ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dan Dennett - Philosopher, cognitive scientist
Dan Dennett thinks that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes.

Why you should listen

One of our most important living philosophers, Dan Dennett is best known for his provocative and controversial arguments that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes in the brain. He argues that the brain's computational circuitry fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and that what we call consciousness — isn't. His 2003 book "Freedom Evolves" explores how our brains evolved to give us -- and only us -- the kind of freedom that matters, while 2006's "Breaking the Spell" examines belief through the lens of biology.

This mind-shifting perspective on the mind itself has distinguished Dennett's career as a philosopher and cognitive scientist. And while the philosophy community has never quite known what to make of Dennett (he defies easy categorization, and refuses to affiliate himself with accepted schools of thought), his computational approach to understanding the brain has made him, as Edge's John Brockman writes, “the philosopher of choice of the AI community.”

“It's tempting to say that Dennett has never met a robot he didn't like, and that what he likes most about them is that they are philosophical experiments,” Harry Blume wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in 1998. “To the question of whether machines can attain high-order intelligence, Dennett makes this provocative answer: ‘The best reason for believing that robots might some day become conscious is that we human beings are conscious, and we are a sort of robot ourselves.'"

In recent years, Dennett has become outspoken in his atheism, and his 2006 book Breaking the Spell calls for religion to be studied through the scientific lens of evolutionary biology. Dennett regards religion as a natural -- rather than supernatural -- phenomenon, and urges schools to break the taboo against empirical examination of religion. He argues that religion's influence over human behavior is precisely what makes gaining a rational understanding of it so necessary: “If we don't understand religion, we're going to miss our chance to improve the world in the 21st century.”

Dennett's landmark books include The Mind's I, co-edited with Douglas Hofstaedter, Consciousness Explained, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Read an excerpt from his 2013 book, Intuition Pumps, in the Guardian >>

More profile about the speaker
Dan Dennett | Speaker | TED.com
TED2002

Dan Dennett: Dangerous memes

Filmed:
1,954,033 views

Starting with the simple tale of an ant, philosopher Dan Dennett unleashes a devastating salvo of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of memes -- concepts that are literally alive.
- Philosopher, cognitive scientist
Dan Dennett thinks that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:25
How many Creationists do we have in the room?
0
0
3000
00:28
Probably none. I think we're all Darwinians.
1
3000
3000
00:31
And yet many Darwinians are anxious, a little uneasy --
2
6000
7000
00:38
would like to see some limits on just how far the Darwinism goes.
3
13000
5000
00:43
It's all right.
4
18000
2000
00:45
You know spiderwebs? Sure, they are products of evolution.
5
20000
4000
00:49
The World Wide Web? Not so sure.
6
24000
4000
00:53
Beaver dams, yes. Hoover Dam, no.
7
28000
2000
00:55
What do they think it is that prevents the products of human ingenuity
8
30000
6000
01:01
from being themselves, fruits of the tree of life,
9
36000
3000
01:04
and hence, in some sense, obeying evolutionary rules?
10
39000
5000
01:10
And yet people are interestingly resistant
11
45000
4000
01:14
to the idea of applying evolutionary thinking to thinking -- to our thinking.
12
49000
7000
01:21
And so I'm going to talk a little bit about that,
13
56000
4000
01:25
keeping in mind that we have a lot on the program here.
14
60000
4000
01:29
So you're out in the woods, or you're out in the pasture,
15
64000
4000
01:33
and you see this ant crawling up this blade of grass.
16
68000
3000
01:36
It climbs up to the top, and it falls,
17
71000
3000
01:39
and it climbs, and it falls, and it climbs --
18
74000
3000
01:42
trying to stay at the very top of the blade of grass.
19
77000
4000
01:46
What is this ant doing? What is this in aid of?
20
81000
5000
01:51
What goals is this ant trying to achieve by climbing this blade of grass?
21
86000
7000
01:58
What's in it for the ant?
22
93000
2000
02:00
And the answer is: nothing. There's nothing in it for the ant.
23
95000
6000
02:06
Well then, why is it doing this?
24
101000
3000
02:09
Is it just a fluke?
25
104000
2000
02:11
Yeah, it's just a fluke. It's a lancet fluke.
26
106000
7000
02:18
It's a little brain worm.
27
113000
2000
02:20
It's a parasitic brain worm that has to get into the stomach of a sheep or a cow
28
115000
5000
02:25
in order to continue its life cycle.
29
120000
3000
02:28
Salmon swim upstream to get to their spawning grounds,
30
123000
5000
02:33
and lancet flukes commandeer a passing ant,
31
128000
4000
02:37
crawl into its brain, and drive it up a blade of grass like an all-terrain vehicle.
32
132000
5000
02:42
So there's nothing in it for the ant.
33
137000
4000
02:46
The ant's brain has been hijacked by a parasite that infects the brain,
34
141000
8000
02:54
inducing suicidal behavior.
35
149000
3000
02:58
Pretty scary.
36
153000
2000
03:00
Well, does anything like that happen with human beings?
37
155000
4000
03:05
This is all on behalf of a cause other than one's own genetic fitness, of course.
38
160000
5000
03:10
Well, it may already have occurred to you
39
165000
5000
03:15
that Islam means "surrender," or "submission of self-interest to the will of Allah."
40
170000
10000
03:25
Well, it's ideas -- not worms -- that hijack our brains.
41
180000
6000
03:31
Now, am I saying that a sizable minority of the world's population
42
186000
5000
03:36
has had their brain hijacked by parasitic ideas?
43
191000
6000
03:43
No, it's worse than that.
44
198000
2000
03:45
Most people have.
45
200000
4000
03:49
(Laughter)
46
204000
2000
03:53
There are a lot of ideas to die for.
47
208000
2000
03:55
Freedom, if you're from New Hampshire.
48
210000
3000
03:58
(Laughter)
49
213000
3000
04:02
Justice. Truth. Communism.
50
217000
4000
04:06
Many people have laid down their lives for communism,
51
221000
3000
04:09
and many have laid down their lives for capitalism.
52
224000
3000
04:12
And many for Catholicism. And many for Islam.
53
227000
4000
04:16
These are just a few of the ideas that are to die for.
54
231000
5000
04:21
They're infectious.
55
236000
2000
04:24
Yesterday, Amory Lovins spoke about "infectious repititis."
56
239000
4000
04:28
It was a term of abuse, in effect.
57
243000
3000
04:31
This is unthinking engineering.
58
246000
2000
04:33
Well, most of the cultural spread that goes on
59
248000
4000
04:37
is not brilliant, new, out-of-the-box thinking.
60
252000
4000
04:41
It's "infectious repetitis,"
61
256000
2000
04:43
and we might as well try to have a theory of what's going on when that happens
62
258000
5000
04:48
so that we can understand the conditions of infection.
63
263000
4000
04:54
Hosts work hard to spread these ideas to others.
64
269000
7000
05:01
I myself am a philosopher, and one of our occupational hazards
65
276000
6000
05:07
is that people ask us what the meaning of life is.
66
282000
4000
05:11
And you have to have a bumper sticker,
67
286000
3000
05:14
you know. You have to have a statement.
68
289000
3000
05:17
So, this is mine.
69
292000
2000
05:19
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are
70
294000
4000
05:23
and dedicate your life to it.
71
298000
2000
05:25
Most of us -- now that the "Me Decade" is well in the past --
72
300000
4000
05:29
now we actually do this.
73
304000
2000
05:31
One set of ideas or another
74
306000
3000
05:34
have simply replaced our biological imperatives in our own lives.
75
309000
4000
05:38
This is what our summum bonum is.
76
313000
3000
05:41
It's not maximizing the number of grandchildren we have.
77
316000
3000
05:44
Now, this is a profound biological effect.
78
319000
4000
05:48
It's the subordination of genetic interest to other interests.
79
323000
3000
05:51
And no other species does anything at all like it.
80
326000
4000
05:55
Well, how are we going to think about this?
81
330000
2000
05:57
It is, on the one hand, a biological effect, and a very large one.
82
332000
4000
06:01
Unmistakable.
83
336000
2000
06:03
Now, what theories do we want to use to look at this?
84
338000
3000
06:06
Well, many theories. But how could something tie them together?
85
341000
3000
06:09
The idea of replicating ideas;
86
344000
3000
06:12
ideas that replicate by passing from brain to brain.
87
347000
5000
06:17
Richard Dawkins, whom you'll be hearing later in the day, invented the term "memes,"
88
352000
5000
06:22
and put forward the first really clear and vivid version of this idea
89
357000
5000
06:27
in his book "The Selfish Gene."
90
362000
2000
06:29
Now here am I talking about his idea.
91
364000
3000
06:32
Well, you see, it's not his. Yes -- he started it.
92
367000
6000
06:38
But it's everybody's idea now.
93
373000
3000
06:41
And he's not responsible for what I say about memes.
94
376000
4000
06:45
I'm responsible for what I say about memes.
95
380000
4000
06:50
Actually, I think we're all responsible
96
385000
3000
06:53
for not just the intended effects of our ideas,
97
388000
6000
06:59
but for their likely misuses.
98
394000
3000
07:03
So it is important, I think, to Richard, and to me,
99
398000
4000
07:07
that these ideas not be abused and misused.
100
402000
4000
07:11
They're very easy to misuse. That's why they're dangerous.
101
406000
3000
07:14
And it's just about a full-time job
102
409000
3000
07:17
trying to prevent people who are scared of these ideas
103
412000
3000
07:20
from caricaturing them and then running off to one dire purpose or another.
104
415000
8000
07:28
So we have to keep plugging away,
105
423000
3000
07:31
trying to correct the misapprehensions
106
426000
2000
07:33
so that only the benign and useful variants of our ideas continue to spread.
107
428000
8000
07:41
But it is a problem.
108
436000
2000
07:45
We don't have much time, and I'm going to go over just a little bit of this and cut out,
109
440000
5000
07:50
because there's a lot of other things that are going to be said.
110
445000
3000
07:53
So let me just point out: memes are like viruses.
111
448000
5000
07:58
That's what Richard said, back in '93.
112
453000
2000
08:00
And you might think, "Well, how can that be?
113
455000
2000
08:02
I mean, a virus is -- you know, it's stuff! What's a meme made of?"
114
457000
7000
08:09
Yesterday, Negroponte was talking about viral telecommunications
115
464000
5000
08:14
but -- what's a virus?
116
469000
1000
08:15
A virus is a string of nucleic acid with attitude.
117
470000
4000
08:19
(Laughter)
118
474000
1000
08:20
That is, there is something about it
119
475000
2000
08:22
that tends to make it replicate better than the competition does.
120
477000
4000
08:26
And that's what a meme is. It's an information packet with attitude.
121
481000
4000
08:30
What's a meme made of? What are bits made of, Mom?
122
485000
6000
08:36
Not silicon.
123
491000
2000
08:38
They're made of information, and can be carried in any physical medium.
124
493000
4000
08:42
What's a word made of?
125
497000
2000
08:44
Sometimes when people say, "Do memes exist?"
126
499000
5000
08:49
I say, "Well, do words exist? Are they in your ontology?"
127
504000
4000
08:53
If they are, words are memes that can be pronounced.
128
508000
5000
08:58
Then there's all the other memes that can't be pronounced.
129
513000
3000
09:01
There are different species of memes.
130
516000
3000
09:09
Remember the Shakers? Gift to be simple?
131
524000
4000
09:13
Simple, beautiful furniture?
132
528000
3000
09:16
And, of course, they're basically extinct now.
133
531000
3000
09:19
And one of the reasons is that among the creed of Shaker-dom
134
534000
6000
09:25
is that one should be celibate.
135
540000
2000
09:27
Not just the priests. Everybody.
136
542000
2000
09:29
Well, it's not so surprising that they've gone extinct. (Laughter)
137
544000
8000
09:37
But in fact that's not why they went extinct.
138
552000
3000
09:42
They survived as long as they did
139
557000
3000
09:45
at a time when the social safety nets weren't there.
140
560000
2000
09:47
And there were lots of widows and orphans,
141
562000
3000
09:50
people like that, who needed a foster home.
142
565000
3000
09:53
And so they had a ready supply of converts.
143
568000
3000
09:56
And they could keep it going.
144
571000
2000
09:58
And, in principle, it could've gone on forever,
145
573000
2000
10:00
with perfect celibacy on the part of the hosts.
146
575000
3000
10:03
The idea being passed on through proselytizing,
147
578000
5000
10:08
instead of through the gene line.
148
583000
3000
10:13
So the ideas can live on in spite of the fact
149
588000
4000
10:17
that they're not being passed on genetically.
150
592000
3000
10:20
A meme can flourish in spite of having a negative impact on genetic fitness.
151
595000
4000
10:24
After all, the meme for Shaker-dom was essentially a sterilizing parasite.
152
599000
8000
10:33
There are other parasites that do this -- which render the host sterile.
153
608000
6000
10:40
It's part of their plan.
154
615000
2000
10:42
They don't have to have minds to have a plan.
155
617000
4000
10:47
I'm just going to draw your attention to just one
156
622000
5000
10:52
of the many implications of the memetic perspective, which I recommend.
157
627000
8000
11:01
I've not time to go into more of it.
158
636000
2000
11:03
In Jared Diamond's wonderful book, "Guns, Germs and Steel,"
159
638000
4000
11:07
he talks about how it was germs, more than guns and steel,
160
642000
6000
11:13
that conquered the new hemisphere -- the Western hemisphere --
161
648000
5000
11:18
that conquered the rest of the world.
162
653000
2000
11:20
When European explorers and travelers spread out,
163
655000
7000
11:27
they brought with them the germs
164
662000
2000
11:29
that they had become essentially immune to,
165
664000
3000
11:32
that they had learned how to tolerate over
166
667000
3000
11:35
hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands of years,
167
670000
3000
11:38
of living with domesticated animals who were the sources of those pathogens.
168
673000
4000
11:43
And they just wiped out -- these pathogens just wiped out the native people,
169
678000
5000
11:48
who had no immunity to them at all.
170
683000
3000
11:51
And we're doing it again.
171
686000
3000
11:55
We're doing it this time with toxic ideas.
172
690000
4000
12:00
Yesterday, a number of people -- Nicholas Negroponte and others --
173
695000
4000
12:04
spoke about all the wonderful things
174
699000
2000
12:06
that are happening when our ideas get spread out,
175
701000
3000
12:09
thanks to all the new technology all over the world.
176
704000
2000
12:11
And I agree. It is largely wonderful. Largely wonderful.
177
706000
6000
12:17
But among all those ideas that inevitably flow out into the whole world
178
712000
8000
12:25
thanks to our technology, are a lot of toxic ideas.
179
720000
5000
12:30
Now, this has been realized for some time.
180
725000
3000
12:33
Sayyid Qutb is one of the founding fathers of fanatical Islam,
181
728000
6000
12:39
one of the ideologues that inspired Osama bin Laden.
182
734000
5000
12:44
"One has only to glance at its press films, fashion shows, beauty contests,
183
739000
5000
12:49
ballrooms, wine bars and broadcasting stations." Memes.
184
744000
6000
12:55
These memes are spreading around the world
185
750000
4000
12:59
and they are wiping out whole cultures.
186
754000
5000
13:04
They are wiping out languages.
187
759000
2000
13:06
They are wiping out traditions and practices.
188
761000
5000
13:11
And it's not our fault, anymore than it's our fault when our germs lay waste
189
766000
8000
13:19
to people that haven't developed the immunity.
190
774000
3000
13:22
We have an immunity to all of the junk that lies around the edges of our culture.
191
777000
6000
13:28
We're a free society, so we let pornography and all these things -- we shrug them off.
192
783000
6000
13:34
They're like a mild cold.
193
789000
2000
13:36
They're not a big deal for us.
194
791000
2000
13:38
But we should recognize that for many people in the world,
195
793000
4000
13:42
they are a big deal.
196
797000
4000
13:46
And we should be very alert to this.
197
801000
3000
13:49
As we spread our education and our technology,
198
804000
3000
13:52
one of the things that we are doing is we're the vectors of memes
199
807000
8000
14:00
that are correctly viewed by the hosts of many other memes
200
815000
6000
14:06
as a dire threat to their favorite memes --
201
821000
3000
14:09
the memes that they are prepared to die for.
202
824000
3000
14:12
Well now, how are we going to tell the good memes from the bad memes?
203
827000
4000
14:16
That is not the job of the science of memetics.
204
831000
5000
14:21
Memetics is morally neutral. And so it should be.
205
836000
6000
14:27
This is not the place for hate and anger.
206
842000
4000
14:31
If you've had a friend who's died of AIDS, then you hate HIV.
207
846000
5000
14:36
But the way to deal with that is to do science,
208
851000
4000
14:40
and understand how it spreads and why in a morally neutral perspective.
209
855000
7000
14:47
Get the facts.
210
862000
2000
14:49
Work out the implications.
211
864000
4000
14:53
There's plenty of room for moral passion once we've got the facts
212
868000
4000
14:57
and can figure out the best thing to do.
213
872000
2000
14:59
And, as with germs, the trick is not to try to annihilate them.
214
874000
5000
15:04
You will never annihilate the germs.
215
879000
3000
15:07
What you can do, however, is foster public health measures and the like
216
882000
6000
15:13
that will encourage the evolution of avirulence.
217
888000
5000
15:19
That will encourage the spread of relatively benign mutations
218
894000
7000
15:26
of the most toxic varieties.
219
901000
3000
15:29
That's all the time I have,
220
904000
3000
15:32
so thank you very much for your attention.
221
907000
3000

▲Back to top

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dan Dennett - Philosopher, cognitive scientist
Dan Dennett thinks that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes.

Why you should listen

One of our most important living philosophers, Dan Dennett is best known for his provocative and controversial arguments that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes in the brain. He argues that the brain's computational circuitry fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and that what we call consciousness — isn't. His 2003 book "Freedom Evolves" explores how our brains evolved to give us -- and only us -- the kind of freedom that matters, while 2006's "Breaking the Spell" examines belief through the lens of biology.

This mind-shifting perspective on the mind itself has distinguished Dennett's career as a philosopher and cognitive scientist. And while the philosophy community has never quite known what to make of Dennett (he defies easy categorization, and refuses to affiliate himself with accepted schools of thought), his computational approach to understanding the brain has made him, as Edge's John Brockman writes, “the philosopher of choice of the AI community.”

“It's tempting to say that Dennett has never met a robot he didn't like, and that what he likes most about them is that they are philosophical experiments,” Harry Blume wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in 1998. “To the question of whether machines can attain high-order intelligence, Dennett makes this provocative answer: ‘The best reason for believing that robots might some day become conscious is that we human beings are conscious, and we are a sort of robot ourselves.'"

In recent years, Dennett has become outspoken in his atheism, and his 2006 book Breaking the Spell calls for religion to be studied through the scientific lens of evolutionary biology. Dennett regards religion as a natural -- rather than supernatural -- phenomenon, and urges schools to break the taboo against empirical examination of religion. He argues that religion's influence over human behavior is precisely what makes gaining a rational understanding of it so necessary: “If we don't understand religion, we're going to miss our chance to improve the world in the 21st century.”

Dennett's landmark books include The Mind's I, co-edited with Douglas Hofstaedter, Consciousness Explained, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Read an excerpt from his 2013 book, Intuition Pumps, in the Guardian >>

More profile about the speaker
Dan Dennett | Speaker | TED.com