LennyBound
Daniel Dennett was invited to the 2006 meeting of the “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival” conference, but just a week before it started he suffered a heart attack. After a few days of recovery he wrote a letter to be read at the conference. This is the video of Paul Churchland reading that letter.
My apologies for the audio being slightly off.
Source
Wonderful, wonderful stuff.
Glad you like it. Thanks for watching! 🙂
Excellent speech!
Dennett is the best. I'm so glad he got through it all okay. Thanks for posting this!
What's wrong with going broke from medial bills. Do you want universal health care? What are you, a SOCIALIST!?!
(Isn't that stupid, calling universal health care "socialism"? How is that a real argument? It's like arguing that universal health care is bad because it has cooties! The name of the freaking country is "The UNITED States of America"! UNITED! As in "e pluribus unum": from many, ONE! If we all decide to share a burden for our mutual benefit, WTF is wrong with that?!?)
One of the most beautiful, eloquent and amazing things I have ever heard in my life! I love that man!
The "fact" that God saved his life simply isn't a fact.
There is no use trying to point out such distinctions.
To the person, belief equals truth.
We are stardust 😛
Is there really "goodness in the world"? I might agree that there is goodness, but I can't agree that it exists "in the world." What does it mean for something to be good, empirically speaking?
If I were in Dennett's position, I would have said, "Thank Chaos."
@ArcadianGenesis
Good, in the moral sense, has no empirical meaning. It cant. Good only exists towards an end. A shovel is good for digging holes, things can be good for humans, or good for your health, or good for Dan Dennet.
When one refers to moral goodness, one means good for humanity, society, good for alleviating suffering, good for conscious, thinking beings.
If you were genuinely in Dennetts position (IE a philosopher) you would perhaps understand why he says 'Thank Goodness'.
I would say that the definition of good you gave is not moral good but pragmatic good. I have not denied the concept of goodness, but particularly *moral* goodness. This seems to be a supernatural concept, so I assert that moral claims can be reduced to pragmatic claims.
@ArcadianGenesis
There is no objective good, or objective morality, other than towards some (utilitarian) end. It is a human construct. The notions of value, meaning, purpose, right or wrong are all totally meaningless in a universe without conscious thought in it. These are things that only we can decide and create.
Its good that you have dismissed supernaturalism. But now you need to rebuild your understanding of these concepts. This is philosophy, Dennetts profession.
I agree with you that morality is a human construct. However, I do not espouse utilitarianism. You are wrong to suggest that all philosophers would agree with Dennett here. There are many other thorough-going moral theories. I recently took a college course in ethics. I know the arguments for utilitarianism, and I know the arguments against it. There are many other moral theories which are relevant to Dennett's position. Maybe you should look into them.
@ArcadianGenesis
Really, you did philosophy and you came out of it with the conclusion that there is no such thing as goodness?
That worked well for you i guess…
Not exactly…you keep misrepresenting my view. I assert that there is no "moral goodness" because this is a non-natural concept. To the extent that there is goodness in the world, it can always be reduced to pragmatic goodness (efficiency, survival, needs, etc).
I consider myself to be a moral non-realist naturalist. However, there are certain realist theories that do appeal to me, namely particularlism.
"or that God is real to begin with?"
I would go with this one given the option as the first one follows on from it. So there is no reason to go into a second level claim when you have not even shown the first level claim to be true.
If you are aware of any reasons, evidence data or arguments to lend credence to the notion that there is a god, I would be agog to hear them.
"wasnt this video about how God had NOTHING to do with saving this man? "
No frankly it was not. What this video WAS about was thanking those who actually really did do the hard work and make the survival happen. Some people really did do a lot of work and study to make this event come about. Well done those people!
" without God, medical techonolgy wouldnt be so advanced."
I doubt that as I have read more medical peer reviewed science papers than you will ever know, and not one of them was authored by "god" but by people who got down and did the work and wrote up the science and released it.
From all Beyond Belief session, I remember this most vividly. Quite fun.
Dan Dennett also has a presentation in (I think) both BB conferences worthy of watching, check main site thesciencenetwork.
Thank goodness he had the money to pay the hospital insteady of sending it to scoundrels that uses people's naivety to get rich the easy way.
Plenty of armchair philosophers here :0)
Sounds a bit like Adam Smith's comments about the miracle of the market–we all rely on countless others for the goods and services that help us to meet all of the challenges of everyday life and even the extraordinary health challenge that Professor Dennett faced and came through. Let's hope that medicine continues to move in the direction of insisting on scientific medicine and the use of best practices.