Robert Wright interviews Daniel Dennett (6 of 8)

Very interesting debate about God, evolution, free will, consciousness and death.
Daniel Clement Dennett is a prominent American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, 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. Dennett is also a noted atheist and advocate of the Brights movement.
Robert Wright is an American journalist, scholar, and prize-winning author of best-selling books about science, evolutionary psychology, history, religion, and game theory, including Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, The Moral Animal, and Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information. He is a visiting scholar at The University of Pennsylvania and Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• God
• evolution
• free will
• consciousness
• death
• Dan
• Dennett

[Raherin]

Lol, I love how Dennet completely proves him wrong, and then the interviewer/debater just changes topics. It's pretty funny. He's not even in Dennet's league at all.

[phantomofmyopera]

Thank you! I suspect the people who think Dennett isn't answering the questions have the same problem Wright seems to have, they want some comforting holy dimension to it all.

[apologeticacattolica]

I adore Robert Wright and have read two of his books with much relish. But I must admit that he's not remaining objective and calm. He's failing to patiently interface with Dennet's ideas. This is a disappointment to me since I like him so much.

[huwrj]

Wright pretends not to be, but he's actually something like a Deist or Intelligent Design proponent. He says he's not, but listen to his arguments and you will find that he has a foot firmly in that camp. And he wants to keep a foot in all camp and make it all into a mystical mush, which means he has to contradict himself.

[SciTechExplained]

@loveminus0 Nice caricature! lol

[fjoo]

I agree with Wright that it's not possible to know Dennett the same way he knows him self.(But for a different reason then Wright).

If I were to know exactly how it was like to be Dennett as he does, then I would BE Dennett.

If I knew how it was like to be Dennett WHILE knowing how it is to be me, or with my brain through his eyes, I would have additional information / experience and would therefore know him differently.

- Though I'm sure Dennett agrees with that, it just didn't come across.

[lordmoorth]

I think they are both wrong. I can't know what it is like to be you without having your brain and being you. My brain can only produce me - itself but it is amenable to science.Simply because you can not have my subjective experience does not mean you can not predict my behavior or describe my subjective experience. Simply because atoms don't look like painted ping pong balls (or have optical detail) does not make a model of DNA made from them useless.

[loveminus0]

Wright has no interest in what Dennett has to say, he just wants to talk about what he himself thinks and how Dennett is wrong about everything. Wright pulls this in every interview/debate he takes part in. It's very tiresome. Dennett makes very clear arguments over and over while Wright completely dismisses them and moves on to what he believes or to another subject entirely.