"Thank Goodness I'm Alive" by Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett was invited to the 2006 meeting of the "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival" conference, but just a week before it started he suffered a heart attack. After a few days of recovery he wrote a letter to be read at the conference. This is the video of Paul Churchland reading that letter.

My apologies for the audio being slightly off.

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• Dennett
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• Philosophy
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[irishmauddib]

Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

[LennyBound]

Glad you like it. Thanks for watching! :-)

[Patriknark]

I'm from Norway, and here we have what you Americans refer to as universal health care, which we in Scandinavia refer to as "public health care"; and it works really well for us at least.. But then again, in American eyes we're probably bloody communists.

Still we have more liberties than you, and a far more liberal legal system. And it works well for us.

But we're not you, so I won't blame your choices. Just informing you of our situation here in northern europe :)

[johnclavis]

What's wrong with going broke from medial bills. Do you want universal health care? What are you, a SOCIALIST!?!

(Isn't that stupid, calling universal health care "socialism"? How is that a real argument? It's like arguing that universal health care is bad because it has cooties! The name of the freaking country is "The UNITED States of America"! UNITED! As in "e pluribus unum": from many, ONE! If we all decide to share a burden for our mutual benefit, WTF is wrong with that?!?)

[irishmauddib]

" without God, medical techonolgy wouldnt be so advanced."

I doubt that as I have read more medical peer reviewed science papers than you will ever know, and not one of them was authored by "god" but by people who got down and did the work and wrote up the science and released it.

[irishmauddib]

"wasnt this video about how God had NOTHING to do with saving this man? "

No frankly it was not. What this video WAS about was thanking those who actually really did do the hard work and make the survival happen. Some people really did do a lot of work and study to make this event come about. Well done those people!

[irishmauddib]

"or that God is real to begin with?"

I would go with this one given the option as the first one follows on from it. So there is no reason to go into a second level claim when you have not even shown the first level claim to be true.

If you are aware of any reasons, evidence data or arguments to lend credence to the notion that there is a god, I would be agog to hear them.

[ArcadianGenesis]

Not exactly...you keep misrepresenting my view. I assert that there is no "moral goodness" because this is a non-natural concept. To the extent that there is goodness in the world, it can always be reduced to pragmatic goodness (efficiency, survival, needs, etc).

I consider myself to be a moral non-realist naturalist. However, there are certain realist theories that do appeal to me, namely particularlism.

[Saktoth]

@ArcadianGenesis

Really, you did philosophy and you came out of it with the conclusion that there is no such thing as goodness?

That worked well for you i guess...

[ArcadianGenesis]

I agree with you that morality is a human construct. However, I do not espouse utilitarianism. You are wrong to suggest that all philosophers would agree with Dennett here. There are many other thorough-going moral theories. I recently took a college course in ethics. I know the arguments for utilitarianism, and I know the arguments against it. There are many other moral theories which are relevant to Dennett's position. Maybe you should look into them.

[Saktoth]

@ArcadianGenesis

There is no objective good, or objective morality, other than towards some (utilitarian) end. It is a human construct. The notions of value, meaning, purpose, right or wrong are all totally meaningless in a universe without conscious thought in it. These are things that only we can decide and create.

Its good that you have dismissed supernaturalism. But now you need to rebuild your understanding of these concepts. This is philosophy, Dennetts profession.

[ArcadianGenesis]

I would say that the definition of good you gave is not moral good but pragmatic good. I have not denied the concept of goodness, but particularly *moral* goodness. This seems to be a supernatural concept, so I assert that moral claims can be reduced to pragmatic claims.