Robert Wright interviews Daniel Dennett (2 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

[justanutadude]

This actually gets WORSE is this an interview or a debate? Dennett looks like he's sorry he every agreed to sit down with this guy!

[EvilSatanBox]

Man, check out how Dennet kicks this guy's ass at 3:00. Forces him to almost completely renege on what he just said. Great philosopher. Thanks for posting.

[huwrj]

Robert Wright doesn't understand evolution. For example, he thinks that the human eye evolves from stem cells. The human eye is made from stem cells programmed from DNA, DNA providing the instruction codes of what to build and grow. That's not evolution. Also he thinks humans are 'higher' forms of life and that evolution has a design goal. Monkeys are just as high forms of life as us, they are successful doing what they do, living in trees, they are better at that than us and occupy that niche.

[steelundergrounder]

@Rome yeah I think so too :)

[Rome]

@evilsatanbox - not sure I would agree, Robert Wright did a pretty good job with him too, especially on consciousness

[TheNewCrankyWorkshop]

Evolution goes in a direction, therefore it must be directed? Where did this guy come from?

[Faboba]

@CambridgeHeights Incidentally, an excellent series of 'challenging' interviews (in the best sense) is to be found in Sue Blackmore's book Conversations on Consciousness, where she's just just as interrogative whether she's talking to Dennett, or Searle, or Block or Chalmers. If you liked the philosophy of mind sections of this interview, you'll love it.

[Faboba]

@CambridgeHeights Oh, sure. But then there are degrees of 'challenging' which might be counterproductive to an interview. Wright comes across throughout as needlessly eager to try to get Dennett to make certain concessions which Dennett rejects (patiently and ("I'll say it again slower, I guess")) suggesting he sees it as a competition. One piece of evidence for this is that he declared 'victory' after the interview in an piece entitled 'Planet with a Purpose' (seriously; google it).

[CambridgeHeights]

@justanutadude It's an interview. A debate is a formal competition. You don't have to suck up to the interviewee every time. You can actually challenge them.

[Neanderthalcouzin]

Why are there all these pissed off comments about Wright? I'm a fan of Dennett but I also like Wright and isn't the point that we want to have open discussions and an exchange of ideas? It's not very encouraging to see these kinds of comments because I'm interested in that, and yet when it seems to happen with someone people really like (i.e. Dennett) people start getting a bit nasty. Isn't that what we dislike about creationists and religion in general?

[ManyInfiniteComments]

The probability of intelligent life depends on the stability of the environment within the planet followed by the solar system, galaxy, and universe each with increasing or decreasing stability. Robert Wright tries to quantify the probability of intelligent life restricted to evolution without environment restrictions which is a key component to the design of the evolved form of every specie. i.e. if dinosaurs were not wiped out it would have been a different story...many possibilities.

[dejawolf]

robert not wright. robert wrong.