RIP Daniel Dennett

A real Living Philosopher, I Have seen him Lecture in person twice and it was completely exhilarating!

Rest in power, Danny Dennett, master of irony. He made the best Santa Claus at the infamous Tufts Christmas parties.

I loved Dr. Daniel Dennett, very sad to hear about his passing, I've would have loved to meet him, he was my absolute favorite, an intellectual giant, a legend, true sage, heard he was also very kind gentle person, huge loss to civilization, I will watch tons of his lectures in the next few days/weeks in his memory, I was distraught to know that my favorite philosopher/intellectual passed away, got some consolation that his lectures will be online and I can watch them over and over again 57:16

He’s the best lecturer in modern history; having access to his presentations has changed my life.

Excellent thinker. It is always a pleasure to listen to him. For me is an inspiration for why I am studying philosophy. I find in him the type of thinker I would like to be one day.

To me this was Dennett's best delivery of this particular talk. Thanks for uploading.

Only twelve minutes in and mind blown. How have I missed this? I've watched a lot of his lectures and interviews, but never heard him talk about religion's parallels to selective breeding. Hadn't heard _anyone_ draw that parallel. Fascinating!

This talk made me understand the religious process very much. Thank you, Dennet

thank you for uploading

*-10%- 43% human cells* The 10% figure is from an older, faulty study. But very informative and helpful speech. Daniel Dennett has made wonderful contributions to philosophy

I used to think religion was just going to fade out. Long after I’m dead, but oh well.. I see now we have to understand it out of existence. I hope the scholars and researchers take up this project suggested by Dennett

Is there a second part to this? It seems to cut off at the end...

i can say that this was very interesting and it really does make a lot of sense. i want to see the whole thing!

Fascinating and brilliant speaker.

excellent lecture. Dr. Dennett is a great orator!

Flipping a coin is a fantastic way to decide what you want between two options. First, assign a face to each option. Second, flip your coin. Third, ignore what the coin says and go with what your gut said while the coin was in the air. In those short moments between the coin being flipped and caught, you got a hunch about which face you wanted to appear.

Such a brilliant presentation.

I'm sure you understood this, but what he meant by "folk" was "primitive" or "aboriginal". He meant little songs and melodies that tend to be found in cultures that have not yet discovered the formal principles of musical composition, the diatonic scale, modes, chords, and all the paraphernalia of modern music writing (of the kind that Woodie Guthrie relied upon in composing his music). That's the "wild ancestor" of our "domesticated" musical forms. Anyway, cheers.

Very interesting and informative talk.

dry-ass intro ends at 2.20

Great lecture, Watched all of it

RIP what a great mind.

This changes my whole way of looking at religion, truly amazing work

Good Evening. You're all very welcome! I love the Brits.

Amazing this was 14 years ago. We are going through a transformation and dogma of the religions of the world have been exposed for what they are, lies and methods of controlling people, reducing people and turning one against another. In the future I hope to see people becoming more spiritual and coming together in their love and respect for each other, and uplift those around them.

I LOVE Dennett's dad jokes :) they are my favourite thing about his lectures

A great guy, and Breaking the Spell is undoubtedly an amazing book. It is an all-out attack on religion without employing violent or derisory language of any sort. As the title of the book itself suggests, it is an attack without attacking but breaking the spell that religion has over so many people.

This lecture needs to come back to the light 😎

Thank you soo much RIP 🙏

Love his books, never seen him on video. Now I know what he looks like.

Well fortunately, an idea's ability to solve problems is not affected by the complete personality it originated in. That said, I think Dennett has immense appreciation for beauty and preciousness of life, consciousness, nature, human relationships. *That* said now, who cares? Let's appreciate personalities as they come, interested in all sorts of things.

this lecture is based on his book of the same name ("breaking the spell: religion as a natural phenomenon"). for memes and memetics, first read richard dawkins' "the selfish gene" (where the term was originally introduced, invented by dawkins) - and perhaps "the meme machine" by susan blackmore. another dennett book you might like is "darwin's dangerous idea".

The best thing in this temporary universe is that nothing is best!

It gets really good at 35 minutes of how a meme is born. . . anyone know if a book of Daniel Dannett on this topic of what the purpose of religion. I'm more of a book person than siting and listening to a video for an hour. . .thankx. . .

34:00 or thereabouts is the central nugget in this talk.

Excellent lecture

When Dennett talked about “Jesus Christ, God’s Chosen King” it sounded so mythical.

Daniel Dennett is the best theologian

I like how you put that religion just "knows" and is arrogant. It sure does seem like that to me. I have a copy of The Self Gene" here. I'm renting it now. I think I have 4 or 6 more weeks before it is due. I read all of 8 pages of his book the last time I rented it and feel in love with his book. I'm reading another book now called "Mindsight" by Daniel Siegel . . .he is a neurocientist. I love learning about the brain.

Only eleven years ago, he stated that after beginning as a Christian Church, then being transformed into an Islamic mosque, Hagia Sophia had eventually become a museum. Unfortunately, it has recently been turned back into a mosque, so adopting it as an example is still valid, but he'll have to place it into another category..

My pleasure. 'Haha' about the grammar thing :) I do enjoy an easy-to-digest sentence... Nice to meet you.

Brilliant :)

I think the biological metaphors that Dennett employs are quite accurate. The emergence of a religious meme is a self-propagating entity around which a culture begins to organically define itself. It does not mean that this meme has any basis in fact. His metaphor of the dog looking up and growling in an assumption that a "who" has caused something to happen is correct. It is analogous to asking "who" caused someone to be killed by lightening. In the absence of the scientific method, the drive to explain natural phenomena has often been ascribed to "who" and the repetition of this "who" answer becomes a meme that self-propagates into the realm of religion. This meme, though false, then begins to explain other aspects of the natural world to its acolytes and they build upon it by explaining other aspects of the natural world by the same process. The meme is thus fortified and becomes the accepted doctrine of a people. It gives them peace because they believe these natural phenomena happen for a reason. It gives cohesion to a group and thus fortifies them. But, it does not make the meme true. All memes are like viruses in the way they propagate. Dennett is presenting his own ideas in his lecture and they, courtesy of KZfaq, are propagating to become memes that will either flourish or go extinct. The only difference is that religious memes are based on "who caused something to happen" as opposed to the more modern rationale of asking "what is happening and how is it happening" as opposed to looking for an agent. I find his argument compelling and potentially right on the money.

words are the vehicle of thought..which is why the saying goes THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK but realize thoughts are emotions so kia tupato!

Thumbs down because the lecture seems to be cut short.

What is gout? It's not a symbiont, it's an accumulation of what, exactly? You can't put any weight on your foot. And so you can't move. And the pain makes you bivouac across the room. And then, a week later, it's 'magically' gone. And then you prance and dance because your feet work again, just like before. (Gout sufferers have a special dance of renewed ability, once they get it back, that those that don't suffer it would find a bit weird.) What is gout?

Rip legend 💖

16:05-54: HOLY COW!!! Flying Sphagetti Monster, you are GLORIOUS!

Oh, I love this guy when he says "nobody knows which one is right, I don't know". So very humble and not asking like a dumb ass saying something other Christians would say like "I know I'm going to heaven, why? The buybull tells me so". When a person says he doesn't know the answer to something like this -it shows maturity. I think DD is my new "hero".

@nerdyharry That's not his job. He's not a motivational speaker. He's a philosopher and his only concern is to try to uncover the truth (without causing any harm.)

It really kicks in at around min 35

Rest in peace Daniel Dennett i learneð so much from you

Hagia Sofia update: Church Mosque Museum Mosque

I wonder if google could create a map of the human "memeome" by merely analyzing all of the text on the web based on the frequencies of the phrases and idioms that define them. Perhaps it's a proprietary index they can't share. It seems like it would be an interesting thing to browse.

As a child from Darwin (Northern Territory, Australia, tropics, Santa never made it to Darwin, Cyclone Tracy 1974 Christmas Day, etc). I grew up watching the news from 'down south'. We'd have to turn the volume up on the TV, because of the monsoonal rain on the roof, whilst we watched stories about the drought, with visions of dry sheep/cow carcassses. 'Is there a way to send all our 'too much' water to them down there?' was my sentiment. It can be engineered. Make Australia drought proof.

@waytohell2 well that's the point, it doesn't "know" it is acting purely without thought. it does not know the advantage it is receiving, it simply does what natural selection selected for.

From a behaviourism perspective when pigeons were given rewards at random intervals they would invent behaviours to rationalize the reason for the rewards . I saw this with humans who were given dollar bills from a slot at random time intervals and they would come up with actions to get these rewards. The logic that explains the peoples behaviour is covered by the joke about the man who wandered around town balling up newspaper and throwing the balls over his shoulder . when asked what he was doing he explained it was to keep tigers away . When he was told that there are no tigers around here he says "See it works

where's the rest?

I love the irony here, of thinking of Religion as an evolving set of self replicating ideas. I have to recommend this scheme to Ray Comfort, Wendy Wyatt, Pat Robinson, Ken Ham and the many vocal Creationists in the USA!

Rest in peace 🕊️❤

You should never enter a debate unless both people are willing to learn something.

It's pathetic that videos like this one should have 70k views 11 years after posting

Rest in peace Daniel

It's like Santa telling you he's not real.

5:46 very good point. Other churches may follow. . . .

36:50 Yes, it's Treebeard.

Rest in peace 😢

this clip seems to finish abruptly, does anyone know if there is a sequense?

If idea is the substance of mental evolution, what drives the idea?

Why does it stop so abruptly????

How beautiful...

That's one O.G. cuckoo! This is my house lol. All jokes aside Dennett is one of the best on this subject, great upload

Julian Jaynes has the best evolutionary explanation for religion. Dennett is speculating by anthropological analogy. ("Search for causal agents" etc. Really?)

In my Philosophy of Mind book I was making a lot of side notes in the book about why I disagreed with certain things, but some sections I didn’t even bother because the arguments were so ridiculous. The section with Daniel Dennett doesn’t have a single ink mark anywhere that’s how much his arguments just make you roll your eyes!! It’s just such a counterproductive task to deal with arguments that try to refute basic axioms. That to me is why philosophy is fun but only to a point, it can turn into complete absurdity just for the purpose of some philosophers just to be a contrarian, that’s where I lose interest. To get a feel for where fun philosophy falls into the abyss of absurdity just read Daniel Dennett

33:15 is where the video really starts

The similarity is not only in religion, to surrender to God and obey the word even if it doesn't make sense. In the scientific arena too this exists. For example scientists discovered that matter, quantum of light is not only "solid" but also a wave. Initially this did not make sense. However they continued to pursue that belief until it was proven to be true. Thus the the double slit experiment. May be that belief and faith are necessary after some intuition is felt.

take a shot every time he says “uh”

💛

Bacteria are incredibly tiny compared to most human cells; so they only make up a couple pounds of our weight, even though in-population there are 10 times more of them.

@nerdyharry Listening to orthodox ministers will make you ill. I love hearing the sense & reason from Daniel Dennett, who is one of the cleverest people on earth.For great analysis of the facts about the Bible & other old Writ & comparative religion try also John W. Loftus, Robert M. Price, Dan Barker, Valerie Tarico, Ken Humphreys, Keith Parsons, Ken Pulliam, David Mills, Gary Greenberg, Bart Ehrman, Joseph Wheless, C. Dennis Mckinsey, Richard Carrier, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins

11: 57 is a wonderful way to put religion. .designed to pull us in so to say. . .

The ant-parasite connection is not symbiosis but parasitosis. In symbiosis, both parties mutually benefit, but the parallel with religion is hilarious...

It's not an attack on religion, it's an attack on ideas regardless. In fact even on the ideas of Dawkins, Plato, etc.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that religions have been brilliantly designed. They have been intelligently desinged, though, or at least some of them.

The existence of systems and events doesn't rule out God. The absence rather would.

It is very honorable that atheist views of the universe explain things, whilst religion explains nothing

How can you describe evolution as "clever" ? evolution is a process, or let's say an idea about a process , a human subjective description of life , how do you define cleverness?

hell yes i'd want my daughter to marry a chelsea fan, daniel

@waytohell2 knowledge implies being aware of the information, that is not necessary.

RIP sir

@mAdmAn948 They got the Idea for inception by lucid dreaming.... The more you read on lucid dreaming the more you will understand it... The 'totem' is called a 'reality check' and is used to check if you are dreaming or not... Not and original idea from the movie but has been around for ages

In what sense can we say that a brain burrowing wasp, or even a cuckoo bird for that matter, "benefits" when there is ostensibly no consciousness available to apprehend their continuing existence as a species? It is true that the strategies May propagate the species but I do not see how you can use the word "benefit', since that is something only a comprehension can Accomplish. It may appear to us to be beneficial to the species, but that is a judgment made from observation, not from the internal perspective. I would say that the entire lecture is based on the idea that human beings can perceive patterns such as the web of a spider and the web of the internet and make analogies and thereby think that they have discovered something, when in fact they may have only created an analogy. This whole lecture seems to be based on the idea for we humans, it is like something to be us, and we can imagine that it is like something for evolution to create patterns which we can discern. But that exists only in our heads not in reality.

Religion a thousand years ago could not and can not teach us what it did not understand at that time.

Man designed the Cow, once food had been assured, He designed himself and got himself domesticated.

2-minute introduction, and although the man may deserve it, skip to 2:20 if you want to start with Mr. Dennett.

Actually, all science has started out as speculation. That's what a hypothesis is. And we must never forget, nature precedes science. Just because we haven't "discovered" something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We are just beginning to scientifically understand the phenomenon of "knowing." You should catch up on Carl Sagan award winners for excellence in scientific education #biologicalunderpinningsofreligiosity.

R.I.P

The mind distorts reality in such a way that the atheist denies the spirit and the believer feels the spirit separated from himself. Then neither of them can perceive the truth in its entirety. The atheist is still just another believer, he believe in science instead of the spirit and the believer needs to pray to a God that he believes is separate from himself for his salvation, for his security, for his comfort... But none of them, neither a believer or the atheist, know how to truly listen without leaving aside their beliefs. Atheists deny themselves as they are and believers separate themselves by praying to an external God invented by them they believe is superior.

if you want to study the effects of religion i suggest studying virology