Awesomelyglorious wrote:
What is this talk about? That's actually rather interesting, as Dan Dennett is a bit of an intellectual hero to me.
The one that I'm attending is entitled "My Brain Made Me Do It"; here is the description:
Quote:
Neuroscientists have recently begun making public pronouncements about the implications of their research for free will and moral responsibility. These have been typically confused, but their confusion is in large measure due to the disarray in philosophy, which has discouraged careful thinking among neuroscientists. Philosophers should turn to the large task of undoing the damage.
The one he is giving on Tuesday (which I cannot attend due to school) is 'The Human Mind as an Upside-Down Brain".
Quote:
Imagining the mind as the brain is fiendishly difficult, and several eminent failures of imagination here are instructive. Both Darwin and Turing proposed a "strange inversion of reasoning" that is one of the keys, I will claim, to opening up the space of imaginable cognitive architectures. Once we understand that the "moving parts" of our brains are themselves tiny agents with agendas, operating in a competitive architecture, we can see- sketchily- the way our minds can be lodged in our brains.
I really wish I could attend both. Badly, I wish.
06 Feb 2011, 6:06 pm
