Hopkins Natural Philosophy Forum
The Johns Hopkins Natural Philosophy Forum sponsors an annual Distinguished Lecture, to be given by a scientist or philosopher working on illuminating the fundamental structure of reality. The 2022-23 lecture was given on February 6, 2023, by Daniel Dennett of Tufts University, on “How, When, and Why Can We Trust Our Brains?”
Abstract: If we didn’t think we could trust our brains, we wouldn’t bother with inquiries
like this. But our brains are composed of cells that don’t know much of anything and there’s no magical Self in the control room. Can we bootstrap our way to a well-grounded conviction that we know at least much of what we think we know?
http://naturalphilosophyhopkins.org/
https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/
#science #philosophy #naturalphilosophy #johnshopkins #consciousness #mind #brain
Source
Romans 10:9
King James Version
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved
John 3:16
King James Version
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
1 Corinthians 15
The Resurrection of Christ
15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures
25 minutes in and no idea where he's going.
Good stuff but I don't love the slide comparing a termite mound with Basílica de la Sagrada Família. The point is to show similarities but this is deceptive in Dennett's presentation, rendering both the same size. The church is over 100 times bigger and this is why it's still being built after 140 years and why it's so much more impressive than a vaguely similar structure 1 meter tall. Reducing Gaudi's giant building in this comparison conveniently hides the radical variety of materials used in its construction, the metaphors of motifs and colors employed (actually the entire structure is a metaphor) + sophisticated symbol-language of sculpture throughout the structure. If he actually saw both objects in person, rather than this photo mash-up forcing the comparison, careful looking from a philosopher who is so careful with words and assumptions, might reveal more differences than shallow similarities.
We're going extinct, boys!
Happy birthday today Daniel Dannet ^^
Come on, thinking tools are not cultural inventions. Most of our cognitive abilities are innate. Visual perception and cognition are not learned from others so it cannot be a cultural product. Same is true for logic etc. If our mental abilities were cultural people living in uncontacted tribes would have fundamentally different cognitive abilities! Also, we would probably find it very difficult to relate to the Bhagavad Gita or Gilgamesh written by very different cultures a very long time ago. The meme model is also very misleading. Genetic variation is random. Meme generation is directed. When engineers come up with a hew design that's not because they try all possible machine configurations until one happens to work. The same is true about the functioning of the brain. The brain does not generate thought my some huge trial and error selection process, the structure and dynamics provides the constraints that ensure that the "ideas" function properly. This is a great talk but around 40 :00 it goes into silly stuff
A giant among giants. Always inspiring, enlightening, and brings together so many varied concepts gathered together in a succinct way from previous giants who were more singularly sighted. One of the 4 horsemen and forever in my thanks for his work to bring closer the age of reason for humanity.
What a great choice is Daniel Dennett !!! Congratulations
Admitting a mistake about Qualia,
first doesn't erase the concept because "it's already out there" as in the old Popperian third world.
Second, the word exists now, so its subject to context, semantics, meaning. It can be an operator of another conscious generation theory.
Third Sacred Families were everyone before a compulsive act of someone's megalomania made it into un unfinished ouevre.
A Termite is flavorours to a "Tamandua Bandeira" a nice guy, also part of the tree of life.
Yes, Moritz Schlick ethics ("more geometrica Demonstrata") was refused even from the inner Wiener Circle, the humunculus was in the beliefs of the father of ethology, Konrad Lorenz, a dangerous mind.
Sclick was evidently wrong, but we wonder what he could have written if not murdered for "being the father of a vicious philosophy"
So Professor, whyle we have you here, less auto critic, more forward thinking 🙏🐰✨
Under every lie is a gradient of truth and inversely so… 🐰
Philosophy is not natural it is a personal opinion based on an authoritative stand from a point of personal bias and incredulity, where philosophy has no authority,
Their is no peer review of philosophy, So it can only be considered to be babble and nothing more.
David Deutch is.
Daniel, dear professor, you are in an age where tolerance to the young is paramount.
Mathematics is a young brain matter, history of Mathematics, not so.
Thank you.
One may don't kow, but it may lead us astray, historically has.
Maybe music is the most thrusting branch of Applied Mathematics.
(if you may say so)
Vast is another abstraction.
Mathematics differs from philosophy because, illuding herself, believes that quantities, even so abstract that are unthinkable, are still real.
Philosophy recognizes the sense and unsense.
Unsense today is the basic line of a tomorrow philosophy.
Ten to the 123 is the concrete precise that is actually, in our state of the art, unreachable and, consequently, abstract…
If all those objections may be put on hold… 😂 🙏
As divagations of uniformation.
Natural language semantics, allow me the improperty, is a construct over the reality, like a punch in the jaw, that is language, exponentially polyvalent, a living manifestation of the poetic spirit, would say W Blake, 6.01 of Tractatus, the limits of my language are the limits of my world, Hans Georg Gadamer, Das Wort ist das Lenens des Seits, M Heidegger, we became anchored to a past that is no more…
Be aware of uour capacity to become different throughout your life work.
Existence and neurophysiologie, epigenomics, Conectome…
Today, all our knowledge is mediated by CS, Big Data…
Impression, vision, crazy association, still exists.
Raw creativity may eventually need some degree of ignorance to develop…
Like when they unleashed scientists in completely new fields…
The bare instrument.
Why can't we solve the hard problem of consciousness by postulating an immaterial personality, by nature conscious, whose essential qualities are thinking and feeling?🤔
But, sir, how can neurons think and feel. Are they not merely the objects for the experiencing subject?
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Considering science just killed 20 million people I'll stay with the magic
Quibble: could the throat-clearing be edited out of the audio. This would be very nice for the listener, especially those using headphones or earbud s.
I’m worried about him. A great man putting difficult concepts in language understood by us average folks.
He’s given lectures on evolution comparing termite cathedrals to Gaudis Sagrada Familia that explains how important time is in the process. ( he touches on it here)
Aaron, you missed the point completely!
It’s nothing close to a metaphor. He’s not comparing the two in order to show how close they are artistically. He’s showing the power of evolution with the fullness of time.
An old man with bright eyes.
I think I can improve on the Plutocrat thought experiment. The Plutocrat says to the guest, you, flick this switch over and over. Inside your head is an infinite series of homunculi, all outside thermodynamics. Compared to infinity, adding a few cogs and a switch counts for nothing.
This just feels so insincere. These guys have no clue what thoughts are , yet they use them to make sweeping statements about life and the universe. Whatever it is that they do, it is not science, as in the rigorous and methodical application of Reason and Logic. They dont even master their basic tools.
Bunch of fools, destroying our planet.
I cant think of a better first lecture. Thank you, Thank Dan, and thank everyone who helped share it. I wouldn't have access to this kind of culture otherwise.
What Mr. Dennett says is just so very simple that I just do not understand why it can not be accapted all by the 6 billon adult people on this globe!? It really should be!! Many thanx for this video Mr. Carroll, Mr. Dennett!! Greeting from Hungary! 👋😁
Maybe Dan has aphantasia
Always love listening to Dan Dennett. Brilliant mind
the buddha wrote "the 5 skandhas" / anatta (no self) hundreds of years ago
I'm always amazed that actually people think of Dennet as brilliant. To me brilliant is a Spinoza, Kant or Einstein.
Best Wishes
Excellent lecture. Please protect this man's head.
Very glad indeed to see Dan Dennett return to his original hard stance against so-called 'qualia'. If I ever get a tooth-ache that hurts like hell but has no effects at all on my behaviour or cognition, I think I can live with it. I'd rather not have a painless toothache that renders me unable to function through thinking about it etc.
13:54 The tree is doing photosynthesis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May Dennett lecture until he's 200 years old!
I do not want to live in a world without Dennett.
Take A Moment
My fellow Ape
Proffeser, Sir
You stand so high on the shoulders of giants I am worried for your safety 😮
The world has PTSD post pandemic now, July 2023.
Keep Talking
We are ready to catch you should fall, you won't, I wanted to let you know.
The World needs you and your colleagues.
Stay Safe and Stay Free 🙏