On Consciousness, Free Will, and Purpose (Robert Wright and Daniel Dennett) [Rebroadcast]

Robert Wright's Nonzero

Nonzero

News & Politics, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.7 • 618 Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2023

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this classic interview, Robert Wright and Daniel Dennett discuss consciousness, free will, being good without belief in God, and whether natural selection could have a larger purpose.

Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained, Freedom Evolved, Tufts University). Recorded 2003.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcast.
0:09.0	Hi, this is Bob, and this is a pretty unusual podcast. It's a conversation I had with a well-known
0:16.8	philosopher Daniel Dennett a long, long time ago, like before I had a podcast feed to put it on.
0:24.5	I videotaped the conversation more than 20 years ago at the dawn of the age of online video,
0:31.9	and I put the video online on my website, Meaning of Life TV, and then later I put it on YouTube,
0:39.0	where it remains today.
0:45.9	The taping was funded by a small Templeton Foundation grant, which also allowed me to interview another dozen or so thinkers around the turn of the millennium. And I recently realized that I
0:52.8	might as well, every once in a while, feature one of
0:55.2	these conversations in my podcast feed. So that's what I'm doing today. I think the conversation
1:02.8	with Dennett was a very good one, in part because we disagree about so much, especially the
1:08.5	subject of consciousness. And by the way, this conversation generated a little
1:13.4	bit of controversy. The controversy was about the part of the conversation where we talk about
1:19.9	whether natural selection could have some larger purpose, like, you know, creating intelligence or something. I argued that there was at least
1:31.3	some evidence of such a purpose, and I took Dennett to be, after some early resistance, accepting my
1:38.4	argument, that there's at least some such evidence, maybe not much evidence, and certainly not enough
1:43.4	to convince Dennett that there is such a purpose, but at least some evidence. Maybe not much evidence and certainly not enough to convince Dennett that there is such a
1:45.4	purpose, but at least some evidence. So after I posted the conversation, I wrote something that
1:52.0	characterized Dennett as accepting my argument and he got upset and said he hadn't in fact done that.
2:00.0	Now, I still think he did accept my argument at the time,
2:04.5	even if he had second thoughts later. At least, I think he conceded the two points that together
2:11.0	amount to acceptance of my argument. But see what you think. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the conversation. And I also hope that if you
2:21.5	have the time and the inclination, you'll rate and or review the non-zero podcast at the Apple podcast
	...

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