Daniel Dennett on Philosophy of Biology and Evolutionary Causation | Closer To Truth Chats

23 thoughts on “Daniel Dennett on Philosophy of Biology and Evolutionary Causation | Closer To Truth Chats”

1. What is nothing?

2. 🐋

3. Dennett is such a good speaker. He just pauses and comes up with the right words, rather than going "uh", well", "you know" etc.

4. Denett looks like Da Vinci

5. Nothing but sophistry, here’s a good example 6:25 of him trying to explain a “useless” feature of a gazelle and using an entirely circular argument. I could go on and on about things that could’ve been different about the human condition, and wouldn’t be like how we see it today if evolution according to a Darwinian paradigm was truly the case

6. 11:10 “evolution is competent without comprehension”

   “Blind process”

   So at what point were humans given the capability to rationalize, make deductive arguments, and transcend the natural world with concepts such as a marriage system and then be able to imagine or comprehend of a world outside that of a Darwinian paradigm? Animals don’t imagine living forever, nor do they think or rationalize as humans do, to be able to think “hmm what if I can live forever and never reproduce?”

   The point is, at what point did evolution throw humans out of its paradigm to then be able to think about it

7. Time Theory

   You are a Time Mechanic!
   Time lines – Infinity – all information

   What is the universe?
   The universe consists of pure – Information – is the universe.

   What is information?
   One bit of information is a technology

   Two bits of information create a new independent information- a new information structure

   What are atoms or matter?
   Structures of information or better, technologies!

   One technology = one individual atom

   Two technologies make a new technology

   A – new structure made up of two inner technologies or structures. Itself is a technology. Independent

   What is mathematics?
   Information interactions – creating new information / or interactions between set technologies (From & too infinity)

   What is time?
   Time is Information – interacting to create a order. A sense of entropy is the ordering of the information interactions – creating new technologies and technologies sets.
   🖖

8. Perhaps it is a property, that in the creation of any given universe that there is an approximately 10 percent residual "stuff" left over in the matter anti matter anihalation. So there is always something rather than nothing and nothing does not exist any where other than a concept. So there will be 10 percent anti matter left over associated with our universe as well according to Durrac's equation.

9. What a load of crap. Bla bla bla without explaining scientifically ANYTHING. Just like cult followers, these nonsensical indoctrinated parrots.

10. As another viewer said; Please have your video editor increase the volume and balance between both speakers. Thanks!

11. why the wide frame? what purpose does it serve?

12. Why is there anything at all rather than not? Well there can't be nothing because nothing isn't anything. If it were it would have to be something. Perhaps something that seems exceedingly subtle to our rather limited minds but nonetheless something & therefore not nothing. Understand that & you will understand that the question itself is invalid.

13. Please bring Sadhguru on 'Closer to Truth'

14. Sound is too low

15. I came here expecting a very low powered, basic bitch conversation where Dennett just spouts exactly the same talking points as every other pop science evolutionary biologist. I was right.

    Seriously? "Why do you think evolution is so important?" What the hell kind of question is that? Did you have to edit out all the interesting questions because Dennett is too dumb to do anything but explain basic Darwinian evolution the 19,453rd time? Boring.

16. A very mind-opening and interesting interview. Thank you both for doing this for us.

17. I hope this finds you well. We last corresponded with Daniel and suggested that he is more Christian than most Christians because you truly know the value of love, which he thanked me for.

    I liked this episode.

    I have a few chestnuts to share from knowing people in recovery.

    The spiritual philosophy is the freedom to have a God of one's understanding or misunderstanding. In essence, this leads to a kind of agnostic pantheism.

    God is entirely humble. It does not care what we think of it, if it exists, and cannot have any need for its creatures or it cannot exist. If more people shared this view, religion would be a more useful trick.

    God exists in the rear view mirror. Expecting God to grant one's wishes is not recommended in AA. In the end, spirituality is the acceptance of divine benevolence.

    Whether God exists hovering above the tables of AA or through following the various steps toward self-awareness, forgiveness and benevolence, one can believe in the first, but if one does not practice the second, one will get drunk. In essence, the AA program is a useful mind fuck.

    All of religious history is also seeing God in the rearview mirror. Is it God or is it luck? The victors always write the history.

    Whether the Father is Being or the existence of the universe does not matter in its existence. It also does not matter to God that we believe either way. Indeed, it cannot matter to God that it exists at all. Again, God must be absolutely humble or not be God.

    Physics and evolution see truth in the past, present and future. Whether this is a living Logos or Sophia or just knowing reality does not matter toward its knowledge, need not (but could be) transcendent. Again, it does require belief in order to have the knowledge and again, God does not care if we do believe – although to the extent that God has knowledge of itself (to be a God, it kind of has to), we cannot fathom what that looks like, indeed we cannot and God does not care if we do outside the fact that knowledge is a useful trick.

    Spirit has been defined as a reflexive action – thinking about one's thinking. From it arises benevolence and feeling. The value of love again. If Christians actually believed in that Love and did not kill each other because of it, it would be a useful trick. If God leads us to fight each other toward our extinction, the trick will no longer be useful.

    People experience God through a part of the brain that some have and some don't. This may either be a proof that God exists or that God does not exist. Indeed, that there is such a neuro center is an argument for the non-existence of God.

    Religion started as ancestor worship (btw, this is not an AA thing, but you guessed already – it is found in your book). Some people still feel that they can not only talk to the dead, but listen to them – with those people having no measurable brain defect. There is no way to prove their claims. Indeed, much of religion is an experience on the personal level that cannot be demonstrated, or can it?

    I know of one external data point (in addition to personal experiences of God that cannot be proven externally, but cannot be explained away simply as a function of the desire for or feeling of societal approval. I am a Catholic who believes in the real presence of Jesus in reception of the Eucharist (which is another word for thanksgiving). A former colleague is a baptist, who does not believe in this and does not experience it in his own church. One business trip, we went to Mass. He related that he had a different experience of Eucharist, even as a stranger. He did not find it reason to become Catholic – so it did not change his inertia – but it is a data point just the same.

    The cynical proof of God is that Christians experience the sacraments even as the leaders of the Church are clearly assholes.

    Religion must be entirely humanistic. As Jesus is said to have said, he is one with God and gentle and humble of heart, his yoke is easy and his burden light. In other words, any teaching that supposedly comes from him must be humanistic to be God's will. If it is not, the teaching is not.

    Understanding that God is both humble and humanistic would make religion a really neat trick for the survival of the species. If is is simply an excuse for tribalism, it is a danger. This is more sourced in the Book of Dennett than the Bible.

    I hope you found these explanations useful in your study of religion as a natural phenomenon. Please don't change on account of these. It would not help your reputation or that of religion for you to do so, just as Bill Wilson had priests for spiritual advisors, an Episcopal one to help create the steps and Fr. Ed Dowling as his later spiritual sponsor – but could not become Catholic because it would damage the Fellowship.

    Of course, Hitch had his kids baptized, just in case. Either his bones or his soul know whether that was a good idea and we cannot know his experience either way.

    Forgot the soul. It can be materialistic (in fact, it has to be) and may or may not be eternal (which can be believed in but not known). That bit of electricity and chemistry that starts with gastrulation and ends when non-human cells feast on the corpse is what the soul must be. Again, anything further requires faith. Faith is not faith if proof exists.

    If proof exists, it ain't faith, it's rationalization. A choice, not a decision, as those of us who have taken the Landmark Forum know, choice occurs in the moment – not as the result of data – that is only a decision. Huge difference.

    Again, as my ancestors from the conversion of the Ashkenazi to their forced conversion by Luther and later by Augsburg would say,

    Mazel Tov,

    Mike Bindner

18. My new mentor. I love hearing Daniel Dennett talk. His insight is our future. He is a pioneer.

19. the way i understand it is if a certain property get to survive, it has more chance to follow in next generation, passing sucessfully surviving gene, while disadvantaged gene have less chance.
    but it dosent mean that nature prefer green to blue to survive to hide. it maybe just mean that it happen that green was better to hide and green survived cause it was better, not cause it decided it was better. the situation and environement choose, not the gene.
    thats how i think about it

20. I am always disappointed when great thinkers dismiss big questions like why there is something rather than nothing. A simple "I don't know", would suffice. But they always go on to say that it's a boring og meaningless question. If a question that captures so much of the mystery of existence is meaningless, then that should be interesting in itself.

21. The bald person is mistaken to attribute natural selection to Darwin. He needs to read more from the nineteenth century instead of taking so much on trust.

22. Hello 😃 I'm so depressed that we can't leave our galaxy lol. With todays society and general conversation Mars isn't far enough away for me lol. When I started my channel I called it wild messages because I enjoyed videos about wildlife. Now I usually just leave wild (outrageous) messages. I must admit that the last 8 months the speed up of the collapse of society l, culture, economics, freedom, and truth has made my wild messages just what's needed. My comments on this channel are not that wild. I'm out of my league on most topics but my imagination is thirsty. I'm very convinced it's this stuff is impossible to figure out for many reasons. There is always a certain overlap that keeps us going in circles. So many things are microcosms I feel like we are missing the obvious. It's possible this simulation is a broken now that we are at the limits of understanding. Infinity ruins everything I don't think it exists! Seems more like part of the program to prevent understanding like the walls of a cage. Unless we actually turn ourselves into datacwe will never travel far or faster than light. If we ever could turn ourselves into data what would that tell us? Anyways I originally was going to say … YOU SHOULD DO THE JOE ROGAN SHOW. I know you would blow his mind and would be interested. You may also be interested in his information on D.M.T. and states of mind. I know lots of people would love your videos but have A.D.H.D lol and are distracted. At this point your the very most knowledgeable expert on all topics combined. Ok call Joe … see you in another dimension

23. His last answer was the best one, most of the big questions can be answered who cares what difference does it make

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