Daniel Dennett is one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of our time. He has conducted in-depth research on consciousness, free will, religion, evolutionary biology, etc., and has collaborated with Richard Dawkin Together with Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, they are known as the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism".
Daniel Dennett's unique understanding and views on "consciousness" have also profoundly influenced and promoted the development of today's hot artificial intelligence, and he is hailed as an "AI pioneer" by many people in the industry. Many of his works have been translated into Chinese, including "The Evolution of Freedom", "Consciousness Explained", "Who or What Am I?" ” and “Darwin’s Dangerous Ideas” have a wide influence among Chinese readers.
Daniel Dennett, (daniel dennett, 1942-2024).
In the following commemorative article, Xu Yingjin, a professor at the School of Philosophy at Fudan University, discusses in detail the inspiration of this great philosopher's thinking for ordinary philosophy enthusiasts. In Xu Yingjin’s view, Dennett’s philosophical spirit can be summarized as: “cutting off the sky hook”. "Skyhook" refers to an artificial concept deliberately invented by some philosophers. Dennett criticizes philosophical methods that rely on unproven concepts to explain complex problems. He believes this is a kind of intellectual laziness.
In fact, most people are negatively affected by these man-made philosophical concepts all the time, from the abuse of the concept of "freedom" that can be seen everywhere in daily life, to the fact that many master's and doctoral professional papers are reduced to a display of "big philosophical words". In the words of the author: “If you are only aware of Dennett’s academic status when you read this article, it means that the philosophical memes around you have probably been artificially controlled to prevent you from contacting a certain The point of memes.”
Dennett’s academic genealogy
On April 19, 2024, the famous American philosopher Daniel Dennett died of lung disease at the age of 82. His death is not only a great loss for American philosophy, but also a great loss for world philosophy.
Unlike many Americans who have lived in the United States since childhood and know nothing about foreign countries, Dennett grew up in Beirut and therefore has a little understanding of Arab culture. After his father died in a plane crash in Africa (little Dennett was just five years old at the time), he was raised by his mother. Little Dennett studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, the top private prep school in the United States (which was also one of the first American schools to accept young children from the Qing Dynasty studying in the United States), and then studied philosophy as an undergraduate at Harvard University.
At Harvard, he met Quin, the then flourishing master of philosophy. As an Asian, I can't help but interject here. Quin also had a deep relationship with two Asian philosophers. One was Wang Hao, who received his doctorate under Quin's guidance, and the other was Zeng Zeng. Shozo Omori (a Japanese philosopher who combines phenomenology with Wittgenstein's philosophy) is a visiting scholar at Harvard. What Dennett learned from Quine was an attitude towards philosophical work called "naturalism", that is, the belief that there is a continuous relationship between philosophical research and natural science research. Therefore, from a naturalist's point of view, it is not acceptable for those engaged in philosophical research to ignore scientific progress.
However, Dennett received his PhD in philosophy not in the United States, but in Oxford, England. His doctoral thesis supervisor was Gilbert Ryle, a key figure in the Oxford Ordinary Language School movement. Dennett learned two things from his mentor: First, be wary of subjectivist preaching such as "soul" and "consciousness" that are difficult to verify from a third-person perspective, because these preachings have Maybe they are all "bullshitting";
Secondly, the task of philosophers is not to increase our knowledge, but to make everyone's minds clear by clarifying the relationship between conceptual genealogy. Therefore, philosophers should always maintain a humble attitude and not be veterans. Consider yourself a human mentor.As for Dennett's doctoral thesis ("Heart and Brain: Introspective Description and the Question of Intentionality from a Neuroscientific Perspective") completed under the supervision of Ryle, the title already hints at this work that teachers and students are jointly engaged in. The purpose of this philosophical enterprise: to use third-person observation to deprive introspective descriptions of consciousness based on the first-person perspective of the philosophical dignity.
After graduating with his Ph.D., Dennett returned to the United States and taught at Tufts University for a long time. He wrote a lot of books, many of which have been translated into Chinese. It is not easy to summarize all aspects of his academic achievements in such a short article. Instead of introducing readers to the views in each of his books like dropping a book bag, it is better to refine the general spirit of his philosophy in an outline.
I personally use the following four words to summarize its philosophical spirit: cut off the sky hook.
Daniel Dennett.
Sky Hook and Sky Hook Philosopher:
"Getting something for nothing" in intellectual research
What is "Sky Hook"? This is a metaphor that Dennett likes to refer to artificial concepts deliberately invented by some philosophers to explain certain phenomena. These concepts are just like the Bodhisattvas who appear from time to time in "Journey to the West" to help Sun Wukong deal with the monsters that block his way. They use a super power that no member of the team has to make the road to the scriptures relatively smooth.
For example, in order to explain why humans can make causal judgments, Kantians invented a skyhook called "causal category". In other words, they regarded abduction as evidence. But from the perspective of court debate, abduction can only constitute a hypothesis, not a kind of evidence.
Another example: Suppose an elephant in the Vienna Zoo was killed and dismembered last night, and the local police found the footprints and fingerprints of several different people at the scene - then, can you Therefore, how many people are responsible for killing elephants? The police are certainly entitled to think this way and use it as a clue to solve the case - but such a conception may not be factual. Why can't the truth be like this: a powerful perpetrator killed the elephant alone and deliberately left different fingerprints and footprints at the scene in order to interfere with the police's thinking of handling the case? Obviously, the above-mentioned chain of evidence is incomplete without arresting the suspect and obtaining a reliable confession.
By the same token, what right do Kantians have to think that the “causal categories” they conceive of are a correct representation of human cognitive architecture? Just because humans are indeed capable of making causal judgments, does it follow that there are causal categories in the human mind that make such judgments possible? At best, this can only be used as a clue for thinking, and cannot be used as a "case closure report". Otherwise, a police officer who can judge that the perpetrator must be multiple people just by seeing the fingerprints of multiple people at the crime scene would have the right to write a case closure report immediately.
Stills from "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch" (2018).
This way of thinking that attempts to bypass evidence collection and directly use assumptions as conclusions is "sky hook" thinking in the philosophical sense. The key point of this metaphor is: a philosophical hypothesis is like a hook that suddenly falls from the sky. It is something "for nothing" in intellectual research. Therefore, even if you obtain such a hook, you must investigate its origin clearly and do not covet it. Convenience, use it first. But in Dennett's view, there are too many "Skyhook enthusiasts" in the philosophical world, which makes learning and researching such philosophy a kind of intellectual degeneration.
- Some people may say: The police's tracing of the truth of the crime involves public interests. Of course, we cannot use "sky hooks" casually to prevaricate. But even if philosophers' discussions about the nature of the mind are a little rough, what harm can it do to the public interests? Woolen cloth? Who cares whether you use a skyhook or not? These seem to be just "turbulence in a teacup". The situation with
is not that simple. As mentioned before, Dennett’s academic pedigree comes from Ryle and Quin, and the academic pedigree of the two (especially Ryle) is related to the late Wittgenstein, who taught at Cambridge University for a long time.One of the key points of Wittgenstein's later philosophy was his opposition to traditional philosophers' attempts to make philosophical research mysterious by inventing some big words, thus causing the inflation of language vocabulary. The result of this inflation is that people who have studied these philosophies often attack abstract concept labels like Don Quixote, but are indifferent to the eating and drinking men and women in daily life. From a sociological point of view, the proliferation of this kind of philosophical style will create a group of loose-minded tourists (and the kind with the aura of a prestigious school) who are ignorant of the real concerns of the masses but obsessed with conceptual games. On the contrary, this will harm the gradual social progress.
"From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again", author: Daniel Dennett, Zhanlu Culture | China Economic Press, March 2024.
"Of course I have free will",
But is it really that simple?
A big word that has become the ideological imprint of many people in the West through the expansion of such words, but has already caused countless disputes, is the so-called "freedom". Liberals always talk about "freedom" when they have nothing to do, and what's interesting is that different political camps that are hostile to each other like to write this big word on their foreheads (at this moment, I suddenly remembered a slogan: "From the river to Ocean, x will eventually be free" - the empty seat left by "x" here is like a bench on the subway, you can sit on it as long as no one takes it).
Dennett himself is not a political philosopher, but in the fields of philosophy of mind and philosophy of action, he has launched an attack on the philosophical foundation of the mind of the concept of "freedom" - "free will". Please note that according to Dennett's philosophy, to unthinkingly assume that we have "free will" is to pray for sky hook thinking, because this way of thinking, like Kantian thinking that deduces the existence of categories, treats assumptions as Closing report. According to libertarians (that is, the group of philosophers who believe that free will exists objectively), since we experience free will - "I can freely decide to continue reading this memorial article about Dennett, or I can Choose not to read”—then, of course I have free will. But is it really that simple? Please look at another narrative about free will given by Dennett:
Our feeling of freedom is actually related to the objective operation of our decision-making mechanism. Some decisions will not involve conflicts of interest, so you will not feel that you are going through some deliberation - for example, generally speaking, a soldier in training will drink without thinking when faced with a water bottle handed to him by his comrades. water inside without any thought. The reason is simple. In most cases, you don't need to think to know how to walk or drink water, otherwise, you will be exhausted. But when complex interest entanglements are involved, thinking will come into play. Suppose your comrades give you the canteen filled with the last life-saving water of the entire company. How much of it will you drink? Not drinking at all is obviously not good for your own health, but if you drink too much, what will your comrades think of you? Therefore, you need to make some calculations at this time in order to grasp the appropriateness of your actions: should you take a small sip or a large sip?
Stills from "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch" (2018).
When you are thinking this way, your brain is actually operating in a very complex way, and most of the details of the operation cannot be subjectively realized by you. However, some important thoughts often trigger the operation of your "reason-giving mechanism", thereby making the reasons for your decision-making aware of you. For example, if you suddenly see dark clouds in the sky and expect it to rain soon, you will reason that your team will have water within the next few hours. In this case, you will make the decision to "take a sip of water now" because the water shortage problem will be alleviated soon. And when you realize that you make such decisions based on these reasons, you realize that you are rational and therefore free.Obviously, the so-called "free will" is nothing more than a by-product of consciousness derived from the ability to reflect on the reasons for decision-making. Without this entire mechanism, there is no independent "free narrative" at all.
Dennett's view cannot be regarded as some kind of "determinism" that denies freedom (according to this theory, human beings are like general physical objects, and their every move is controlled by physical laws), but the so-called "determinism" that denies freedom. Compatibilism" (according to this theory, humans are both restricted by physical laws and can be said to be free). In other words, even though he does not object to our use of the concept of "freedom", he follows in the footsteps of his mentor Ryle and repeatedly reminds readers to pay attention to the role of the concept of "freedom" in complex conceptual systems (especially the language of "reason giving"). the game's conceptual system), lest "skyhook enthusiasts" break away from this network and use the word too freely. And if the word "freedom" is used so wrongly, it will cause the so-called "conceptual inflation" problem, and the error caused by this is similar to a person who does not know the financial fact that the national currency is anchored in gold. Mistakes made by rulers who issued currency.
"Explanation of Consciousness", written by Daniel Dennett, translated by Su Dechao and others, Xinsi Culture | CITIC Publishing Group, July 2022. For more information about this book, see: Xu Yingjin: "Consciousness is explained." Is this statement reasonable?
Dennett's critics clearly won't shut up. There are two types of criticisms they issued:
First, isn’t the compatibilist model of free generation given by Dennett himself a skyhook? Why should we buy into a skyhook imposed on us by a philosopher who opposes the skyhook way of thinking?
Second, assuming Dennett’s theory is correct, where does human autonomy lie? You are said to be free simply because such a description conforms to the expectations of natural language users - but what about the basis of your own free existence? Are you purely negative without the description of others?
Regarding the above two questions, the Dennettist's reply is as follows:
Answer 1: The free model of compatibilism is not a skyhook, but a product of "crane thinking". What is "crane thinking"? It means resorting to the idea of gradual change given by the theory of evolution, explaining the formation of human cognitive architecture bit by bit, and resolutely not skipping a step in it. For example, if you want to explain why ornithischian dinosaurs evolved into Archaeopteryx, you have to list the fossils of various transitional species, and you cannot suddenly scare people with the fossils of Archaeopteryx. This way of thinking corresponds to the thinking of cranes, that is, you have to lift building materials piece by piece with a crane that you can operate, and you cannot expect any skyhook to do it for you. Following this line of thinking, Dennett described the process of freedom emerging in nature in his book "The Evolution of Freedom", that is, the gradual change process from simple decision-making mechanisms to complex decision-making mechanisms. In his view, as long as the task faced by an agent is complex enough, it needs to record the reasons for its decision-making in its long-term memory so that it can recall this information when dealing with similar problems in the future - and this is important for The recording ability of reasons itself was obviously slowly evolved to improve the adaptability of intelligent agents to the environment, and was not a gift given to humans by "Skyhook". Therefore, the result of theoretical reflection on the above-mentioned evolutionary process (that is, Dennett’s own compatibilist view of freedom) is not the product of another skyhook philosophy.
"The Evolution of Freedom", written by Daniel Dennett, translated by Qu Jiao, CITIC Publishing Group, September 2022.
Answer 2: Dennett’s model of freedom does regard freedom as the product of a discourse pattern—that is, someone is free because treating him or her as a free agent brings about a a narrative convenience. Whether he himself is free or not does not concern the Denist. Obviously, this is a view that can easily offend the self-esteem of some people, because they believe that having freedom (rather than just being said to be free) is the key mark of being human.
But in the view of Dennettists, Dennett's theory can better make his explanation of human behavior consistent with our findings in psychology, communication and behavioral economics. The recently deceased Nobel laureate psychologist Kahneman has long pointed out that human psychological decision-making activities are easily controlled by external influences - for example, as long as you always believe that a political group is evil through some kind of propaganda , and the other group persecuted by it (let's temporarily call it "x") is innocent, you will feel that standing in the position of x shouting something like "from the river to the ocean, x will eventually be free" The slogan is justice. But obviously, you may just be the victim of some kind of carefully designed cognitive warfare. It's a pity, because even the brains of those self-proclaimed college students studying at Ivy League universities actually inherited the ancient architecture from the gatherer-hunter era. Therefore, the effective working range of their cognitive radar is definitely at a Under the limit of "Dunbar's number" (that is, 150 people) (according to the theory of British anthropologist Dunbar, the complexity of the social network composed of 150 people constitutes the cognitive upper limit of our ability to deal with acquaintance relationships). In this case, their judgment is likely to be influenced by the "stratosphere" around them, and they will lose their accuracy when facing super complex international issues that exceed the upper limit of Dunbar number.
I do not hope that what I have written above will cause readers to misunderstand Dennett’s theory that he “demeaningifies” everything that people do in the name of “freedom.” During World War II, the Allied forces liberated the surviving Holocaust survivors in the Dachau concentration camp in the name of freedom. Of course, it had a positive historical significance, but the process of giving this meaning has nothing to do with whether we have the freedom to exist independently of social evaluation. Status is irrelevant.
Dennett's theory is obviously in sharp contrast to Rousseau's famous saying - "Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains". Dennettists might rephrase Rousseau's words this way: "Man is born into a network of social evaluations, and is always evaluated as the possessor of freedom." What needs to be noted here is that it is precisely this rewriting that makes this new view of freedom more acceptable to the public’s moral common sense, while Rousseau’s view of freedom is not.
Specifically, Rousseau's theory made him lack sufficient theoretical resources to criticize Robespierre's indiscriminate killings in the name of freedom (since Robespierre was also born free, of course he could also use freedom Tens of thousands of people were executed in the name).
——In the view of Dennettists, freedom is essentially the product of social evaluation, and this evaluation is aimed at the rationality of the parties’ reasons for acting. Therefore, we can certainly classify those Good actions (i.e. actions based on legitimate reasons) are distinguished from bad actions.
So, which reasons are good reasons and which are bad reasons?
Don’t forget, Dennett is a super-Darwinist, so good ideas—inspired by science writer Dawkins, Dennett also calls those human ideas that can be spread “memes”— The dissemination of ideas can promote the reproductive fitness of concept users, but not vice versa. For example, the meme "Kill all the French nobles" invented by the Jacobins is a bad meme. This is tantamount to eradicating the physical carrier of science, technology, culture and art accumulated in the Louis XVI era, thereby reducing the The French nation will reproduce moderately in the future (by the way, the reason why Germany was confident that it could defeat France before World War I was because the demographics at that time showed that Germany's high fertility rate gave it a richer reserve force than France).
"Darwin's Dangerous Ideas", author: (U.S.) Daniel Dennett, translator: Zhang Penghan, Zhao Qingyuan, CITIC Publishing House, February 2023.
In other words, while human morality in a broad sense is against indiscriminate killing, Dennett's Memetic Society is particularly opposed to indiscriminate killing aimed at destroying the physical bearers of important memes.Therefore, with the ideological benchmark provided by Darwinism, Dennett cannot be regarded as a cultural relativist or postmodernist who believes that "anything goes". Rather, standard Denists would regard such postmodernist ideas as a bad meme: because postmodernists' laissez-faire attitude toward traditional marriage would reduce the reproduction of such meme recipients Moderation makes postmodernism a kind of "cultivating children and exterminating grandchildren" - while the original meaning of Darwinism is precisely to see "population flourish".
Not to be tolerated as a fighter in the American cultural civil war
Dennett's critical attitude towards postmodernism seems to make it easy for him to become a confidant of American Christian conservatism - but the trouble is, because Dennett himself regards Christian ideas as merely A meme that refuses to acknowledge the existence of God has also been a thorn in the side of conservatives.
From this perspective, Dennett’s position in the current American cultural civil war is somewhat similar to Su Shi’s in the Northern Song Dynasty. Due to Su Shi’s political maverick, both Wang Anshi’s new party and Sima Guang’s old party squeezed him out. ——Correspondingly, Dennett's criticism of cultural pluralism makes him unable to be accepted by the radical left on American campuses; and his critical attitude towards religion makes him unable to be accepted by the "red necks" in the world. . But from Dennett's own standpoint, being in such an embarrassing position is also determined by his philosophical character. The most important academic virtue that philosophers need to demonstrate is coherence, that is, they cannot slap themselves in the face. If Dennett converts to Christianity in order to please conservatism, how can he continue to be a fighter who cuts off all skyhooks? Isn't it the most typical sky hook thinking to appeal to God for all explanation problems?
I've been thinking about the cover illustration of the English version of Daniel Dennett's book.
Finally, I would like to say a few words of sincerity to philosophy lovers in the Chinese world. If you are only now aware of Dennett’s academic status as you read this, it’s likely that the philosophical memes around you have been artificially controlled to the point of not allowing you to engage with a particular meme. The purpose of this kind of control is obviously to leave ecological niches for other philosophical memes - if you don't keep some of them, you will be tempted to believe the following argument, which will sooner or later lead to the conclusion of "cutting off descendants": Marriage is a human being Invented false social forms need to be abandoned; science itself is nothing more than a power structure and an ideological illusion; any authority needs to be brought down; Robespierre was right, even if he ultimately killed him revolutionary comrade Dandong, and so on.
I don’t know how widely these negative memes have spread, but based on my experience as a philosophy teacher for more than 20 years in reviewing a large number of philosophy major dissertations, I really don’t want to underestimate the breadth of their spread, because many papers All of them showed me the author's disregard for science and ignorance of traditional culture - and the coffin board used to cover up these gaps in knowledge was full of philosophical words borrowed by the author from the "Sky Hook Philosopher".
As a result, many doctoral dissertations in philosophy eventually turned into "big word display science": "Oh, my dear tutor, I have already verified that the first big word invented by a certain philosopher appeared in this book Later, this big word gave rise to five big words, which all appeared in another book published by the philosopher in Paris ten years later. You see, my philosophical research work is. Not very solid?" Reading these papers often made me feel ethically distressed. For human reasons, I certainly would not give these papers a failing grade, but letting my own cognitive system process these negative memes does take up my time resources for processing those positive memes - for example, reading Danny special time.
The man is gone, but the memes remain. This short article is dedicated to the memory of my philosophical idol Dennett. Written by
/Editor by Xu Yingjin
/Li Yongbo Liu Yaguang
Proofreader/Wang Xin
