Dennett on Consciousness and Free Will

Daniel Dennett is a prominent American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind and philosophy of science; particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University.

Complete "Big Think" Interview:
http://bigthink.com/danieldennett

(My apologies for the video being a little jumpy; that was just the way the original video was.)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Daniel
• Dennett
• BigThink
• Consciousness
• Materialism
• Free Will
• Compatibilism

[Francium5]

Santa is taking the magic out of Christmas...:(

[ianw19]

@ianw19 Oh, and explanations of one's behavior in the form of, "I did X because I wanted Y" don't count, because that statement only raises the question, "why did you want Y?" And people have an even harder time explaining their desires than they have explaining their behaviors. If our desires are not freely chosen or willed or consciously controlled, than how can "we" have free will?

[mphello]

In the philosophy of science, I am a believer in the principle of mediocrity.

However, I disagree with Dennett's assertion that most people fear the possibility of deterministic consciousness rather than free will. Most people don't fear or care one way or the other. That is a side issue.

The real source of contention is whether consciousness survives physical death.

That's what people want to believe - even if it's deterministic thereafter.

[Honeyandmilk100]

Consciousness is a bunch of tricks? Was this guy even conscious himself when he made this comment?

[kevinmm20]

I get what Dennett is saying we have, "The variety's of free will worth having," but I wish he would stop calling it free will..

[ianw19]

@Fredwardina well, frankly, I think free will is in fact a useless concept.

[Fredwardina]

@ianw19 Saying that free will can't exist because we don't fully understand desire and the unconscious portion of the decision-making process is an argument from ignorance. If you think that "X" being restricted by what is possible (eg, the common youthful desire to be a bird) and "Y" being partly determined by outside factors (eg, a necessary desire to eat food) denies free will, then you are operating under a useless concept of free will, as Dennett explains in the video.

[ClamCrunchy]

Dennett attempts to deflate consciousness, but at the same time he assumes that we know why we act as we do. Much of the time we aren't aware of our motives or desires - unconscious thoughts are probably responsible for much of what we do and think. And certainly many of the reasons that we give for acting as we do are merely conflabulations.

[ianw19]

1st, it's not true that humans always, or even usually, can articulate specific reasons for their actions. 2nd, experimental psychology has shown that people's choices are influenced by factors that bypass their conscious awareness, so people's expressed reasons for their behavior are often wrong and usually incomplete. 3rd, in sentences like, "we represent our reasons to ourselves" its unclear what "we" refers to. It sounds like an autonomous agent, but that's scientifically indefensible.

[bernardomarinho007]

@Trailer1220 aleluia brotha!