The library finally has notified me that Daniel Dennett's autobiography "I've
been thinking" is ready to borrow. So I went to the library and got it. As
expected an interesting book. He writes about his time in Oxford and his mentor
Gilbert Ryle, his approach to philosophy and his little life hacks.He explains
for example how he used to stay awake in boring talks: he waits until all
characters of the alphabet subsequently appear in the talk and then writes down
the word. First he waits for a word containing A, then for a word containing B,
etc. If he reaches Z he starts again at A. He says J, Q und Z would be
rare...As you know Daniel has written a number of fascinating books. Dennett's
law of philosophy for me is that for every big, fundamental 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
religionWe have discussed all four questions here in FRIAM as well:
consciousness, evolution, free will and religion. The conclusions I came too
(after many discussions here and countless visits to the library) are:+ For
subjective consciousness humans have built tools to solve the "what it is like
to be" question of subjective consciousness. The tools are simply the cinemas
and movie theaters which show the stuff that Hollywood produces. Recently the
GoPro cameras which show what it is like to be a hero fulfill a similar
purpose+ Regarding the spell of religion we have built tools too. Churches,
mosques, synagogues and temples are places where the magic of religion is used
to form groups out of loosely coupled individuals. And the magic turns out to
be gene expression, as I tried to explain in the book from 5 years ago+ For the
question of free will we have invented tools too. Mainly language and "to be or
not to be" thinking of course, but as trivial as it may sound, ordinary things
such as notes and calendars help us to remember what we want to do, thereby
guiding our decision makingI have the feeling that the solutions to the biggest
and most elusive questions can be found in the most ordinary common things,
hiding in plain sight. Would you come to different conclusions in one of big
questions after our discussions here? -J.
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