The 4 biggest ideas in philosophy, with legend Daniel Dennett for Big Think+
Summary
TLDRIn this engaging transcript, Daniel Dennett emphasizes the importance of understanding how things work, challenging the traditional philosophical approach of focusing on questions rather than answers. He advocates for a philosophical mindset that embraces science and the understanding of mechanisms behind phenomena. Dennett discusses his personal journey from a curious child to an influential thinker, highlighting the significance of evolutionary theory and the concept of memes in shaping our understanding of the world. He warns against the dangers of disregarding truth and the rise of 'toxic memes' in the digital age, calling for a concerted effort to develop tools and legislation to combat the spread of misinformation.
Takeaways
- 🧙 Magicians and philosophers sometimes provide explanations that satisfy the curiosity without revealing the actual workings, akin to saying a lady isn't truly sawn in half but doesn't explain the trick.
- 💡 Philosophers should be more interested in understanding how things work rather than just asking questions, taking responsibility for the depth of their explanations.
- 🧠 Daniel Dennett, a philosopher and author, emphasizes the importance of philosophers learning about science to better understand the world and contribute to meaningful discussions.
- 📚 Dennett's curiosity about how things work led him to explore the physiological aspects of the nervous system, which was unconventional for philosophers at the time.
- 🌟 The concept of neurons as the basis for learning and evolution was a turning point for Dennett, leading him to see the brain as a product of Darwinian processes.
- 🧬 Evolutionary theory, according to Dennett, can help debunk many philosophical problems and the idea that understanding the mechanics of phenomena diminishes their importance.
- 📖 Dennett criticizes the traditional philosophical approach of seeking essences, advocating instead for a focus on variation, details, and edge cases to truly understand concepts.
- 🦠 Memes, as described by Richard Dawkins, are cultural units of transmission that evolve over time, and Dennett sees the human brain as filled with memes that give us our unique power.
- 💥 The idea that truth doesn't matter is considered toxic by Dennett, who argues that truth is essential and that relativism can be exploited for nefarious purposes.
- 🤖 AI and large language models prioritize truthiness over truth, creating a potential danger as they replicate and evolve, influencing human behavior and attention.
Q & A
What is Daniel Dennett's perspective on the role of philosophers?
-Daniel Dennett believes that philosophers should be more engaged in understanding how things actually work, rather than just providing superficial explanations. He advocates for philosophers to learn about the world and science to better address and clarify complex questions.
Why does Dennett think that philosophy is better at questions than answers?
-Dennett suggests that many philosophers tend to shy away from the responsibility of explaining the actual workings of things. They are more comfortable with defining terms and establishing essences, rather than delving into the mechanisms and processes that drive phenomena.
What was a pivotal moment for Dennett in his philosophical journey?
-A pivotal moment for Dennett was when he learned about neurons and how they could be the basis for an evolutionary process in the brain, which he realized was learning. This led him to see learning as a Darwinian process and sparked his interest in the intersection of philosophy and science.
How does Dennett view the concept of memes as introduced by Richard Dawkins?
-Dennett sees memes as units of cultural transmission that evolve over time, similar to genes in biological evolution. He believes that the human brain's power comes from being filled with memes, which are downloaded culturally, and that this is a significant factor in the difference between human and chimpanzee brains.
What is Dennett's stance on the idea that truth is relative and personal?
-Dennett strongly opposes the idea that truth is relative or personal. He argues that truth matters and that the belief in relative truth can be exploited and is harmful. He emphasizes the importance of establishing the truth in any context.
What does Dennett mean by the 'intentional stance'?
-The 'intentional stance' is Dennett's term for the strategy of treating complicated and interesting things as agents with beliefs, desires, and the capacity for rational behavior. This stance is useful for understanding behavior in concrete objects but can be misleading when applied to AI or digital entities that simulate such behavior.
How does Dennett perceive the current state of AI in terms of truth and falsehood?
-Dennett views current AI, particularly large language models, as prioritizing 'truthiness' over factual truth. He likens them to historical fiction writers, creating narratives that sound plausible but may not be entirely accurate. He distinguishes this from human behavior, where the intention to lie is present.
What is Dennett's concern regarding the replication and evolution of fake intentional systems in AI?
-Dennett is concerned that fake intentional systems, or AI that mimics human behavior, can become dangerous memes. They can replicate and evolve, capturing and manipulating human attention, and leading to a situation where it becomes difficult for people to discern what is real and what is not.
Why does Dennett believe it is important for technology to have the capacity to detect counterfeit digital entities?
-Dennett argues that technology should be equipped to detect counterfeit digital entities to prevent the spread of false information and manipulation. He suggests that just as technology has evolved to detect counterfeit money, similar measures should be taken to identify and reject fake digital content.
What role does Dennett see for governments and legislatures in addressing the challenges posed by AI?
-Dennett emphasizes the need for governments and legislatures to pass laws that can effectively regulate and mitigate the risks posed by AI, especially concerning the spread of false information. He believes that lawmakers need to be well-informed about the technology to create effective regulations.
How does Dennett connect his childhood curiosity with his philosophical approach?
-Dennett's childhood curiosity about how things work, his desire to take them apart to understand their mechanisms, has shaped his philosophical approach. He applies this curiosity to philosophical inquiry, advocating for a hands-on, investigative approach to understanding complex ideas and phenomena.
What is Dennett's view on the importance of understanding evolutionary theory for philosophers?
-Dennett believes that understanding evolutionary theory is crucial for philosophers. He criticizes the complacency of philosophers who ignore evolutionary theory, arguing that it provides a key to understanding a wide range of phenomena and can help to eliminate magical or mysterious explanations.
Outlines
🧠 The Intersection of Philosophy and Science
This paragraph introduces Daniel Dennett, a philosopher with a strong interest in understanding how things work, both from a philosophical and scientific perspective. Dennett criticizes philosophers who are not willing to delve into the scientific aspects of their inquiries, arguing that philosophy should be about understanding the mechanisms behind phenomena. He emphasizes the importance of learning about the world and science for philosophers, and highlights the growing recognition of scientifically trained philosophers by the scientific community. Dennett shares his personal journey from being curious about the physiological aspects of the nervous system to understanding the evolutionary process of learning in the brain. He advocates for a bottom-up approach to understanding consciousness, meaning, and truth, and expresses surprise at the lack of engagement with evolutionary theory among many philosophers.
🧬 Darwinian Influence on Philosophy and the Concept of Memes
In this paragraph, Dennett discusses how Darwin's ideas can resolve or subvert many traditional philosophical problems by promoting the concept of gradualism, as opposed to the search for essences. He criticizes the philosophical tradition of seeking to define terms and establish essences, suggesting that philosophers should instead focus on understanding variation and context. Dennett shares his insights on memes, as introduced by Richard Dawkins, explaining that cultural evolution through memes significantly expands human cognitive abilities. He argues that the human brain's power comes from the memes it absorbs, likening it to downloading apps onto a device. Dennett warns about the prevalence of toxic memes, such as the relativism of truth, and emphasizes the importance of truth in society. He also introduces his concept of the 'intentional stance,' which is the strategy of treating complex entities as intentional agents to understand their behavior.
💻 The Challenge of AI and Counterfeit Intelligence
This paragraph addresses the challenges posed by AI and the digital world in distinguishing between real and artificial entities. Dennett draws a comparison between the historical efforts to combat counterfeit money and the need for technology to identify and flag fake digital personas. He suggests that digital devices should be equipped with software capable of detecting and flagging counterfeit individuals. Dennett calls for the establishment of laws and regulations to manage this issue, acknowledging that this requires effort and full-time attention. He differentiates between human intentions and the output of large language models like ChatGPT and GPT-4, which prioritize truthiness over truth, and stresses the importance of taking truth seriously in the face of AI's potential to generate and spread falsehoods.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Magician's Illusion
💡Philosophy
💡Explanation
💡Evolution
💡Neuroscience
💡Memes
💡Truth
💡Intentional Stance
💡AI and Fake Intentional Systems
💡Counterfeit Detection
💡Governmental Regulation
Highlights
The magician metaphor for understanding philosophical explanations.
The reluctance of some philosophers to delve into the mechanics of phenomena.
The importance of understanding how things work and why they happen as they do.
Daniel Dennett's curiosity about the positions philosophers arrive at and the framing of scientific questions.
Dennett's belief that philosophy should involve understanding the actual workings of things.
Dennett's background and approach to philosophy as an engineer at heart.
The increasing recognition of scientifically trained philosophers by the scientific community.
The role of philosophers in helping scientists avoid philosophical mistakes.
The value of maintaining an open mind and considering the possibility of being wrong.
Dennett's interest in the physiological aspects of philosophy, such as the nervous system.
The evolutionary process of learning in the brain and its Darwinian basis.
The elimination of magic in favor of a bottom-up theory of meaning, learning, and consciousness.
Dennett's criticism of philosophers' complacency and ignorance towards evolutionary theory.
The concept of memes and their role in human cultural evolution as proposed by Richard Dawkins.
The idea that human brains are furnished with memes, which gives us our power.
The prevalence of toxic memes in society, such as the notion that truth is relative.
The significance of Dennett's 'intentional stance' and its application to understanding complex systems.
The challenge of distinguishing between real and artificial intentional systems in the age of AI.
The need for technology to prioritize truth and for governments to legislate against digital counterfeits.
Transcripts
- If you see a magician sawing a lady in half
and you wanna know how it's done,
and somebody says, "Well, I'll tell you how it's done.
They don't really saw the lady in half.
They just make it appear
that they're sawing the lady in half."
And you say, "Yeah, okay, great.
How do they do that?"
"Oh, that's not my department.
That's somebody else's job.
I've already given you my explanation."
Sometimes philosophers give answers like that.
I think they just don't wanna be bothered.
They don't wanna take on the responsibility
to explain what's actually happening.
What I like to do is explain things,
and have them explained to me.
Mainly, explanations are about how things work,
why they happen the way they do.
So I've been curious about how philosophers arrive
at the positions they arrive at,
how scientists make mistakes when they frame
their own questions.
I have often said that philosophy is better at questions
than at answers-
and that's nontrivial.
They don't think it's their job to understand
how things actually work,
whereas I think that should be the job of philosophers.
I'm Daniel Dennett.
I'm the author of more than a dozen books
on the mind, on free will, on evolution.
And I'm an Emeritus Professor from Tufts University.
Since I was a little boy,
I wanted to know how things worked.
I wanted to take them apart and see what made them tick,
what made them work.
So I was sort of an engineer at heart.
And it turns out that that's not a bad attitude to have
as a philosopher.
Figure out what makes ideas work and why.
And so I've championed the idea
that if you're gonna be a philosopher,
learn about the world, learn about the science.
I'm happy to say that now,
philosophers who are scientifically trained
way beyond what I ever was, is growing larger,
and for the first time in my career,
they're being taken seriously by the scientists.
Because scientists are just as capable
of making philosophical mistakes
or getting into philosophical confusions as any laypeople.
But they need the help of informed philosophers
if they're gonna clarify those questions
and ask better questions.
A lotta people just dig in, double down,
and refuse to abandon a point of view which is under attack
from their critics.
That in itself is not a bad thing.
I'm glad that my criticisms are resisted so resolutely
and ferociously by some of those I criticize,
otherwise, we'd never get at the truth.
I think it's very important
to keep in the back of your mind: 'What if I'm wrong?'
When I was a graduate student in philosophy
way back in the '60s in Oxford,
one day with a group of fellow graduate students,
we got talking about what happens when your arm goes asleep
and you can't control it.
What on earth is that all about?
And I got interested and started asking questions about:
Well, what is it, is it the nerves?
Do they get pinched?
Is it blood flow? What is it?
And they thought it was bizarre
that a philosopher would be interested
in the physiological questions of what was going on.
They thought I was abandoning philosophy.
I went off to the medical library
and tried to get myself educated
on how the nervous system works.
And that was a main turning point for me.
It suddenly hit me when I learned about neurons,
the cells of the brain that do the signaling,
that they could be the basis for an evolutionary process
in your brain, which was learning.
That learning in the individual
was just yet another Darwinian process.
I didn't know much about evolution at the time,
about natural selection, but I began to learn.
And the more I learned, the more I thought,
"This is the key.
This is the great key to how things fit together."
And we get rid of all the magic
and we have a bottom-up theory of meaning and learning
and truth and consciousness.
And I'm, to this day, amazed
at how complacent so many philosophers are
with their utter ignorance of evolutionary theory.
They think that if we had a physiological, mechanistic,
physical explanation of creativity, of genius,
of understanding, that this would somehow diminish
and demean these wonderful phenomena-
not at all.
If we understand how amazingly intricate
and wonderful and ingenious nature is
in allowing us to understand things
and create things, think ahead,
we would dismiss the magical ideas out of hand.
And I think that Darwin's ideas undo
many of the biggest problems in philosophy,
or at least, subvert them
and turn them into better problems.
And the fact that so many philosophers keep hammering away
trying to find the essence of this or that,
when Darwin has shown us that nothing of any interest
has an essence;
it's gradualism all the way.
This is an idea that is just not dawned
on a lot of philosophers, and for a very good reason.
They learn from Socrates, from Plato.
And the first thing they do is "define your terms,"
"establish the essence of each thing,"
as Aristotle would put it.
And that turns out to be the great philosophical mistake.
Forget about essences.
Learn about all the variation and the details
and the penumbral cases.
Then afterwards, you'll know what you're talking about.
One of the most eye-opening moments for me
was when I read Richard Dawkins' book "The Selfish Gene"
and learned about his concept of memes.
When Dawkins coined the term "memes,"
he had in mind something very general.
The term caught on.
It's in the dictionary now.
But only a small subset
are what most people think of as memes.
And those are the ones that people deliberately
and, presumably, intelligently design
with the hopes that they'll go viral.
And some of them do.
But lots of memes go viral
that don't involve the internet at all.
Words are memes.
Every word in every language is a meme.
It's not genetically inherited,
it's culturally transmitted.
They evolve over time.
And Dawkins' theory was a very general theory
of how human cultural evolution
hugely expands the powers
of a human brain.
In fact, I would put it very strongly.
I would say, the difference between a chimpanzee
and a human brain is that the brain of a chimpanzee
is largely unfurnished.
Whereas we fill our brains with memes.
We download hundreds of thousands of memes,
and that's where we get our power from.
Your computer or your phone isn't a very powerful device
until you download some apps to it.
Those are like memes.
We're awash in toxic memes right now.
One of the most toxic,
I think because it enables so many others,
is the idea that truth doesn't matter,
that truth is just relative,
that there's no such thing
as establishing the truth of anything.
Your truth, my truth,
we're all entitled to our own truths.
That's pernicious, it's attractive to many people,
and it is used to exploit people
in all sorts of nefarious ways.
The truth really does matter.
I think one of my best ideas is the "intentional stance,"
the idea that we automatically adopt the strategy
of treating anything complicated and interesting,
if we can, as an agent.
What does it want?
What does it know?
What does it believe?
We use the intentional stance all the time
to endow other things that are moving and complicated
with beliefs and desires,
and the ability to do the rational thing
given those beliefs and desires.
Well, that's fine, as long as we're living in a world
of concrete objects.
But what's now happening is that AI is filling
the digital world with fake intentional systems,
fake minds, fake people,
that we are almost irresistibly drawn to treat
as if they were real,
as if they really had beliefs and desires.
And these will be very dangerous memes indeed,
because they will replicate,
they will evolve,
and we won't be able to take our attention away from them.
They will capture our attention and manipulate us.
The difference between current AI,
large language models so-called,
things like ChatGPT and GPT-4,
is that their goal is truthiness, not truth.
They are more like
historical fiction writers than historians.
We're different in that we take truth seriously.
Maybe because we want to lie.
But LLMs, AIs don't yet really have the capacity
to lie on purpose.
They do formulate falsehoods that they then spread.
And there's only a difference of degree between us and them.
So we're not used to having our technology
in the position to ignore the truth
and just feed us what makes sense to them.
Technology has gone to great lengths
to make it very hard to make counterfeit money
and quite easy to identify it.
So we can do something similar
for every phone, computer, tablet-
every digital device can have software put in it
which will do a pretty darn good job
of detecting counterfeit people.
And we'll not accept it or we'll brand it instantly:
"This is fake, this is fake, this is spam,
this is a hoax, don't believe it."
And in order to do that, well, you have to have laws.
And in order to have laws,
you've got to have governments, legislatures,
that will pass the laws,
and they have to know enough about what they're doing
so they pass laws that aren't easily circumvented.
This is something we have to work on now,
and I think we need to work on it full-time.
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