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{{a|book review|}}{{br|From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again}}<br> | {{a|book review|}}{{br|From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again}}<br> | ||
{{author|Daniel Dennett}} < | {{author|Daniel Dennett}} <br> | ||
===On how to philosophise with a hammer=== | ===On how to philosophise with a hammer=== | ||
{{quote| | {{quote|{{rorty on truth}}}} | ||
{{author|Daniel Dennett}} has a knack for a pithy aphorism. He writes technical philosophy in clear, lively prose which invites engagement from enthusiastic amateurs like me. He is best known for 1995’s {{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}}, an exposition about natural selection. Dennett’s insight was to present [[evolution]] as an algorithm: | {{author|Daniel Dennett}} has a knack for a pithy aphorism. He writes technical philosophy in clear, lively prose which invites engagement from enthusiastic amateurs like me. He is best known for 1995’s {{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}}, an exposition about natural selection. Dennett’s insight was to present [[evolution]] as an algorithm: | ||
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Darwin’s idea is dangerous because it works on anything that habitually replicates itself with occasional variations: not just organisms. [[Evolution]] is, says Dennett, like a “[[universal acid]]”, apt to dissolve knotty intellectual conundrums wherever they arise. | Darwin’s idea is dangerous because it works on anything that habitually replicates itself with occasional variations: not just organisms. [[Evolution]] is, says Dennett, like a “[[universal acid]]”, apt to dissolve knotty intellectual conundrums wherever they arise. | ||
Conundrums don’t come knottier than those of classical metaphysics, and {{author|Daniel Dennett}} has spent the 22 years since {{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}} trying to dissolve them with his bottle of universal acid. First it was free will (in 2003’s {{br|Freedom Evolves}}). Then God (in 2006’s {{br|Breaking the Spell}}) and now, in newly published {{br|From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again}}, Dennett returns to mind, a problem which he declared settled as long ago as 1991, in {{br|Consciousness Explained}}. | Conundrums don’t come knottier than those of classical metaphysics, and {{author|Daniel Dennett}} has spent the 22 years since {{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}} trying to dissolve them with his bottle of universal acid. First, it was free will (in 2003’s {{br|Freedom Evolves}}). Then God (in 2006’s {{br|Breaking the Spell}}) and now, in newly published {{br|From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again}}, Dennett returns to mind, a problem which he declared settled as long ago as 1991, in {{br|Consciousness Explained}}. | ||
A one-line summary of each of these books would be: “You’re thinking about it the wrong way. It’s [[evolution]]. Everything else is an illusion”. | A one-line summary of each of these books would be: “You’re thinking about it the wrong way. It’s [[evolution]]. Everything else is an illusion”. | ||
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<center>***</center> | <center>***</center> | ||
This abstraction between data and language puts a back on the table a distinction between the “self” and “the brain that generates it” which Dennett has been very keen to banish. Isn’t this [[dualism]]? It might seem like it but, to co-opt another of Dennett’s coinages, it’s not ''greedy'' dualism. It doesn’t impose a supernatural creator or any other kind of sky-hook. It just observes something special is going on: if you want to go from binary code to rice pudding and income tax, you’ve got a bit more explaining to do. | This abstraction between data and language puts a back on the table a distinction between the “self” and “the brain that generates it” which Dennett has been very keen to banish. Isn’t this [[dualism]]? It might seem like it but, to co-opt another of Dennett’s coinages, it’s not ''greedy'' dualism. It doesn’t impose a supernatural creator or any other kind of sky-hook. It just observes something special is going on: if you want to go from binary code to [[rice pudding and income tax]], you’ve got a bit more explaining to do. | ||
Dennett barely mentions language or [[metaphor]]. He spends a great deal of time talking about words and memes (in their technical sense: gene-like replicating units of cultural transmission, and not cat videos on YouTube). | Dennett barely mentions language or [[metaphor]]. He spends a great deal of time talking about words and memes (in their technical sense: gene-like replicating units of cultural transmission, and not cat videos on YouTube). | ||
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{{quote|There are so many different worlds <br> | {{quote|There are so many different worlds <br> | ||
So many different suns <br> | |||
We have just one world <br> | |||
But we live in different ones <br> | |||
:— Dire Straits, ''Brothers in Arms''.}} | |||
I doubt Mark Knopfler was talking about literary theory. The modern world seems to be polarising. {{author|Daniel Dennett}}’s [[reductionist]] disposition is of a piece with that. But the conscious world each of us inhabits is an ambiguous, ambivalent, imaginarium of a place. Alternative accounts of it and the things in it are just additional tools in the box: we are free to use them, or not, as we wish. If we keep them as alternatives we will not have to philosophise with a hammer when the occasion calls for a soft cotton cloth. | I doubt Mark Knopfler was talking about literary theory. The modern world seems to be polarising. {{author|Daniel Dennett}}’s [[reductionist]] disposition is of a piece with that. But the conscious world each of us inhabits is an ambiguous, ambivalent, imaginarium of a place. Alternative accounts of it and the things in it are just additional tools in the box: we are free to use them, or not, as we wish. If we keep them as alternatives we will not have to philosophise with a hammer when the occasion calls for a soft cotton cloth. | ||