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If Brains are Computers, Who Designs the Software? With Daniel Dennett



The Royal Institution

Cognitive science sees the brain as a sort of computer, but how does education redesign these cerebral computers? Cognitive scientist, philosopher, and expert on consciousness Daniel Dennett explains.
Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/0GJa0xKKSOU
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There is widespread agreement among researchers in cognitive science that a human brain is some kind of computer, but not much like the laptop. If we look at perceptual experience, and education in particular, as a process of redesigning our cerebral computers, how does the software get designed, and what are the limits of this design process? Daniel C Dennett finds out.

Daniel C Dennett is a cognitive scientist and philosopher with a particular interest in consciousness, free will and the evolution of minds. His newest book, From bacteria to Bach and back, explores how thinking minds could have evolved due to natural selection.

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25 thoughts on “If Brains are Computers, Who Designs the Software? With Daniel Dennett
  1. If brains are computers who designs the software? If an IBM PC is produced, who wrote the software? Why no one,….it just appeared. Are some humans arrogant? Evolution? The proper requirements…man, woman evolved because "something" primitive predicted each would be needed to reproduce the human race.. All this is just an accident! There is no God. So then, let's just wait, the probability of humans finding a solution to all of their problems is 1 in 2. Life is good in the hands of a human. Just look at what we have accomplished. The prospect of world peace and perfect health is just around the corner.

  2. Did Alan Turing actually build a computer? I mean, the speaker is referencing Turing's first concept, which of course could never actually be built since it needs an infinite paper roll.

  3. Sorry, Dyson Freeman is one of those giants on whose shoulders you stood. Come on, indeed.

    If one can work through all this mathematical and physical intricacy involved and STILL not believe in God, then it is not a case of your not believing in God. I rather suspect that you are angry that God is not running the universe the way you want it run.

    Obviously, folks may believe as they choose. Seems to me Occam's razor says there is a God.

    Also, if I am wrong, then who will judge me when I die? No one. If he is wrong, then who will answer for him when he is judged? He will.

  4. Well the main moral of the story is that competition is not something that you (or anything) 'does', it just happens. Meanwhile most think it's a thing that has to be done or it does not exist, so some people with certain political/ideological affiliation make it a life goal that we should get rid of it because it's "toxic". They seem to want life without competition, but since life is a facet of competition, you can only get rid of it by killing everything… and hence the believers of that certain political/ideological affiliation tend to slaughter unprecedented amount of victims while claiming to be creating the 'paradise of workers''

  5. I am always amazed at how when explaining biology the word design is used. How does random chance produce design? This is nonsensical. We were designed. The real question is by whom or what.

  6. To be an expert on consciousness, one would necessarily have to practice "awareness". An expert in this study should be able to do more than map complex neural impulses within others. A true expert should be able to examine those behaviors, emotions and thoughts originating from within themselves. (We might refer to this ability as "meditation".) The question then becomes: Is the brain aware of itself? OR is their an awareness than transcends the apparatus impressing and examining the brain's content? Let those who know how to meditate come to their own conclusion…

  7. This speaker seems to love questions but he never really has answers. He seems to relish unanswered questions. Did the audience want answers or just mystical questions?

    "If Brains are Computers, Who Designs the Software?" has a provably true answer. One must simply bring all of known science to bear on the question.

    Do you understand evolution, biology, and geology? If yes, congratulations -you have the capacity to answer his question. The answer agrees precisely with all of modern science.

    Care to have a friendly debate?

    Just so we are clear, my provable premise is that God created everything (except religion) and the sciences prove it; Moses witnessed or was shown creation over the course of a week- like a mini series on TV; modern science including evolution agrees perfectly with the literal creation story- perfectly; and neither the Bible nor science agrees with religion.

    The creation story is about the transformation of Earth into a livable planet for us. It is a completion story. As life branched out, God culled it (extinctions) and allowed only specific forms of life to exist. The word "let" is the same as the word "allow". God allowed certain essential life as was necessary for us.

    Moses observed creation (in a vision perhaps) over the course of six days from a ground level perspective. This is what he was shown. Moses was a witness to these things.

    1) Light- first sunlight through densely clouded sky.———————end of Hadeon Eon.
    2) Clear lower atmosphere——————————————————mid Archean Eon.
    3) Granite landmasses above the sea—————————————end of Archean Eon Part 2)Seed bearing vegetation that will remain——————-end of the Paleozoic Era.
    4) Clear atmosphere- stars, moon visible—————————end of the Jurassic Period.
    5) Animal life in the sea, and birds that will remain- —————end of the Mesozoic Era.
    6) Land dwelling mammals including ancient humans —– ~~end of the Pleistocene Epoch.
    Part2) Modern human called Man- later called Adam and Eve.

    There are 23 significant statements in the creation story and all are in order. They represent Earth's transition into the livable planet that it is today. The odds of the correct order occurring by chance is roughly 1 in ~25 sextillion. Evolution is excellent evidence for the creation story's perfect accuracy. How could Moses have gotten it right unless he was influenced by a higher intelligence?

    We've all heard absurdities like “The landmasses floated atop water” and “The Sun, moon, and stars were created on “day 4” etc…” These absurdities stem from one misunderstanding, namely, in early Genesis water above and below the firmament (expanse), cloud cover and sea water, are both called water. Note: they are, in fact, both water. The flood story is rendered entirely plausible by this one clarification as well.

    The sea brought forth fish and birds, and earth (dirt) brought forth both seed bearing vegetation and mammals. Sounds like evolution doesn't it? Extinctions add the ultimate intelligent touch to evolution.

    We are all descendants of Noah who was a descendant of Adam. Adam was handmade by God. All other existing lines were destroyed at Noah's flood. Noah's sons and perhaps Noah himself were married to women outside the bloodline of Adam. Where did they come from? They came from outlying humans that had a lineage reaching back over 100,000 years. Read the creation story and consider where Cain's wife came from.

    Is creating and sustaining life with a process we call evolution the one thing God could not and cannot do?

    One other point, Heaven is defined in Genesis and is everything from Earth's surface through to infinity. It includes our atmosphere and all empty space in the universe.

    If you wish to understand both the biblical creation story and the flood story completely, in light of modern science (no creation science), read GENESIS DECODED and NOAH'S FLOOD for free. Contact me at akridge5@yahoo.com– I will email them to you free.

  8. The brain is like a computer, however the nervous system is what drastically influences how the many functions of the brain reacts to and stored information. The muscles are also store houses for memory and experiences as well. The nerve endings connects to the ligaments and tendons which ultimately influence the actions of the muscles. It's all very neat and satisfying to learn more about.

  9. I believe it's a *Battery that needs to re-charged daily for good uses. We have no clue regarding consciousness or memory. We pull the information out of the either, some peeps do it better than others, & others do better at other things. We are all here at the same time by design, just like the Grand Canyon is Beautiful at this time for *US to see, do you see how it works? All by design.

  10. When DNA divides it must " quantum entangle" the 2nd pair of exact DNA, giving birds the ability to fly in flocks, navigate, fish to swim in shoals and us to play table tennis faster than electrical impulses in our nervous system. It must give the DNA the ability to orchestrate the thousands of chemical reactions going on in each cell of our body at any one time. Gravity, speed of light and dark matter, all of this made possible, if we assume that matter is composed of basic building blocks of quantum fields, discrete and flat, flipping rapidly between 3 dimensions. We see matter only when the fields are broadside but are not seen by any dimension at the event horizon as they flip. Time does not exist at that brief point and thus information can be stored "forever" and accessed via the pineal gland making consciousness possible. Controlled by species specific DNA we never dream nor think in the body of other animals.

  11. The assertion that evolution via natural selection is not intelligent design is an assumption made without any evidence, as opposed to a verifiable fact.
    This is also true of the claim that there is no boss termite or that termites don't know what they're doing or why.
    Neither of the statements can no more be proven any more than one can insist that one plus one must equal four.
    And perhaps most importantly, the fact that a person can conceive of a universe creator built without a creator does nothing to prove that this concept must be true or that this must be how our universe came to be.
    Not that I want to defend the intelligent design argument either. Rather, it seems to me that evolution is the result of "conscious selection" as opposed to pure randomness or sheer luck, where each move up the chain is guided from within that organism, or particle, for that matter.
    The basic assumption of science and religion is that something so small as to have nothing other than "virtual" size cannot possibly be conscious and aware. But then again, each of us knows that no matter how diminutive we most certainly are in comparison with the size of our own planet, to say nothing of the entire universe, we are not too tiny to "know that we know" or to make conscious decision about what we're going to do next.

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