Cartesian Theatre – Daniel Dennett

25 thoughts on “Cartesian Theatre – Daniel Dennett”

1. brilliant explanation 🙂

2. I disagree with the animal point. I believe animals can see the furtue like we can to a certain extent. I had cats that used to jump great distances from one platform to another, and you can see in their eyes that they are visualizing the outcome of the leap before they actually leap. Plus, a cat may not know its a cat, but it can identify other cats instintively. My cat knew that other cats were like it, but dogs and ferrets weren't like it, so it sort of knew its place in the world.

3. By 'seeing into the future' I don't think he meant seeing a few seconds into the future. Most animals move if they see that something's about to hit them. What they don't do is plan into the future like we do, and I think that's what he meant. On your recognizing other cats point, he brought it up at the end of the video, during the Q&A when someone made the same point that you did. Check out the whole video if you're interested.

4. I understand.. Thats why I say to a "certain extent", I know our brains are more complex than animals, but i believe animals still have the primal or basic funtions of our capabilities. My cat can't plan years ahead like we can, but it can carry out the same function, just with limited capabilities. And I will check out the whole video. I'm writing my own book bout atheism and I want to see if anyone hit my talking points already.

5. I completely agree with you on that. It's pretty unplausible that the capabilities that we have are unique. Like most traits they probably exist in various degrees in other animals, although most likely quite a bit behind us.

6. Another example- Squirrels bury nuts when they are plentiful for leaner times- money in the bank.

7. Yes, but that doesn't necessarily have to be planning. It might just be instinct.

8. The dog we had when I was a kid, used to walk to the hallway and sit there every time my dad was about to come home, say 5 minutes prior to that event. Thing is, my dad was on the road a lot and really never had any pattern of coming home on specific times at specific days.

   What is linear time?

9. Yes, I just got back from my vacation only to find that my channel has been voteboted…

10. No, we cannot explain the operation of that kind of soul beyond the most basic and primitive. Can we? If the soul is made of huge number of tiny robots, that just makes it even more mysterious. Doesn't it?

    Also I think a buffalo is aware of being a buffalo. It recognizes other buffalos, even totally unfamiliar ones, and approaches them the way it wouoldn't approach any other animal.

11. @silverstream314 probably its an inherited ability that we share with, or may be it independently evolved. tropical squirrels do not portray that ability since there is no snowy winter. probably we cheeky humans took it a few steps beyond.

12. @derangius Yes, all of my videos were hit by a vote bot roughly a year and a half ago.

13. That audience was interesting. I recognized Jeff Hawkins (who invented Hierarchical Temporal Memory AI) and Ramashandran, the Indian neurologist who cured phantom limb syndrome pain with a mirror. I am sure I should know more of them… interesting talk.

14. denial. dude just has to learn more about parallel and distributed processing… that the consciousness is divisible, reduces to sub-consciousness, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's more like, "it's not a classic property, it's a behavior… can't compute, it must not exist". Meanwhile some have figured out there are no classical properties, no classical things, just systems and their behaviors, and are inventing ways to address this extra complexity.

    System Analysis FTW.

15. Dennett's ideas deserve some attention and contemplation, whether he is right or wrong.

16. What is a vote bot?

17. The buffalo does not know it's going to die. That's the look-ahead.

18. If a buffalo doesnt know its a buffalo then how come its afraid(or hesitating in the presence) of other species even if they are not carnivorous and hangs out with buffalos? I think you underestimate the mental capacity of animals…  Gorillaz for example (somw of them) can learn to express theirselves with simple words using sign language… heck I saw (not in person but in video and pictures) a gorrila drawing a picture of a good friend of his a dog… well it wasnt so accurate but you could still easily see that the painting matched the particular dog. A parrot Alex who was an experiment at Harvard universoty learned quite a few hundret words (not parroting them but understanding their meaning -that was the sole point of the experiment to make him learn meanings of words )… he died because of a heart failure last words he said to his keeper was " You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you." So yea….

19. He is completely underestimating the conscious powers of animals in my opinion. To say that we have brains that are far different and have much more 'power' is such a human-centric point of view to have. What makes our brains different to those of intelligent animals? His point of seeing into the future is absolutely ridiculous, and some of the comments saying that "oh animals seeing something moving towards them and moving doesn't count". Fair enough, but how about the fact that animals as unimpressive as mice store food for winter? Surely that is being able to see into the future? They know that the seasons are cyclical and that it brings about effects such as less food, lower temperatures etc.
    As for animals not knowing what species they are…. ha. Yes they won't know they are a buffalo but this is a human word we have made up for them. They will know that they are the same species as the other buffalos around them- hence why group-living is such a predominant feature in the animal kingdom. If young from another species is abandoned by its parents it is not adopted by another individual from another species, because they know it is not one of 'theirs' (i know there are youtube clips of panthers looking after the young of an orangutan or something similar but this is extremely rare).
    Also elephants have been observed holding mourning passaged for dead family members. They will bury the dead individual under sticks/stones etc and make a noise that scientists have attributed to their version of crying.
    If this doesn't show species recognition and intelligence in animals then what is the criteria for it?

20. He smart guy.

21. Some of the many reasons that Dennett, as usual, is completely wrong: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201407/come-back-homunculus-all-is-forgiven

22. Dennett does a great job of showing how silly it is to claim conscious "arises from" or "emerges from" the brain. But, his alternative is to eliminate consciousness and that's self-refuting. To see a view that avoids the silliness of dualism yet preserves irreducible consciousness and mental causation check out The Case for Monistic Idealism

23. If Cartesian Homunculus don't exists like Man in Black and we are small Robots like Blade runner (Deckard) made of implanted memories, so brains also don' requires you train yourself by repetition but consciousness occurrence have no place TED talk Dan Dennett: The illusion of consciousness brains are not local, but the have evidence people with brain injury so it have some place where process of reasoning, thought, explanation, and motor skills occur.

24. Atheist are racist white pigs philosophers

25. ho ho ho

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