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
TED2009

Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet, funny

Dan Dennett: Beleta, seksalloga, dolĉa, amuza

Filmed:
3,553,924 views

Kial beletas beboj? Kial dolĉas ĉokoladkukoj? Pri tiuj demandoj, la filozofo Dan Dennett donas neatenditajn respondojn en prelego pri la evoluismaj kontraŭintuiciaj rezonadoj koncerne al beleteco, dolĉeco kaj seksallogeco (plus nova teorio de Matthew Hurley klarigante kial ŝercoj estas amuzaj).
- 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.

00:12
I’m going around the world giving talks about Darwin,
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Mi trakuras la mondon por paroli
pri Darvino,
00:15
and usually what I’m talking about
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kaj mia plej kutima temo estas
00:17
is Darwin’s strange inversion of reasoning.
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ties stranga rezonadinversigo.
00:20
Now that title, that phrase, comes from a critic, an early critic,
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Tiu kunmetaĵo venas de frutempa kritikinto,
00:25
and this is a passage that I just love, and would like to read for you.
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kaj mi ŝatas tiun citaĵon de li,
nepre legendan:
00:29
"In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer;
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"En tiu teorio, ekzamenota de ni,
Fundamenta Nescio estas la kreinto,
00:34
so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system,
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kaj ni povas aserti kiel esenca principo
de la sistemo
00:39
that, in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine,
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tion, ke por fari perfektan kaj mirindan maŝinon,
00:42
it is not requisite to know how to make it.
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ne necesas scii kiel ĝin konstrui.
00:45
This proposition will be found on careful examination to express,
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Atenta ekzamenado rivelos,
ke tiu propono esprimas
00:49
in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory,
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koncize la kernan enhavon de la Teorio,
00:53
and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin’s meaning;
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kaj por resumi la penson de S-ro Darvino,
00:57
who, by a strange inversion of reasoning,
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kiu, per stranga rezonadinversigo,
01:01
seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified
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ŝajnas krei,
ke absoluta nescio kvalifikiĝas
01:04
to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in the achievements of creative skill."
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por anstataŭi absolutan saĝecon
pri kreativaj sukcesoj".
01:10
Exactly. Exactly. And it is a strange inversion.
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Trafe, trafe. Kaj temas
ja pri stranga inversigo.
01:17
A creationist pamphlet has this wonderful page in it:
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Kreisma paskvilo enhavas
tiun mirindan paĝon:
01:21
"Test Two:
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"Dua elprovo:
01:23
Do you know of any building that didn’t have a builder? Yes/No.
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Ĉu vi konas konstruaĵon, konstruitan
de neniu? Jes / Ne.
01:27
Do you know of any painting that didn’t have a painter? Yes/No.
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Ĉu vi konas pentraĵon, pentritan
de neniu? Jes / Ne.
01:30
Do you know of any car that didn’t have a maker? Yes/No.
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Ĉu vi konas aŭton, faritan de neniu
aŭtokonstruanto? Jes / Ne.
01:34
If you answered 'Yes' for any of the above, give details."
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Se vi respondis "Jes" al unu el tiuj
demandoj, bonvolu klarigi."
01:39
A-ha! I mean, it really is a strange inversion of reasoning.
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Nu, miaopinie,
jen ja stranga rezonadinversigo.
01:45
You would have thought it stands to reason
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Ŝajnas ja racie, ke koncepto
01:49
that design requires an intelligent designer.
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nepre venas de konceptinto.
01:53
But Darwin shows that it’s just false.
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Tamen, Darvino montras
kiel tio malpravas.
01:55
Today, though, I’m going to talk about Darwin’s other strange inversion,
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Hodiaŭ, tamen, mi parolos pri lia alia
stranga rezonadinversigo,
02:00
which is equally puzzling at first, but in some ways just as important.
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same surpriza, unuavide,
sed iel same grava.
02:06
It stands to reason that we love chocolate cake because it is sweet.
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Ŝajnas racie, ke ni ŝatas ĉokoladkukon
ĉar ĝi estas dolĉa.
02:13
Guys go for girls like this because they are sexy.
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Uloj postkuras ulinojn,
ĉar ili estas seksallogaj.
02:19
We adore babies because they’re so cute.
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Ni amas bebojn, ĉar ili beletas.
02:23
And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny.
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Kaj kompreneble, ŝercoj ridigas nin,
ĉar ili estas amuzaj.
02:32
This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why.
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Inversitaj rezonadoj! Jes, ja!
Kaj Darvino montras kial.
02:39
Let’s start with sweet. Our sweet tooth is basically an evolved sugar detector,
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Komencu ni pri dolĉaĵoj. Nia ŝato por
ili venas antaŭ ĉio de
nia evoluinta suker-detektilo.
02:47
because sugar is high energy, and it’s just been wired up to the preferer,
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Ĉar sukero donas energion,
la gusto pria instaliĝis en nia cerbo.
02:51
to put it very crudely, and that’s why we like sugar.
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Jen kial ni tiel ŝatas sukeron.
02:56
Honey is sweet because we like it, not "we like it because honey is sweet."
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Dolĉas mielo, ĉar ni ŝatas ĝin.
Ne "ni ŝatas ĝin, ĉar ĝi dolĉas."
03:03
There’s nothing intrinsically sweet about honey.
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Mielo neniel dolĉas per si mem.
03:08
If you looked at glucose molecules till you were blind,
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Rigardu glukozmolekulojn
tiel longe, kiel vi volas,
03:12
you wouldn’t see why they tasted sweet.
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vi neniam vidos kial ili dolĉas.
03:15
You have to look in our brains to understand why they’re sweet.
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Anstataŭ, esploru vian cerbon
por tion kompreni.
Do se vi pensas, ke unue venis dolĉeco,
03:21
So if you think first there was sweetness,
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03:23
and then we evolved to like sweetness,
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kaj ke ni poste evoluis por ŝati ĝin,
03:25
you’ve got it backwards; that’s just wrong. It’s the other way round.
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vi eraras kiel kreisto.
Fakte, okazis la inverso.
03:29
Sweetness was born with the wiring which evolved.
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Dolĉeco naskiĝis kun evoluinta gusto.
03:33
And there’s nothing intrinsically sexy about these young ladies.
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Tiuj junaj knabinoj ne estas seksallogaj per si mem.
03:37
And it’s a good thing that there isn’t, because if there were,
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Bonŝance, ĉar se okazus la malo,
03:42
then Mother Nature would have a problem:
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Patrino Naturo havus problemon:
03:46
How on earth do you get chimps to mate?
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kiel diable inciti tiujn ĉimpanzojn
al sekskuniĝo?
03:53
Now you might think, ah, there’s a solution: hallucinations.
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Nu, eble vi pensos:
"Ha, jen bona solvo: halucinoj!"
04:01
That would be one way of doing it, but there’s a quicker way.
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Kompreneble, tamen jen solvo pli rapida:
04:05
Just wire the chimps up to love that look,
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Evoluigu la ĉimpanzojn, por ke ili ŝatu
tiun eksteran aspekton,
04:08
and apparently they do.
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kaj ŝajne, estas ekzakte tio, kio okazis.
04:11
That’s all there is to it.
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Estas tutsimple.
04:16
Over six million years, we and the chimps evolved our different ways.
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Antaŭ ses milionoj da jaroj,
la ĉimpanzoj kaj ni evoluis malsammaniere.
04:20
We became bald-bodied, oddly enough;
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Ni fariĝis tute senvilaj, kredu aŭ ne;
04:23
for one reason or another, they didn’t.
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ial, ili restis vilaj.
04:27
If we hadn’t, then probably this would be the height of sexiness.
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Malokaze, tio estus probable
la pinto de seksallogeco.
04:39
Our sweet tooth is an evolved and instinctual preference for high-energy food.
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Nia ŝato por sukero venas de instinkta
prefero por energiaj manĝaĵoj.
04:44
It wasn’t designed for chocolate cake.
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Tiu ŝato ne estis konceptita
por ĉokoladkukoj.
04:47
Chocolate cake is a supernormal stimulus.
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Ĉokoladkuko estas supernormala stimulo.
04:50
The term is owed to Niko Tinbergen,
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La esprimon eltrovis Niko Tinbergen,
04:52
who did his famous experiments with gulls,
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kiu faris famkonatan
eksperimenton kun mevoj.
04:54
where he found that that orange spot on the gull’s beak --
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Sur la bekoj de mevoj vidiĝas
oranĝa makuleto.
04:58
if he made a bigger, oranger spot
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Kiam li prezentis pli grandan,
pli brilan oranĝan makuleton,
05:00
the gull chicks would peck at it even harder.
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mevidoj bekfrapis ĝin pli forte.
05:02
It was a hyperstimulus for them, and they loved it.
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Ili ŝatis la superstimulon prezentitan.
05:05
What we see with, say, chocolate cake
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Tion oni vidas kun ĉokoladkuko.
05:09
is it’s a supernormal stimulus to tweak our design wiring.
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Ĝi estas superstimulo por nia
evoluinta instinkto.
05:14
And there are lots of supernormal stimuli; chocolate cake is one.
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Kaj multas la superstimuloj;
ĉokoladkuko estas nur unu el ili.
05:17
There's lots of supernormal stimuli for sexiness.
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Oni trovas multajn por seksallogeco.
05:20
And there's even supernormal stimuli for cuteness. Here’s a pretty good example.
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Kaj same por beleteco.
Jen vere bona ekzemplo.
05:26
It’s important that we love babies, and that we not be put off by, say, messy diapers.
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Gravas, ke ni amu bebojn,
ke ni ne abomenu malbonodorajn vindaĵojn.
05:31
So babies have to attract our affection and our nurturing, and they do.
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Beboj devas estigi ĉe ni amon
kaj flegvolon, kaj tion ili faras.
05:37
And, by the way, a recent study shows that mothers
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Parenteze, freŝdata esploro
montris, ke patrinoj
05:41
prefer the smell of the dirty diapers of their own baby.
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preferas la malbonodorajn vindaĵojn
de siaj propraj beboj.
05:44
So nature works on many levels here.
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Naturo verkas mistere.
05:47
But now, if babies didn’t look the way they do -- if babies looked like this,
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Tamen, se beboj aspektus malsame
-- tiel, ekzemple --
05:52
that’s what we would find adorable, that’s what we would find --
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tiam, ni tion trovus adorinda.
Pri tio ni pensus:
05:56
we would think, oh my goodness, do I ever want to hug that.
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"Ho, kia enbrakiginda etulo!"
06:02
This is the strange inversion.
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Estas tio la stranga inversigo.
06:04
Well now, finally what about funny. My answer is, it’s the same story, the same story.
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Kaj pri la ŝercoj? Nu, temas pri la sama afero,
06:11
This is the hard one, the one that isn’t obvious. That’s why I leave it to the end.
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kvankam ĝi estas malpli evidenta.
Jen kial mi priparolas ĝin laste.
06:15
And I won’t be able to say too much about it.
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Kaj mi ne povos diri multon prie.
06:17
But you have to think evolutionarily, you have to think, what hard job that has to be done --
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Sed pensu pri ĝi evoluisme.
Nu... kia malfacila laboro,
06:23
it’s dirty work, somebody’s got to do it --
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sed iu devas fari ĝin...
06:26
is so important to give us such a powerful, inbuilt reward for it when we succeed.
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Plej gravas, ke ni ricevu fortan enan
rekompencon por tio, kiam ni sukcesas.
06:34
Now, I think we've found the answer -- I and a few of my colleagues.
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Mi pensas, ke ni trovis la solvon
-- kelkaj kolegoj kaj mi.
06:38
It’s a neural system that’s wired up to reward the brain
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Temas pri nerva sistemo,
evoluinta por rekompenci la cerbon,
06:42
for doing a grubby clerical job.
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kiu faras tedegan kontorlaboraĉon.
06:48
Our bumper sticker for this view is
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Se resumi nian penson prian,
06:52
that this is the joy of debugging.
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temas pri la plezuro forigi cimojn.
06:55
Now I’m not going to have time to spell it all out,
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Mi ne havas tempon por ĉiuj detaloj,
06:57
but I’ll just say that only some kinds of debugging get the reward.
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sed diru ni, ke nur iaj forigoj
estas rekompencitaj.
07:02
And what we’re doing is we’re using humor as a sort of neuroscientific probe
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Ni uzas humuron kiel
nervosciencan esplorilon,
07:10
by switching humor on and off, by turning the knob on a joke --
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ŝaltante kaj malŝaltante humuron,
fingrumante la regbutonon de ŝerco
07:14
now it’s not funny ... oh, now it’s funnier ...
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-- ne amuze... Ho, pli amuze, nun...
07:16
now we’ll turn a little bit more ... now it’s not funny --
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ni fingrumu iom pli...
ne, ne plu amuze --
07:18
in this way, we can actually learn something
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Tiumaniere, ni povas ja lerni ion
07:21
about the architecture of the brain,
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pri la arkitekturo de la cerbo,
07:23
the functional architecture of the brain.
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la funkcia arkitekturo de la cerbo.
07:25
Matthew Hurley is the first author of this. We call it the Hurley Model.
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La ĉefa aŭtoro estas Matthew Hurley,
07:30
He’s a computer scientist, Reginald Adams a psychologist, and there I am,
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komputila sciencisto, Reginald Adams
estas psikologo, kaj jen mi estas,
07:34
and we’re putting this together into a book.
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kune, ni verkas libron pri ĉio-ĉi.
07:36
Thank you very much.
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Koran dankon.
Translated by Karine Breault
Reviewed by James Piton

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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