[FRIAM] Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)

[Russ Abbott]

Stephen,

Thanks for the link to Michael Levin's piece on Dennett. Levin, also at
Tufts <https://as.tufts.edu/biology/people/faculty/michael-levin>, is one
of the most insightful and creative biologists around. The article points
to a joint Aeon piece
<https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-understand-cells-tissues-and-organisms-as-agents-with-agendas>
Levin wrote with Dennett. Even though it was published 3 1/2 years ago,
it's very much worth reading. It will give you a sense of the kind of work
Levin does.It also illustrates Dennett's notion of competence without
comprehension from his From Bacteria to Bach and Back
<https://www.amazon.com/Bacteria-Bach-Back-Evolution-Minds/dp/0393242072>,
published
3 years earlier. The article is a very nice example of the melding of two
minds.

Many will want to maintain that real cognition is what brains do, and what
happens in biochemistry only seems like it’s doing similar things. We
propose an inversion of this familiar idea; the point is not to
anthropomorphise morphogenesis – the point is to naturalise cognition.
There is nothing magic that humans (or other smart animals) do that doesn’t
have a phylogenetic history. Taking evolution seriously means asking what
cognition looked like all the way back. Modern data in the field of basal
cognition makes it impossible to maintain an artificial dichotomy of ‘real’
and ‘as-if’ cognition. There is one continuum along which all living
systems (and many nonliving ones) can be placed, with respect to how much
thinking they can do.


-- Russ Abbott
Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles


On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 1:15 PM Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com>
wrote:

> Michael Levin's farewell to Dan Dennett
>   https://thoughtforms.life/farewell-dan-dennett-i-will-really-miss-you/
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 19, 2024 at 2:46 PM Stephen Guerin <
> stephen.guerin at simtable.com> wrote:
>
>> Such a loss :-(
>>>
>>> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-philosopher-atheist-darwinist/
>>
>>
>> yes a loss of a great person and intellectual. Though in the loss is the
>> possibility of progress.  if you consider the above "atheist-darwinist" url
>> representing a certain paradigm in which Dennett has been cast as a central
>> figure.
>>
>> Planck's Principle on paradigms and funerals:
>>
>> An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually
>> winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul
>> becomes Paul
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_Paul_the_Apostle>. What
>> does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing
>> generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another
>> instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.
>> — Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33, 97
>>
>> Colloquially, this is often paraphrased as "Science progresses one
>> funeral at a time"
>>
>>
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> Stephen Guerin
>> CEO, Founder
>> https://simtable.com
>> stephen.guerin at simtable.com
>>
>> stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu
>> Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
>> <https://hwpi.harvard.edu/eps-visualization-research-laboratory/home>
>>
>> mobile: (505)577-5828
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 19, 2024 at 1:03 PM Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Such a loss :-(
>>>
>>> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-philosopher-atheist-darwinist/
>>>
>>> I will put his autobiography "I’ve Been Thinking" from last year on my
>>> reading list
>>>
>>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/01/ive-been-thinking-by-daniel-c-dennett-review-an-engaging-vexing-memoir-with-a-humility-bypass
>>>
>>> -J.
>>>
>>>
>>> -------- Original message --------
>>> From: Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net>
>>> Date: 4/19/24 7:32 PM (GMT+01:00)
>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)
>>>
>>> A sad day today. Daniel Dennett has died :-( For every big question in
>>> philosophy there is at least one Daniel Dennett book:
>>>
>>> "Consciousnes Explained" (1991) about consciousness
>>> "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (1995) about evolution
>>> "Freedom Evolves" (2003) about free will
>>> "Breaking the spell" (2006) about religion
>>>
>>> https://dailynous.com/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-death-1942-2024/
>>>
>>> -J.
>>>
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