

Sadly, that's our world now. But we still have his works, such as this video.

[@christophermclaughlin8899]

@@JimBalterthrough his works he will attain the only semblance of immortality available. May people read his works for years to come, and in doing so engage in a conversation of sorts with this great mind, long after his corporeal self has faded away.

[@bmdecker93]

My intellectual heroes. As a native of Baltimore, I'm thrilled to see Carroll at Hopkins and Dennett speaking at this inaugural event.

[@SandipChitale]

Beautiful lecture. One thing to observe with Dan's talks is that he uses a straightforward day to day language e.g. "And then what happens?" (very American style I think). No resorting to very smart sounding words like epistemology or ontology - whatever those mean. I mean there are simple words that could be used instead - "how we understand" and "what is". IMO other philosophers should adapt this approach if they want to be understood by and reach lay people.

[@nyworker]

But he always talks about "a brain" but he never admits that brains do not exist either by his talks. Truth is that "brain" is just a word for a system of 30 substructures and organs. He never talks anatomical details except to support his worn argument.

[@arusirham3761]

True

[@JimBalter]

@@nyworker "But"? Your comment is a complete non sequitur to what you responded to, and your claim is absurdly pedantic and the total opposite of speaking plainly.

[@nyworker]

@@JimBalter I disagree but that's ok.

[@Human_Evolution-]

May Dennett lecture until he's 200 years old!

[@ikaeksen]

Happy birthday today Daniel Dannet ^^

[@photographyandthecreativeyou]

Really enjoy Daniel Dennett's work. Thanks for this!

[@nyworker]

TRIGGER WARNING !!!!!....This talk by Dr Dennett may lead you to logical and rational thinking.

[@philj3167]

Always love listening to Dan Dennett. Brilliant mind

[@shinjirigged]

I cant think of a better first lecture. Thank you, Thank Dan, and thank everyone who helped share it. I wouldn't have access to this kind of culture otherwise.

[@captainzappbrannagan]

A giant among giants. Always inspiring, enlightening, and brings together so many varied concepts gathered together in a succinct way from previous giants who were more singularly sighted. One of the 4 horsemen and forever in my thanks for his work to bring closer the age of reason for humanity.

[@CodexPermutatio]

Excellent lecture. Please protect this man's head.

[@larryparis925]

Hey, I think you are on to something.

[@williamarnold9744]

Dennett is good at thinking, and good at communicating his thoughts. His books and lectures are always a treat.

[@volaireoh883]

Thanks for the link Sean, looking forward to this.

[@barbcarbon9440]

I just love Daniel Dennett. Such ease and humor to make these tough subjects so approachable. 💜

[@101personal]

What a great choice is Daniel Dennett !!! Congratulations

[@normandguevara1530]

R.I.P Dennett .Not long ago it was the four Horseman.

[@ThongNguyen-fl9jp]

what a model of a life to have lived. so grateful for the decades of wonder he gave . if chat gpt will be good for one thing, it'll be to create an immortal AI Dennett agent to help us still here cheat on the homework of life

[@Jalcolm1]

He died still elucidating with his excellent commitment to common sense and clarity the way forward. Funny affable and irreplaceable.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Feedback mechanism of teaching learning is the real-time re-evolution circularity quantization cause-effect of self-defining elemental e-Pi-i sync-duration resonance function, and Form following the Fusion-Fission Function in continuity. That's it that's all-ways all-at-once floating Singularity-point Entanglement Calculus.., "make of it what you will".

[@goltltamas]

What Mr. Dennett says is just so very simple that I just do not understand why it can not be accapted all by the 6 billon adult people on this globe!? It really should be!! Many thanx for this video Mr. Carroll, Mr. Dennett!! Greeting from Hungary! 👋😁

[@tallsw7290]

Probably cause he rejected the whole idea of explaining the fact we experience something or like how we feel as if we are watching a movie of the world play out. Kinda the same as what most people studying consciousness is doing, making neural or physical correlating to experience and assuming that these correlations naturally result in our subjective experience rising.

[@JimBalter]

@@tallsw7290 Wrong.

[@tallsw7290]

@@JimBalter Perhaps make an argument. There’s nothing wrong with the work people are doing js we need to admit at some point an identity statement has to be made and maybe we do have more conceptual problems than we think we do.

[@JimBalter]

@@tallsw7290 The argument has been made many times. It was made in this video. It's a waste of time arguing with people like you. You made a plainly false claim: "Probably cause he rejected the whole idea of explaining the fact we experience something or like how we feel as if we are watching a movie of the world play out." and offered no *argument* supporting your false claim, yet demand an argument that it is wrong ... hypocritical misplaced burden.

[@jestermoon]

Take A Moment My fellow Ape Proffeser, Sir You stand so high on the shoulders of giants I am worried for your safety 😮 The world has PTSD post pandemic now, July 2023. Keep Talking We are ready to catch you should fall, you won't, I wanted to let you know. The World needs you and your colleagues. Stay Safe and Stay Free 🙏

[@arthurwieczorek4894]

Where Dennett speaks of certainty and bet-your-life uncertainty, I refer to them as absolute truth and ampliative truth.

[@JimBalter]

Sad that, immediately after Dennett asked who the "him" was (actually "me") in Emo Philips's joke, the audience couldn't figure out that "we" was the most important word in his talk title.

[@nyworker]

He's right about illusions. For example there is no light in our brains or in our visual systems. Or light moving around at the speed of light in our biology.

[@moocow323]

What about biophotons?

[@robertlunn3678]

Aaron, you missed the point completely! It’s nothing close to a metaphor. He’s not comparing the two in order to show how close they are artistically. He’s showing the power of evolution with the fullness of time.

[@Frohicky1]

I think I can improve on the Plutocrat thought experiment. The Plutocrat says to the guest, you, flick this switch over and over. Inside your head is an infinite series of homunculi, all outside thermodynamics. Compared to infinity, adding a few cogs and a switch counts for nothing.

[@villekarna8545]

Dennett starts at 2:59

[@robertlunn3678]

I’m worried about him. A great man putting difficult concepts in language understood by us average folks. He’s given lectures on evolution comparing termite cathedrals to Gaudis Sagrada Familia that explains how important time is in the process. ( he touches on it here)

[@poimandres]

RIP

[@Frohicky1]

An old man with bright eyes.

[@user-ks6sv6sj5t]

45:00

[@nyworker]

1:30:28 "thanks to the second person's pov"..or we can call those the common rules of the game.

[@bjpafa2293]

David Deutch is. Daniel, dear professor, you are in an age where tolerance to the young is paramount. Mathematics is a young brain matter, history of Mathematics, not so. Thank you. One may don't kow, but it may lead us astray, historically has. Maybe music is the most thrusting branch of Applied Mathematics. (if you may say so) Vast is another abstraction. Mathematics differs from philosophy because, illuding herself, believes that quantities, even so abstract that are unthinkable, are still real. Philosophy recognizes the sense and unsense. Unsense today is the basic line of a tomorrow philosophy. Ten to the 123 is the concrete precise that is actually, in our state of the art, unreachable and, consequently, abstract... If all those objections may be put on hold... 😂 🙏 As divagations of uniformation. Natural language semantics, allow me the improperty, is a construct over the reality, like a punch in the jaw, that is language, exponentially polyvalent, a living manifestation of the poetic spirit, would say W Blake, 6.01 of Tractatus, the limits of my language are the limits of my world, Hans Georg Gadamer, Das Wort ist das Lenens des Seits, M Heidegger, we became anchored to a past that is no more... Be aware of uour capacity to become different throughout your life work. Existence and neurophysiologie, epigenomics, Conectome... Today, all our knowledge is mediated by CS, Big Data... Impression, vision, crazy association, still exists. Raw creativity may eventually need some degree of ignorance to develop... Like when they unleashed scientists in completely new fields... The bare instrument.

[@bjpafa2293]

I am very sorry, but I have been unable to find a job that allows to have opinions, unfounded... Those are, in this humble opinion, geometric tricks of knowledge that may mean more when properly analized... Tiger tiger, burning 🔥 ✨ Thank you, congratulations.

[@narancauk]

13:54 The tree is doing photosynthesis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@bjpafa2293]

Yes, Moritz Schlick ethics ("more geometrica Demonstrata") was refused even from the inner Wiener Circle, the humunculus was in the beliefs of the father of ethology, Konrad Lorenz, a dangerous mind. Sclick was evidently wrong, but we wonder what he could have written if not murdered for "being the father of a vicious philosophy" So Professor, whyle we have you here, less auto critic, more forward thinking 🙏🐰✨ Under every lie is a gradient of truth and inversely so... 🐰

[@bjpafa2293]

Admitting a mistake about Qualia, first doesn't erase the concept because "it's already out there" as in the old Popperian third world. Second, the word exists now, so its subject to context, semantics, meaning. It can be an operator of another conscious generation theory. Third Sacred Families were everyone before a compulsive act of someone's megalomania made it into un unfinished ouevre. A Termite is flavorours to a "Tamandua Bandeira" a nice guy, also part of the tree of life.

[@GhoshA]

A series of discussions between J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm in 1976 Brookwood park is a good reference for the same subject. One can easily see that the notion which he is claiming had been discussed profoundly there.

[@arthurwieczorek4894]

My first thought reaction to the title of this talk. There is consciousness, there is meta-consciousness, there is meta-meta-consciousness.

[@nyworker]

I don't buy the Cartesian Theater. I know for a fact that I was transferred 5000 miles to a South Pacific Island last night and woke up in my bed in NY.

[@FormsInSpace]

the buddha wrote "the 5 skandhas" / anatta (no self) hundreds of years ago

[@Arunava_Gupta]

But, sir, how can neurons think and feel. Are they not merely the objects for the experiencing subject?

[@TheMargarita1948]

Quibble: could the throat-clearing be edited out of the audio. This would be very nice for the listener, especially those using headphones or earbud s.

[@kevinh5349]

Oh, brother. Do any of these people know what they're talking about?

[@SandipChitale]

IMO people should pay attention to research being done by Michael Levin on how the notion of self can expand and contract (cancel cell) from single cells (neurons), to multiple cells, to tissue, to organ (brain) and to organism (humans) and now a distinctive human societies/culture(internet) and how that notion of self is affected thru electro-biochemistry (except for the internet level). And how different sized cognitive light cones are associated with each of these levels. Dan's idea of neurons being agents ties into this idea of neuron level self and it's limited cognitive light cone aggregating into human level consciousness and intelligence.

[@Rope_Adope]

Maybe Dan has aphantasia

[@aaron2709]

Good stuff but I don't love the slide comparing a termite mound with Basílica de la Sagrada Família. The point is to show similarities but this is deceptive in Dennett's presentation, rendering both the same size. The church is over 100 times bigger and this is why it's still being built after 140 years and why it's so much more impressive than a vaguely similar structure 1 meter tall. Reducing Gaudi's giant building in this comparison conveniently hides the radical variety of materials used in its construction, the metaphors of motifs and colors employed (actually the entire structure is a metaphor) + sophisticated symbol-language of sculpture throughout the structure. If he actually saw both objects in person, rather than this photo mash-up forcing the comparison, careful looking from a philosopher who is so careful with words and assumptions, might reveal more differences than shallow similarities.

[@JimBalter]

How tall are termites?

[@aaron2709]

@@JimBalter And which Saints do they depict in their paintings?

[@richardnunziata3221]

I love Dennett but I feel philosophy is not keeping up, its waiting instead of suggesting research programs. Programs in network theory , cellular automata, machine language learning...Science has left philosophy behind. Philosophy for the most part is left with logic games and defending the meaning of words. Perhaps philosophy's one last use is to protect us against religion and the sacred.

[@Nooneself]

I'm always amazed that actually people think of Dennet as brilliant. To me brilliant is a Spinoza, Kant or Einstein. Best Wishes

[@johnhausmann2391]

You should start using the word 'genius'. Then Dennett can be just brilliant.

[@JimBalter]

You can't even spell his name. People think he's brilliant because they are intelligent and informed ... and that's why you don't.

[@CorwynGC]

Prof Dennet pushes human exceptionalism to the point of making completely unproven assumptions. But I don't think it makes a difference in his thesis. If what is important is the thinking tools, it is just as easy to make that argument without even mentioning what you assume other animals have or don't have. Everyone else with similar theses makes a the same argument just with a different missing element.

[@robertbentley3589]

25 minutes in and no idea where he's going.

[@azukarzuchastux8066]

Romans 10:9 King James Version 9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved John 3:16 King James Version 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 1 Corinthians 15 The Resurrection of Christ 15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures

[@lynpugs]

Talk about a fairy tale that is.

[@JimBalter]

Sory, we're not imbeciles here.

[@Arunava_Gupta]

Why can't we solve the hard problem of consciousness by postulating an immaterial personality, by nature conscious, whose essential qualities are thinking and feeling?🤔

[@TotalitarianDemocrat]

Because of the causal closure of physics

[@Arunava_Gupta]

@@TotalitarianDemocrat Please elaborate on this a little bit.

[@TotalitarianDemocrat]

@@Arunava_Gupta An immaterial soul wouldn't be able to cause your behaviour because your behaviours are physical events and physical events have physical causes.

[@Arunava_Gupta]

@@TotalitarianDemocrat Thanks for the reply. But why not? What if this personality is by nature a mover of matter?

[@TotalitarianDemocrat]

@@Arunava_Gupta I think that would violate the law of conservation of energy, for instance, if my moving my arm was ultimately caused by something other than the transfer of chemical energy.

[@shehrosemian]

Dennett lost his technical bearing a long, long time ago...

[@JLongTom]

What are you basing this statement on?

[@shehrosemian]

​@@JLongTom What do you mean? Isn't foundationalism dead? ;)

[@JimBalter]

Raw ad hominem ... proof of the commenter's intellectual dishonesty and irrelevance.

[@JimBalter]

@@shehrosemian That has nothing to do with foundationalism.

[@shehrosemian]

@@JimBalter Oh, okay. You said it, so it must be true.

[@CorwynGC]

It amazes me how many of the quotes from philosopher's he uses, have fundamental logical fallacies in them. I would have expected better.

[@JimBirchCluster]

Example?

[@CorwynGC]

@@JimBirchCluster I recall strawmaning, ad hominem, appeal to popularity.

[@JimBalter]

@@CorwynGC You're committing a fallacy if ipse dixit.

[@CorwynGC]

@@JimBalter Nah, just lazy. check for yourself.

[@JimBalter]

@@CorwynGC I checked ... you're full of crap.

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[@ossiedunstan4419]

Philosophy is not natural it is a personal opinion based on an authoritative stand from a point of personal bias and incredulity, where philosophy has no authority, Their is no peer review of philosophy, So it can only be considered to be babble and nothing more.

[@JimBalter]

Wrong.