This is a terrific video in which Dennett and Dawkins get further into the weeds discussing the dynamics of evolution, responsibility, how you can make living things out of dead stuff and conscious ones out of unconscious ones, the wonder of natural processes, the idea that we have souls—but they’re made of neurons, and many [...]
“Everyone generalizes from one example. At least, I do.” – Vlad Taltos (Issola, Steven Brust) My old professor, David Berman, liked to talk about what he called the “typical mind fallacy”, which he illustrated through the following example: There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether “imagination” was simply a turn of phrase [...]
Last week I highlighted both a portion of Jerry Coyne’s report from AAI and independently Andrew Sullivan’s nasty retort to another portion of that same post. But I never quoted the really fun and on target coinage of Daniel Dennett which got so far under Sullivan’s skin: Dan Dennett talked about interviews with active priests [...]
Andrew Sullivan, whose blogging I usually admire and emulate a great deal as he’s really my blogging hero, had an astoundingly nasty post about the fact that atheists dared to meet up together to listen to Daniel Dennett mock the emptiness of apophatic theological gobbledygook last weekend. They’re really charming, aren’t they? It is as [...]
In Philosophy Now, Daniel Dennett engagingly tells his life story—or at least part one of it. It’s a fascinating read and for me the most interesting parts are these on Gilbert Ryle and AJ Ayer. In particular, the account of Ryle’s method of mentoring and influencing is remarkable an inspiring. Or maybe just evidence that [...]
This post is inspired by some excellent remarks from Daniel Dennett in reply to William Lane Craig’s vigorous cosmological arguments for the existence of God (which you can see him make in a separate debate here). Here is the Dennett video, below it you’ll find a rough transcript I have produced of it, and then [...]
3 Quarks Daily is offering a relatively sizable prize ($1,000) for the best philosophy blog post of the year. You can read the nominees (a great many of which were self-nominated) here and vote for your favorite here. The finalists will be submitted to Daniel Dennett who will decide the winner. Peter Mandik, who is [...]
This is a terrific video in which Dennett and Dawkins get further into the weeds discussing the dynamics of evolution, responsibility, how you can make living things out of dead stuff and conscious ones out of unconscious ones, the wonder of natural processes, the idea that we have souls—but they’re made of neurons, and many [...]
Earlier today, I challenged Rod Dreher’s recent post wherein he lamented the difficulties we have in overcoming our minds’ propensities for rationalizations. In that same post he had argued from the experience of his own loss of Catholic faith that the intellect was an insufficient ground for religious beliefs and that the will needed to [...]
In reply to Rod Dreher’s recent post explaining his decision to train his children’s wills to be faithful since the intellect was not a firm foundation of faith, I critically characterized his position as essentially boiling down to the following: So, the solution is not to train your children to be intellectually scrupulous but to [...]
According to Dennett, it’s just like showing how magicians and musicians do theirs: Your Thoughts?
While he was hospitalized a couple years ago, Daniel Dennett got irritated when people offered to pray for him and insisted that they thank doctors rather than offer their ineffectual prayers. The Wittenburg Door was appalled and inferred (quite unjustifiably) that Dennett did not understand that all many people mean to say when they say [...]
Joe Bob Briggs from The Wittenburg Door visited a convention of atheists last year. The Wittenburg Door is primarily a satire magazine written by Evangelicals with a sense of humor and perspective which I remember fondly from my teen years. So, writing for a “with it” sort of Evangelical publication, Briggs’s barbs at the atheists [...]
Anderson Brown gives a really interesting list of 10 classic articles in the philosophy of mind which cover (a couple more than) 10 pivotal arguments. I’ve heard of almost all of them and all the philosophers on the list are extremely famous, major contributors to the field. I especially love this one article’s point: [...]
Njustus offers a probing challenge to my recent post in which I defend Daniel Dennett’s argument that atheists should stand up for atheism rather than take the attitude that the religious beliefs that they do not share are good for their neighbors and should be encouraged. I argued that Dennett’s position is not “ideologically narrow” [...]
I agree with this a whole lot (I most recommend the last link to PZ Myers’s assessment of Hitchens on war): The real-world implications of the “New Atheists” ideas are not insulated from the same dogmatism and intolerance that they decry. To get back to my original point about rationalism, the religious aspect is only [...]
A reader of The Daily Dish writes the following in reply to remarks by Andrew Sullivan’s under-blogger and temporary fill-in lead blogger, Patrick Appel: Almost every conversation about atheism on the Daily Dish seems to be confusing two very different sets of views — largely because both groups self-identify as atheists. I’m an atheist, and [...]
Patrick Appel objected to Dan Dennett’s recent piece in The Guardian countering those faitheists who do not actually have religious beliefs themselves but believe in the necessity of religious beliefs for others to achieve various social goods. In reply, a reader wrote the following to him: Ironically, I don’t see any support in the quote [...]
During Andrew Sullivan’s absence, this last week at The Daily Dish, there has been a flurry of discussion around issues related to Daniel Dennett’s recent attack on “belief in belief”. In a series of posts, I want to go through a number of these interesting lines of thoughts that have been raised and possibly bring [...]