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Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Difference between revisions
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Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{review|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea|Daniel Dennett|July 29, 2004|Oolon Colluphid is in the house}} This fascinating, difficult book has a simple premise: evolution describes a...") |
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{{review|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea|Daniel Dennett|July 29, 2004|Oolon Colluphid is in the house}} | {{review|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea|Daniel Dennett|R22CKJ180GF8F7|July 29, 2004|Oolon Colluphid is in the house}} | ||
This fascinating, difficult book has a simple premise: evolution describes a colossal series of individual, algorithmic steps, none of which is accompanied by any specific intention or intelligence. | This fascinating, difficult book has a simple premise: evolution describes a colossal series of individual, algorithmic steps, none of which is accompanied by any specific intention or intelligence. | ||
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* [[Mind]]/[[AI]] - if we evolved from organisms which do not have any form of [[consciousness]], and that process did not itself involve intentionality or intelligence (until the arrival of human intelligence, which Dennett would describe as a "crane") then any account of consciousness *must* be wholly explicable in physical terms, and (though Dennett doesn't say this) it must be conceptually possible, with the correct technology (which we may of course never have), to synthesise not just the functional equivalent of consciousness, but actual consciousness itself. | * [[Mind]]/[[AI]] - if we evolved from organisms which do not have any form of [[consciousness]], and that process did not itself involve intentionality or intelligence (until the arrival of human intelligence, which Dennett would describe as a "crane") then any account of consciousness *must* be wholly explicable in physical terms, and (though Dennett doesn't say this) it must be conceptually possible, with the correct technology (which we may of course never have), to synthesise not just the functional equivalent of consciousness, but actual consciousness itself. | ||
This second point (but not the extrapolation) is the central thesis of | This second point (but not the extrapolation) is the central thesis of Dennett’s book {{br|Consciousness Explained}}. In many ways, I wish I had read Darwin’s Dangerous Idea first, for the premises on which Dennett's account of consciousness are based are set out here in a great deal of depth. | ||
As you progress through Darwin's Dangerous Idea, having unequivocally lost the ideas of God and a "soul", a further order of things which are very central to civilisation as we know it start to collapse as well, most notably the ideas that there are external concepts of "right" and "wrong" at all. | As you progress through Darwin's Dangerous Idea, having unequivocally lost the ideas of God and a "soul", a further order of things which are very central to civilisation as we know it start to collapse as well, most notably the ideas that there are external concepts of "right" and "wrong" at all. | ||