Post by FilmFlaneur on Apr 19, 2024 19:20:45 GMT
Daniel Dennett, fiery atheist philosopher obit
www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/music/daniel-dennett-fiery-atheist-philosopher-who-saw-human-brains-as-programmes-obituary/ar-AA1njsKE?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=2506b6d8d7684367c2ce4d3cdf60a1ff&ei=2
Daniel Dennett, the American philosopher, who has died aged 82, was, with Richard Dawkins, a leading proponent of Darwinism and one of the most virulent controversialists on the academic circuit.
Dennett argued that everything has to be understood in terms of natural processes, and that terms such as “intelligence”, “free will”, “consciousness” “justice”, the “soul” or the “self” describe phenomena which can be explained in terms of physical processes and not the exercise of some disembodied or metaphysical power. How such processes operate he regarded as an empirical question, to be answered by looking at neuroanatomy – the engineering involved in brains.
Darwinism, to Dennett, was the grand unifying principle that explains how the simplest of organisms developed into human beings who can theorise about the sorts of creatures we are. In Consciousness Explained (1991), he argued that the term “consciousness” merely describes “dispositions to behave” and the idea of the “self” was nothing more than a “narrative centre of gravity”.
In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) he went further than any other philosopher or biologist in arguing that the whole of nature, including all individual human and social behaviour, is underpinned by a Darwinian “algorithm” – a single arithmetical, computational procedure.
Borrowing Richard Dawkins’s notion of “memes” (“bytes” of transferable cultural ideas encompassing anything from a belief in God to an individual’s fashion tastes), Dennett argued that the Darwinian algorithm also explained, for example, the musical genius of JS Bach, whose brain “was exquisitely designed as a programme for composing music” (A more traditional atheist like myself wonders at the unembarrassed use of 'design' here)
Dennett’s philosophy undercut any idea of teleology or “purposive” creation. There is no point in our existence, he maintained, and those who believe otherwise put their faith in “skyhooks” (“hooks” that can be fixed to the sky to make it easier to build skyscrapers). Skyhooks, of course, do not exist, but, Dennett argued, men reach for a piece of magic, a designer behind the design, to avoid the fact that life has no intrinsic meaning. Darwinians, on the other hand, he called the “brights”, a group which (perhaps understandably in the American context) he had a tendency to regard as an oppressed minority.
Dennett was not a man who shrank from conflict. On the door of his office at Tufts University, Boston, Massachussetts, he pinned up Gore Vidal’s observation: “It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.” His targets included most of the big names in the recent history of ideas – John Searle, Noam Chomsky, George Steiner, Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose, Jerry Fodor, Richard Lewontin – all “skyhook” merchants, in Dennett’s view.
But Dennett’s harshest judgement was reserved for peddlers of religion which, like Dawkins, he believed to be a “meme” every bit as dangerous as the Aids virus. In Breaking the Spell (2006) he sought to demonstrate that religion is itself a biologically evolved concept, and one that has outlived its usefulness...
Dennett argued that everything has to be understood in terms of natural processes, and that terms such as “intelligence”, “free will”, “consciousness” “justice”, the “soul” or the “self” describe phenomena which can be explained in terms of physical processes and not the exercise of some disembodied or metaphysical power. How such processes operate he regarded as an empirical question, to be answered by looking at neuroanatomy – the engineering involved in brains.
Darwinism, to Dennett, was the grand unifying principle that explains how the simplest of organisms developed into human beings who can theorise about the sorts of creatures we are. In Consciousness Explained (1991), he argued that the term “consciousness” merely describes “dispositions to behave” and the idea of the “self” was nothing more than a “narrative centre of gravity”.
In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) he went further than any other philosopher or biologist in arguing that the whole of nature, including all individual human and social behaviour, is underpinned by a Darwinian “algorithm” – a single arithmetical, computational procedure.
Borrowing Richard Dawkins’s notion of “memes” (“bytes” of transferable cultural ideas encompassing anything from a belief in God to an individual’s fashion tastes), Dennett argued that the Darwinian algorithm also explained, for example, the musical genius of JS Bach, whose brain “was exquisitely designed as a programme for composing music” (A more traditional atheist like myself wonders at the unembarrassed use of 'design' here)
Dennett’s philosophy undercut any idea of teleology or “purposive” creation. There is no point in our existence, he maintained, and those who believe otherwise put their faith in “skyhooks” (“hooks” that can be fixed to the sky to make it easier to build skyscrapers). Skyhooks, of course, do not exist, but, Dennett argued, men reach for a piece of magic, a designer behind the design, to avoid the fact that life has no intrinsic meaning. Darwinians, on the other hand, he called the “brights”, a group which (perhaps understandably in the American context) he had a tendency to regard as an oppressed minority.
Dennett was not a man who shrank from conflict. On the door of his office at Tufts University, Boston, Massachussetts, he pinned up Gore Vidal’s observation: “It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.” His targets included most of the big names in the recent history of ideas – John Searle, Noam Chomsky, George Steiner, Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose, Jerry Fodor, Richard Lewontin – all “skyhook” merchants, in Dennett’s view.
But Dennett’s harshest judgement was reserved for peddlers of religion which, like Dawkins, he believed to be a “meme” every bit as dangerous as the Aids virus. In Breaking the Spell (2006) he sought to demonstrate that religion is itself a biologically evolved concept, and one that has outlived its usefulness...
