Daniel Dennett on Tools To Transform Our Thinking

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2017

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Daniel Dennett is one of the world's most original and provocative thinkers. A philosopher and cognitive scientist, he is known as one of the 'Four Horseman of New Atheism' along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. In 2013 he came to Intelligence Squared to share the insights he has acquired over his 40-year career into the nature of how we think, decide and act. Dennett revealed his favourite thinking tools, or 'intuition pumps', that he and others have developed for addressing life's most fundamental questions. As well as taking a fresh look at familiar moves - Occam's Razor, reductio ad absurdum - he discussed new cognitive solutions designed for the most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, consciousness and free will. — We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be. Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2. And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared.. Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So you've arrived you head to the brasserie then the terrace cocktail don't mind if I do
0:08.5	You raise your glass to another guest because you both know the holidays just beginning.
0:14.0	And you're only in Terminal 3.
0:18.0	Welcome to Virgin Atlantic's unique upper class clubhouse experience
0:22.0	where you'll feel like you've arrived before you've taken off.
0:27.0	Virgin Atlantic, see the world differently.
0:31.0	The new Samsung Galaxy Z-Flip 5 and Chromebook are better together.
0:37.0	Take hands-free selfies which automatically sync to your Chromebook, ready to edit, and access
0:41.6	recent Chrome tabs across both devices.
0:44.0	The new Galaxy Z Flip5 and Chromebook, better together.
0:48.0	Available on Sky Mobile.
0:50.0	Bluetooth and internet connection required.
0:52.0	You must be signed into the same Google account on both
0:53.9	your phone and Chromebook.
0:57.0	I'm delighted to be here to see you all on such a beautiful day, not outside in the sunshine.
1:05.0	So, I'm going to talk about tools for thinking.
1:09.0	One of my students famously said, or I love it, you can't do much carpentry with your bare hands,
1:18.2	you can't do much thinking with your bare brain.
1:21.3	How many do you know about the Flynn effect? Oh, only a few. Okay.
1:26.0	Made after Jim Flynn, James Flynn, psychologist. He didn't do the original research, but he's drawn attention to the importance of it.
1:36.8	It turns out that since the, in the hundred years that we've had IQ tests, scores have been going up.
1:45.0	IQ tests are normalized at 100 being the average,
	...

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