Dan Dennett Looks Back on His Career

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2023

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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Daniel Dennett, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering the thorniest, most fundamental mysteries of the mind. Do we have free will? What is consciousness and how did it come about? What distinguishes human minds from the minds of animals? Dennett’s answers have profoundly shaped our age of philosophical thought. In this episode, he reflects on his amazing career and lifelong scientific fascinations, as well as the value of life beyond the university, one enriched by sculpture, music, farming, and family.

Daniel C. Dennett is Professor Emeritus at Tufts University and the author of numerous books, including Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Breaking the Spell, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, and Consciousness Explained.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show Sherber Show. Hello everyone, Schurmer. It's another friendly reminder to sign up for our
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0:41.6	office. It will provide food and drinks. It's going to be
0:44.8	big fun. And then Saturday and Sunday I've got a we've got a bunch of great events
0:48.7	set up for you. Most interestingly I wanted to tell you about Pete Magosian.
0:53.0	I've known Pete for a long time now, he's a long time good friend,
0:57.1	and that he's developed this really interesting process he calls street epistemology in which he goes around talking to people just in various places he's been in Europe for months now
1:08.4	Doing this in which he brings up controversial issues and just sees what it would take for people to move from their current
1:14.1	position to some other position. For example, he would just ask, what would it take to change your
1:19.2	mind? This is one of the great questions. Anyway, Pete will be here with his own film crew as well. So we're
1:25.6	going to do a bunch of this right there on the stage. You will be participating in
1:29.2	this. That is he's going to bring some of you up and say, ask you if you're an atheist, what would it take for you to be an agnostic?
1:37.6	What would it take if you moved even further fidaeism or fidaeism or maybe even theism. What would it take for you to be convinced that there is a
1:47.8	God? Okay. That's going to be super interesting so check check it out. Go to Skeptic.
1:52.8	Click on the banner. Sign up December 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. We have the Saturday night fundraising
1:58.9	dinner Sunday morning with Jared Diamond Saturday with Michael Schallenberg and Pete Pagosian.
2:03.2	Can't wait to see you. All right.
2:07.0	All righty, everybody, it's Michael Schurmer and it's time for another episode of the
2:10.4	Michael Schurmer show brought to you by the Skeptic Society and
2:13.2	Skeptic magazine here we are there's a lot of online magazines now almost
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