Philosopher Daniel Dennett offers a kind of self-help book for deep thinkers.
Those of you that are regular followers of Learning from Dogs know that I tend to offer posts for the week-end that are light-hearted. Certainly that’s easier for me, if you pardon me from saying, and hopefully a change for you, dear reader.
Well today’s offering is not exactly heavy but it is, nonetheless, not a typical Saturday topic.
However, trust you find it engaging.
Of the many blogs and websites that I follow, I enjoy the regular mental stimulation that flows from the blog Big Think. Recently there was a piece from Daniel Dennett that tickled my interest and I wanted to share it here.
Wikipedia describes Daniel Dennett as follows:
Daniel Clement “Dan” Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.
This is the Big Think piece that caught my eye. Enjoy!
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The Philosopher’s Self-Help Book (with Daniel Dennett)
While Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley busy themselves making every aspect of our lives more efficient (except, perhaps, for the process of discovering these new technologies, learning them, and integrating them into our lives), Daniel Dennett sits up at Tufts University in Massachusetts, philosophizing. His latest book, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking is an attempt to make transparent some of the tricks of the philosopher’s trade. In an accelerating age, it’s a self-help book designed to slow the reader down and improve our ability to think things through.
The kinds of things Mr. Dennett likes to think about include the nature of consciousness, evolution, and religious belief. But the mind-training his new book offers is applicable to any problem you want to consider thoroughly. In an age of quick fixes and corner-cutting, we’re in constant danger of bad decision making – of overreliance on what cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls “system 1”, and what most of us call intuition. This rapid decision making channel of the brain is helpful when we are in mortal danger, or pressed for a quick decision within our areas of expertise. But for most decisions, the slower, more deliberate channel (system 2) is much more reliable. What Dennett offers, then, in Intuition Pumps, is a workout for system 2 – a series of thought experiments you can apply to puzzles real and imagined to bulk up the slower, wiser parts of your consciousness.
Some of the tools Dennett offers in the book are more familiar than others. Reductio ad absurdum arguments, for example, in which we test the validity of a claim by taking it to its most outrageous illogical extreme (a: “all living things have a right to liberty.” b: “so let me get this straight – a blade of grass has a right to liberty? What does that even mean?”). But the true delights of the book are the far-out exercises Dennett and his colleagues have dreamed up in the course of their work, such as “Swampman Meets A Cow-Shark”, from Donald Davidson, which begins:
Suppose lightning strikes a dead tree in a swamp; I am standing nearby. My body is reduced to its elements, while entirely by coincidence (and out of different molecules) the tree is turned into my physical replica. My replica, The Swampman, moves exactly as I did; according to its nature it departs the swamp, encounters and seems to recognize my friends, and appears to return their greetings in English.
Walking us through Davidson’s considerations about whether and to what extent the Swampman is anything like Davidson, and related ones about a cow that gives birth to something that looks exactly like a shark (yet has cow DNA in all of its cells), Dennett teaches us a surprising lesson about the utility of wild philosophical speculation.
Cloaked in the breezy, familiar trappings of a self-help book, Intuition Pumps is in actuality a dark mirror of that genre – a field of rabbit holes designed to leave the reader with more questions than answers, and wiser for the long and indirect journey.
Watch for Daniel Dennett’s Tools For Better Thinking – a Big Think Mentor workshop coming soon.
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Don’t know about you but Daniel Dennett’s book looks like one that deserves reading. If you feel the same way the book is called Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking and here’s the link to Amazon.
Learning from Dogs 
Dennett is a philosopher for general audience as the EU put it, when it gave him the Erasmus prize.
He is no philosophers’ philosopher, you will not catch him revolutionizing the established order of thinking, thus making him tolerable to the masses. Yet he is enlightening for the masses. BTW, Dennett spoke many times of the Iraq war, hence my next connection.
Speaking of reductio per absurdum, all those who don’t want to hurt Assad, in the interest of peace, quiet and humanity, get the newly created Auschwitz Prize. That means a lot of happy laureates! ;-)!
In any case, thanks Paul for reminding your readership that philosophy exists. Contrarily to rumor that it is dead, it’s more alive than ever, and always found, on the edge!
PA
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Patrice, I’ve been cogitating on the Syria affair for a few days. It’s also the reason I have refrained from commenting over at your place.
The problem I have is a total loss of trust in the system of governance, or the process of government if one prefers, of so many western governments. Therefore, I can’t see the gas attack carried out by who knows who on behalf of who knows who in the simple terms of the atrocity, the crossing of a ‘red line’, as it is being promulgated. The USA and France are clearly going to launch hostilities. Time will tell if this action is the noble cause it’s being sold as or part of the complex chess game of owning and controlling the Middle East.
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Well. I don’t see why we can’t put this comment at my “place”. I think it should be put there. that’s where the debate is.
Most of my usiual commenters disagree with my Syrian position. One of my commenters wrote he loved my site, “except when [I] turn into a right wing extremist”. Others suggested I wanted to invade China, Russia, and launch WWIII…
I am zero right wing extremist. I am a certified right wing extremist victim, instead. And avoiding WWIII is the aim.
The action is part noble, part controlling, but controlling can be noble. I have an unpublished essay where I retrace Syrian history, and it’s dynamite that way.
With a tiny planet and enormous means of destruction, control is of the essence. The French Republic ought to control its environment, and that means as far as a VX laden missile can fly.
It’s obvious Assad conducted the attack, as I argued in details on my site. I will comment separately on the trust thing.
PA
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As far as trust is concerned, things change. My disagreements with Obama have gone down. I disagree with the snowden witchhunt, and, mostly the Summers appointment. For the rest, Obama is navigating right at this point. He is actually squeezing plutocracy right now, and exploding Assad is part of it.
As i explained in my latest essay:”White Flag syndrome” that one commenters define as:
“A sweeping, deep-rooted essay, replete with carefully hidden truths. They need to be stated again and again.”
That, not to boast, is much deeper philosophy than Dennett’s, and much more practical. BTW, I am happy Obama is now following the right philosophy on Syria, as explained by me for more than two years…
Squeezing the plutocracy is hyper dangerous, even for Obama. The Mafia is building Toronto, for example, with the complicity of the Canadian government. Do you think Obama could go out, and say:”And, BTW, the Mafia is building Toronto”? No. He has just one skull. But Italian justice and media could say this, and finally did.
Anyway, I wished you would comment on my site.
PA
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Patrice, your two replies are very much appreciated. Let me ponder some more (just turned on a few moments ago) and respond some more.
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