The 4 biggest ideas in philosophy, with legend Daniel Dennett for Big Think+

Daniel died on april/2024… this less than twelve minutes video is very clear and intelligible. The so called "hard problem of consciousness" would be a good replacement for "memetic theory" and "intentional stance"!!! and would result in three landmarks instead of 4 "points"!!

I'm not claiming Descartes had a stomach, but agriculture shielded him from the immediate struggles of nature.

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Descartes' statement "I think, therefore I am" (Cogito, ergo sum) is foundational in Western philosophy, emphasizing the certainty of self-awareness as the basis for knowledge. The context of his time, indeed during an agricultural age, allowed for more reflection and philosophical inquiry, as survival was less immediate compared to a hunter-gatherer society.

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I figured this out.

Nature selected for intentionality without thinking about consequences. And then those humans dominated with the intentional stance. What they tell you about nature is true in Darwin. Blind watchmaker.

She gets the credit.
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The shift from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age brought significant changes in human behavior and cognition. During the Stone Age, humans were primarily focused on survival, relying on instinctual behaviors to gather and hunt for food. They could be seen as "food automatons," driven largely by immediate needs.

However, as humans developed agriculture, they began to exert more control over their environment. The rise of intentions, planning, and foresight became essential for activities like farming, domestication of animals, and building settlements. These cognitive advancements allowed humans to not just survive, but thrive, leading to more complex societies and technologies.

Nature didn't "allow" intentions with the foresight that they would lead to domination over it. Evolution selects traits that increase an organism's chances of survival and reproduction in its environment. In the context of agriculture, intentions, planning, and innovation were advantageous traits that helped humans secure food, protect themselves, and build societies.

While this led to humans having a dominant role over nature, it wasn't a predetermined outcome but rather a consequence of how those traits interacted with the changing environment and challenges faced by early agricultural societies. In essence, nature "selected" for traits that were beneficial in the short term, without anticipating the long-term consequences of human dominance.

I use the intentional stance as per David Denett.

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Yes, when you walk a dog on a leash, you are indeed using an intentional stance. You treat the dog as an entity with goals, desires, and intentions, such as wanting to explore, sniff, or follow a particular path. You interpret the dog's behavior as purposeful, and you use the leash to guide or influence those intentions to align with your own, such as keeping the dog safe or staying on a certain route. This approach reflects how humans interact with animals by attributing intentionality to them.

I remember reading Dawkins’s book, The God Delusion and Dennett’s Breaking the Spell (both 2006) pretty much back to back. As a person who just doesn’t understand why intelligent people would persist—past childhood—in magical thinking, wish fulfillment fantasies, impossible events, I enjoyed how Dawkins discombobulated religious belief. Fun! But Dennett, with his argument that it is human nature to attribute Intention to complex phenomena, gave me more understanding. I appreciated how he understood that religious people often think their lives would be meaningless without faith. Finally, Dennett did a better job of emphasizing how advances in thought are so often counter-intuitive: that our training in hypothesizing and testing leads us to understandings that our “common sense intuitions” often finds strange, bizarre. I think that, for example, many religious people find it near impossible to understand that they have developed completely unreasonable, untenable and false beliefs through socialization.

Good thing about a philosopher is that they have the heart of doing things their way. When they want to know about something or invent on something they go extra mile for getting more materials and information for that thing. God bless you all.

Life is a journey and teaches every day. Thanks for telling us about it. Bad leadership is one of the problem that is making the world go round bad.

I have read several of dan,s books .He does not just lay out his ideas he metiticously goes through possible counter agreement . He can imegine and so carve out.I receive this news with a great shok in this vedio .I like it much.

What amazing memories and mind ..You will remembered for years and you will remain in the history of legends..Rip

Traditionally, philosophy looks at the big questions of life and knowledge; while science seeks to model the mysteries of the natural world. However, the philosophy of science allows overlap in order to define science, how it works, and how to build scientific knowledge. It makes sense and it's a wonderful piece.