Overview
In this interview, Professor Daniel Dennett discusses his philosophical roots, his thoughts on Freud, predictive processing, psychedelics, consciousness, and ancient Athens. Dennett argues that philosophers have the ability to criticize and contribute to the science of the mind, and speaks to the virtues of cross-disciplinary glances and hybrid vigor. He discusses potential scientific and therapeutic value of psychoactive substances within proper settings.
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Methods and contributions
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Findings and contributions
- Dennett argues that anybody can, in principle, tell scientists how to do better science, since scientists are as vulnerable to illusion and sloppy thinking as anyone.
- Dennett recalls arguing, with Hurley and Adams, that all control in nervous systems is accomplished by 'emotional' signals with no highest-level executive.
- Dennett says dream content is not random and that theories are best confirmed by showing how a model predicts the results of targeted disruptions.
- Dennett views psychedelics as risky but potentially enlightening and therapeutic, and says he has avoided them himself.
- Dennett proposes that academic ethics policies apply everywhere, possibly enforced by strict liability laws for developers, including for AI, psychedelics and gene-tinkering.
Methods
- Question-and-answer interview of Daniel Dennett by Fleig-Goldstein and Friedman — The interviewers pose long contextualized questions on Quine, Freud, predictive processing, psychedelics and Plato, and Dennett answers each in turn.
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Document downloads
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- 2019_DennettExplained.pdf PDF · 0.16 MiB · extracted-text source
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