Daniel Dennett vs Keith Ward • Are we more than matter? Mind, consciousness and free will

welcome to the big conversation here on unbelievable with me Justin Bradley the big conversation is a series of shows exploring faiths science philosophy and what it means to be human in association with the Templeton religion trust and today our conversation topic is are we more than matter debating mind consciousness and freewill and the big conversation partners I'm sitting down with today are Daniel Dennett and Keith Ward Daniel C Dennett is professor of philosophy at Tufts University in the USA and well known for his work in the philosophy of mind his books include breaking the spell religion as a natural phenomenon and from bacteria to bark and back the evolution of minds dan is an atheist and has even been counted among the four so-called Horsemen of the New Atheism he believes that brains mind and consciousness can be explained in purely material terms with no need for anything other than a naturalist view of reality Keith Ward is a British philosopher who's held various positions including Regis professor of divinity at Oxford University and he's presently professor at roehampton university his books include why there almost certainly is a God and more than matter and Keith holds to an idealist view of the mind believing that consciousness is the primary reality upon which the material world is dependent and that our existence as conscious self-aware creatures is dependent on an ultimate mind God so Keith and Daniel welcome along to the program great we're going to be talking about consciousness mind freewill huge topics and we'll won't be able to do them full justice in the course of the time we have today but perhaps before we get into it a little introduction to you both dan are you happy to wear the label atheist is that something you've called yourself for a long time I'm happy to wear the label for years I didn't bother but then it seemed that especially in the United States there was a sort of theocratic boom and it seemed important just to tell people you don't have to make a big deal of it because they know no I'm an atheist and you know a lot of atheists a lot of Americans need to hear that and in that sense do you find that your atheism in a specific way or is it a specific outlook on life in any way that the atheism it's just the naturalist outlook I mean I don't believe in anything supernatural and so take on the burden of explaining all the wonderful things in the world in terms that are scientifically acceptable and and and does that for you quite then to a naturalist perspective being that all that ultimately does exist is is material stuff matter energy and so on and so on yes information exists hmm it's not in a special medium it now always has to be in some physical medium but you really have to consider information in your in your theory and and this has been recognized by people say in physics for many years Norbert Wiener put it very clearly you it's it's impossible to be a modern materialist without adding information to your list it's it's neither matter nor energy and when it comes to the philosophy of mind do you find that by and large a naturalist perspective is the dominant one these days when it comes to explaining consciousness certainly in the areas that I work in in cognitive science and naturalistic philosophy of mind it's entirely dominant there is a sort of backwater movement which is got some adherents which is pushing non naturalist lines pants psychism and dualism the various sorts are are currently being enthusiastically explored by a few people well I'm looking forward to the conversation with you and I think it's the first time you've met Keith I've been able to have a dialogue so I'm really pleased to be able to bring you both together Keith I think you're one of the foremost people probably in the world when it comes to an idealist perspective on consciousness and mind we'll get you to explain that in a bit more detail in a moment but you yourself are a Christian is that an unusual in the world of philosophy in your experience to be a Christian well I'm part of the back wall in England it's not really unusual although I think most philosophers who teach in universities in England aren't very interested in religion be true but on the whole there they're not very interested in large-scale metaphysical views at all so they do different things and there are quite a number of quite notable philosophers who are either religious or specifically Christian yes my colleague Richard Swinburne is one example but there are others so it's quite a large backwater but it's probably a minority well it is a minority yes I think you've both been involved in philosophy of mind for a similar length of time in fact I think you both shared a a teacher in the past Gilbert Ryle that's true as far as my where Keith was more in line with with Dan's view on the nature of mind than yours well I don't think he was in line with either of our views as I understand them because he was very much influenced by someone called JL Austin who is associated with ordinary language philosophy and I think Gerber I'd always said to me that he wasn't he didn't have to know anything about psychology at all true and he didn't in the use of the words that people used about he's intelligent or he knows something he has dreams he was interesting the uses of a language and I think I think well I was certainly more metaphysically man did I wanted to say what's stuff made of ultimately mmm and he didn't think that was a very interesting question well let's explore your sort of area and your worldview if you like in this sense Keith's of what stuff is ultimately made of you're an idealist could you explain what an idealist yes a lot of people think an idealist is somebody who has rather impractical and moral ideals but that's not that at all it it is saying that consciousness or mind is the best known most immediately known and probably ontological II prior that is the thing which exists in its own sake and that the material world is in some sense illogical construction out of that consciousness interestingly the person I think we both came across when we were in Oxford a Jair was an idealist in this sense he thought that what the stuff of reality is what he calls sense data over which our perceptions really and perceptions are conscious things and so the British Empire is a tradition was always just say in 18th century that all knowledge comes from experience an experience is conscious experience so that's where I start from that very old British tradition really and and that's I suppose in a sense it's true that everything we do know of is mediated by our senses as there's a sense in which we are absolutely bound by sight taste touch and everything else is that the sense in which you would say that that consciousness is primary is is is that we are ultimately that our experience of everything has to be mediated by consciousness yes there are two main philosophical approaches one is phenomenology which is mostly in continental Europe and that is you start philosophy by asking the question what is it like to experience something or what's the nature of experience so you're starting from experience and you you would probably never say that you could eliminate that that's a starting point and then you ask what it's what does it like to fear what does it like to have anxiety or the whole of existentialist philosophy starts there and then there's a rather different and persist tradition which concentrates on sense perceptions but doesn't assume that sense perceptions come through the body let's see and philosophers carry out after this sort carry out thought experiments could you have visual perceptions and oral perceptions were that a body could they exist and I people like me fine we think it's logically possible and so there that's a sort of key move when you say if you start from experience and you're not going to eliminate it then your problem is what is the material universe hmm it's it's not the other way round it's not so it's almost exactly the opposite way around in a sense to to the view that Dan takes that consciousness and mental stuff is dependent on if you like materials flow yours is the view quite the opposite that the consciousness and mental activity comes first and and that is the Senecas fest in the order of knowledge and then there's the question well does that mean it comes first in real fact and a person who is an idealist would say yes that's the certainly a possibility and it will come into talking about what why you believe this is the case but how does this offer you point back to God ultimately then well it's slightly independent I mean a lot of idealists wouldn't use the word God because God has a personal sense about it hmm and so the philosophy of idealism and its major proponents like Immanuel Kant and Hegel wouldn't be God in the sense in which Christians talk about God it'd be something rather more abstract more metaphysical right but I would use the word God of course semo's so my Christian faith is more dependent on various sorts of personal experience than on the philosophy okay but they have a natural affinity if you believe in God it's it's fairly natural to say oh that fits into a view of saint consciousness as a primary element of reality and in that sense is everything that exists in your view in some sense within exists because it exists within the consciousness of God yes yes yeah and as a hypothesis I would say it has to do that there has to be some consciousness here that's the hypothesis thank you very much for helping us to understand the idealist perspective and in what sense then could you lay out Dan your view as a naturalist of how mind emerges from material stuff and natural in fact the Heath's account of idealism provides a very nice background for saying what the difference is mm-hmm he says that sense experience conscious experience comes first in your knowledge and I said first in one sense yeah you have to be awakened and have the experiences to start learning about science but when you do what you discover is that you're sent not only into your senses deceive you but sometimes you were wrong about your very own experience you're not the authoritative infallible internal witness that you think you are and if you want to understand science and I think an idealist has two choices they can either just ignore science the material science physical science or they can somehow couch it within their idealistic framework but they and and then take it very seriously hmm but if you do that it undermines your idealist foundations you know sometimes spectacular ways and what we're learning is that our own experience the experience that we have untutored and just by being awake the experience that is first in knowledge according to Keith turns out to depend on own relievedly complex and fascinating and sophisticated unconscious computations that go on in our brain so the naturalist says well let's study that let's see if we can figure out how brains work and either you have to deny that brains have anything to do with consciousness or you have to take that seriously and when you do you begin to discover that consciousness the consciousness that we all enjoy is not what we thought it was it's not an inner show at all it's a way of being in the world and being knowledgeable and adroit and adept in the world and the models that we're developing in cognitive science can account for vast stretches of that capacity and better than we can if I ask you just tell me what you see right now and you say wise to your face how do you do that how does your your lips move something in your brain gets you talking you have no access to yourself to how you frame that sentence and how you relied on your current experience it just seems obvious but in fact there's a lot going on inside there that we have to untangle and when we do that from the naturalist point of view the idealist position looks fundamentally backward it looks like just grabbing the wrong end of the stick I'll let Keith respond to that in the moments time but what I'm hearing from you there Dan is is that because we have been able to investigate the material stuff of the brain and see the connections and see that when we do things to the brain it changes the perceptions people have and they're conscious experience and everything else there that gives us evidence that all of that consciousness is strictly dependent on that the physical state of I'm not saying it's yes and I mean nonetheless it it is an extraordinary organ isn't it the brain and when you consider that on a naturalist perspective even inanimate atoms have come to reflect upon themselves it it it is an extraordinary thing in that sense do you do you feel that there's still an element of mystery there or are you happy to say no I think we really can I think we really can it's a puzzle yeah and and it's what I call the hard question our problem with the hard question the hard question is and then what happens that is all right you've got this analysis of information coming in from the census for instance and then what happens there's a whole story to be told about how we use it how it modifies our beliefs and our emotions and our memories and our personalities and what we say next what our projects are and mostly even scientists have sort of stopped when they've stopped in consciousnesses if that was the finish line no no that's not the finish line that's only halfway through and we have to do and then what happens and only when we can explain how consciousness not only moves our bodies and gets our lips moving but but feeds back on itself and permits us to reflect and reflect and reflect and reflective reflect and it's only when you've got an account of the actual brain mechanisms that make this incredible reflective capacity available then you're really beginning to explain consciousness Keith as an idealist then what's your problem with this particular account of the way that the material brain can quite satisfactorily account for all of our conscious states and that sort of thing well first of all to begin with I absolutely think it's important to take scientific knowledge about the brain and about the world seriously and I do want to do that I don't want to include that in some preordained idealist picture but I want to understand how it is that the physical structures of rain interact with consciousness having said that I'm I don't either think that we have infallible knowledge of what's going on in our minds consciousness and I agree that a lot of what we're conscious of is caused by the rain and if something is wrong with your brain then typically something is wrong with what you understand your consciousness to be so it's not an infallible thing consciousness but I think it is a thing in the broadest sense that is to say if you made a list of the items that exist in the universe and you had electrons and quarks and super strings and whatever and brains of course you would also have to add and consciousness because I don't really I'm not convinced that a study of the brain will ever answer the question how consciousness originates I don't see how that could be done because you could say well when the brain when a brain if some sort is in a certain configuration then the consciousness occurs that seems to me to be a causal relationship which is contingent it could have been different you know because to explain that a bit more what's the problem with the idea of consciousness arising by a particular you know combination of neuro chemicals well because the combination of neurons and chemicals is exactly that and you could know all about that and not know about there being any consciousness I mean we take an example which appeals for me about an ant right thing of announces it is an out conscious well I really think we don't know I don't think answer conscious personally but I really don't know guy if I ask that question I'm asking whether there is something about an ant that physical inspection cannot discharge I don't think any physical inspection of an ant will tell you whether it's conscious right that's so that that's how I've seen it's something you can only experience directly well you know that's the problem for an idealist that you can't ever experience directly anybody else's consciousness but I do think that I experience directly my own consciousness and that I know when I'm aware of something not infallibly but at least I know when I'm aware and I think that's something additional to any physical description in what's happening right it sounds a bit like what Pete's describing there I could be wrong is is something along the lines of the hard problem of consciousness is earned and you want to explain what that is and what a response to it is why you don't think it so the philosopher David Chalmers dubbed something the higher problem capital aids have a capital P and it's just the problem that Keith outlined that is what is there in addition to the adroitness of the hand which David doesn't saddle anything is it conscious hmm and how do we tell the difference between a zombie which is just as animated as Keith there but for all we know is unconscious I think this is a subtle trick a sort of like a magician's trick which gets our imaginations off on the wrong foot I don't think there is a hard problem it's just Chalmers baptism of this hard problem which has got people convinced there's a hard problem when he first introduced it I said this is just vitalism reborn after all there's the hard problem of whether something's alive how do we know the ants alive you say well look at it well that doesn't prove it it might just be a robot I mean maybe it's a zombie or maybe it's not even alive now physicists biologists they don't argue about this the line between living and not living is not an interesting theoretical line we've learned what our proteins alive are motor proteins alive or are they just little robots cells are alive yeah how about viruses don't ask we understand that the complexity gradually creates things which are manifestly alive amoebas are alive and you we don't have to create a strict cut off and it's a lion there's no a lone V tau there's no extra substance that you have to put in there that distinguishes the living from the unliving as many people thought those were the vitalists and I think the Chalmers and I'm Keith here on it on his own expression there they're remaking the vitalist mistake and now they simply moved up a notch and they say there's an extra soup song of something which is consciousness which has nothing and Thomas is very clear about this has nothing to do with all the things that I study about consciousness I've nothing to do with the ability to answer questions or to have your memory adjusted or to change your beliefs or become you know get converted religiously all of those things those are the easy problems of consciousness the only problem this left over is whether you're conscious and in that sense it looks exactly like vitalism hmm and when I put it to david that there that's what it is he said no it isn't it the problems are entirely different and well we don't have David here but we do have here so so Keith what what do you make of the way that Dan has laid out the hard problem of consciousness there and for you well I don't think vibrate ISM is a problem of any sort I mean because as far as I can see described everything is living is to talk about its reproductive capacities and it's behavioral capacities and that's okay and I think you can have a very shady boundary in deciding whether you call a bacterium alive or not but consciousness is not like that it's not it's not a decision about whether to call something a lot unconscious or not it's a real fact you want to know do ants have feelings and a feeling is something that I know I have feelings I started life as a musician so to me music is very important and music is consciously perceived I mean if it wasn't consciously perceived I wouldn't be interested in it right so so whatever is going on in my brain to produce me enjoying music that doesn't explain my enjoyment of the music that's an inner experience that nobody else can share and how I think of vogner's ring is totally different from the way that some other people think of it but it's the same experience the same things are happening the same electrochemical wavelengths are going along and that same neurons of firing perhaps and is it the case that in your view the the fact that you could look at a person's brain when they're listening to vogner and say oh I can see neurons firing and brain chemistry going on but that cannot be equated with the same thing as the experience of hearing me exactly it can't I it's not an identity there's no identity between finding blood flow and brain or electrical activity in the brain and whatever it is that they're enjoying when they enjoy it in that sense it's a qualitative difference no qualitative difference and also one which is it's not like vitalism because it's not vitalism there's nothing extra which makes something alive you describe it by describing the biological facts but I do think that with consciousness there is something extra and that could be a zombie I mean there could be a person just like me but it wasn't conscious and I'm nothing I probably could be somebody could write well and you'll get the same problem with a robot if you made a robot which which you couldn't tell the difference in this famous Turing test you couldn't tell the difference we it and a human being that would still be a question which you couldn't resolve is it actually having experiences and you wouldn't be able to answer that question and this is a live discussion obviously with the advent of artificial intelligence and soldiers yes but but ultimately when it comes down to it the fact that you think you cannot equate a brain state with the actual experience of listening to Wagner or seeing the color red or whatever it might be means that for you this consciousness is something qualitatively different from the material well it's not only that you see it's not it's not just a hypothetical thing it's that what makes my life worthwhile is my conscious experiences and how I cope with them and my brain I go along with whatever people tell me about my brain and that might be very important but it's not what I'm primarily concerned with I'm fascinated know what happens in my brain when I listen to vogner but what I'm primarily concerned about is how meaningful it is to me and the difference it makes to my life and that that is something no physicist but then you should be interested in asking the hard question and then what happens so the music is very meaningful to you so now there's lots of things going on in your brain which are in fact embodying that very meaningfulness that very responsiveness the fact that it makes a difference and here if we look at cases of brain damage we see people who are have locked-in syndrome or were in a comatose or vegetative state and there's all sorts of different varieties of this if you be an Adrian Owens wonderful book on this and and here's a question for you suppose you were in one of those terrible states and you're listening to Weiser and if you're really in a deep coma then I think you would say well then I'm not conscious of course and it doesn't matter what what's happening in my brain I I'm not enjoying it even all right so now we raise the lavabit raise the level a bit and this is analogous to moving on up through from proteins to the selves and to the hands and so forth and at some point no not at some point that we can point to with a sharp line we're going to see a gradual accrual of the very things you're talking about the the responsiveness of the meaningfulness how it makes your life worth living something can't make your life worth living unless it has an effect on your brain it just can't and if you understood those then you would see that there was no charmed line where this something extra got added there's just more and more of making your life worth living and and there are almost certainly are states that you could be in for instance your loved ones might say play vogner through headphones into his ears this this will give him solace and they may not be able to tell now whether this is giving you solace but if they could read your brainwaves they might be able to say yes yes see look at the these are the reactions of a person who can enjoy who is thrilled by the music even though he can't talk even though he can and so there's every imaginable variant from dead comatose to wide awake thrilled and at no point does a special extra thing called consciousness come into it well I'm not at all happy about that I agree that there of course there are different degrees of consciousness I agree also that there is the brain works and solves problems and things when you're not conscious I mean I agree with that so I agree there is a causal connection between the brain RBI in my view the brain does exist I'm not an idealist you said there's no brain and the brain gives you access and if it's working normally it will give you the access that we call full consciousness if it's unusual in some way then that affects the quality of your consciousness so I see this as an access the brain is an access and machine to consciousness so to put this quite bluntly if somebody suffers from Alzheimer's then their memories are not retrievable by the brain the brain has no access to those memories but I actually think those memories continue to exist but not in the physical brain that's my view yes why do you think that's such a you know well why do you disagree so strongly with that view then well Keith talks about the brain gives you access who boots us you you are your living brain close enough there's there's no extra cartesian race kaga tans that has access through the pineal to some parts of something's going on in the brain what what access has to mean in a naturalistic contact is is that in effect some parts of the brain have information that is retrievable by them usable that in that modulates their behavior or not and the these access relations are being mapped out very clearly these days there's still some major puzzles but when you talk about Alzheimer's for instance we can talk about the gradual dissolution of paths of access that are normally there and that play very important role but there's never a place where we say and here's where the access to you as a as an ego as a as the inner witness comes into the picture that is the image which is deeply ingrained in our way of thinking and it's just time to learn how to as far as you're concerned then that that idea of personal identity is an illusion we are simply the accumulated product of our our brain stays in that sense if we're anything it's not an illusion in the sense that there isn't continuing Keith and the continuing Justin but it is an illusion if you think that there's a sort of an essential nugget which is which is you which which just happens to be in this body or just happens to be in that body that idea which is a very familiar idea from religions theologically we might call this the soul and you've written on the concept of the soul so you what's your view on this idea of the soul I mean only if ever and this moves on through a second level the first level of discussion really was whether there are things like perceptions and thoughts and feelings which you might say could exist as in Buddhism or as in David Hume perhaps as a series of somehow linked perceptions thoughts and feelings and so you've got a this without a selfless series hmm and then it said the second stage you say well is there anything that holds this series together and I do believe in our day lists and do lists - though I'm not a duelist but ideas and Julis both think there is you have to talk about not just a series of experiences not infallibly known and not necessarily all connected together but there is something which enables that to be to be known as a series so my experiences are the things I remember the things I'd look forward to and again today an example from music if I here the last chord of a Beethoven's Symphony I hear it as the last chord of a symphony which is very different from just having an experience of a chord so memory is linked somehow and this is a great problem for people in some Buddhist schools who think of the self in the chain of experiences and you have to say well then there must be something which is a subject and here is a subject of experience so experiences are possessed by something now I think Daniel you might say the brain or part of the brain and I think no it's not nothing physical you see that's the point so I I wouldn't call this supernatural but it's not physical mmm so it's supera natural and it doesn't come within the physical realm of public verification and and the thing that the subject that is experiencing and remembering and looking forward to this is the immaterial me innocence yes it is it is it is not a material thing it cannot simply be the brain that it's not her own so I strongly don't believe that I am my brain I think my brain is part of me I do think that and I just think I'm essentially embodied run nevertheless I do think I am essentially a subject of experiences and what's going on when when you're having and we can't avoid this this language of I and you and me it's it's deeply embedded as you say Dan but nonetheless you think we're wrong to sort of assume that there is a a ghost in the machine as it were there is the ghost in the machine what there is is information an information that is organized and that uses memory and anticipation to organize that information and that can be considered to be the sort of software that's running on the brain and when you learn a new language you greatly enhance your carpet as your talents and your proclivities and everything else this is like downloading another app to your to your to your hardware yeah right now the the brains are hardware but the organization of the brain is the software and that what we can do as human beings depends very much on the software that we've downloaded through culture on our language and on all our reading and and the the tricks that we've learned and the tools that we've learned how to use all of that has to be embodied in the brain but it's information it can be passed from person different doesn't weigh anything it's like poetry it's a but but sticking with this computer analogy I guess when I use a computer I can see the hardware and I know what the software does and the way it processes everything but there still has to be a me that it means anything - it won't mean anything - the computer is just a computer yes there's a user who's the user of the brain and the answer is the brain the brain consciousness is the brains user illusion of itself and it needs it it needs it in order to simplify the task the brain is too complicated in its myriad details and the world is too complicated for the brain to deal adroitly with it so the brain has been designed to have user interfaces inside it that simplify it so that it so that it makes things easy to track easy to deal with easy to recall the same way that the screen on your laptop makes them you don't want to know the complexities of what are going on inside your computer so you have this very handy very effective user interface so called user illusion and that's what consciousness is it's a user illusion that is designed by evolution and by learning and by cultural evolution to make our brains useful capable in a sense yeah of getting our bodies through this car the world yes see at that point I have to say that what you call an illusion is to me the most important thing there is and I am even going to give you that this is this is a Wilfrid Sellars concept of the manifest image there's the scientific world of quarks and and protons and atoms and molecules and so forth and then there's the manifest image the world of people and tables and chairs and and music and songs and faces and beliefs and promises and all that good stuff that's the most important level and all of that the very existence the very fact that we have these categories is due to this brilliant summarization and and extraction of important details from this blooming confusion of atoms that is described by the scientific image yeah well my sense of the importance of my experience would be vastly undermined if I thought it was really all completely caused by a blooming conglomeration of atoms well because that has no purpose laws of physics self completely purposeless they just operate in accordance with whatever principles of regularity there are so you lose the notion of purpose really purpose is part of the illusion of you're in your inner experience you have purposes but actually the brain doesn't so if you're going to say this is produced by the brain then you're really saying well the reality is not purposive you just think you have purposes well no in fact that's in some ways the main theme of my latest book from bacteria to Bach and back because one of the central philosophical themes in that book is showing how a purposeless process natural selection in the purposeless physical world gradually creates purpose and how we have purposes our tools have purposes our limbs have purposes our eyes have purposes nature is awash in purposes they're not generated from the top down by the great purpose giver of God they emerge from the bottom up from a purposeless process that's the genius of Darwin's idea right well I think that's a heroic project it is it is but I don't think it's a possible one and tell us why tell us why well because and purpose if you think there's something flies was called intentionality but you're you're thinking of there is you have an idea in your mind and you're going to say write a book next year and so you think you have an idea of your mind you're writing a book next year but this idea refers to something that's future it's not something that's actually present so the eye you don't give it a complete description of the idea by just describing what's actually in your mind at the moment right because it has to refer to the future okay and it's very difficult I think for a materialist or a naturalist to say what it is about physical processes which don't refer to the future because how could they work what would that mean the concept of something in your present behavior being determined by the thought of something which doesn't exist in the future and the purpose is you trying to get that so the our dear looks as to the common sense as though your your idea is having a causal effect what's your idea of the future mmm having a causal effect and I don't think a physical description can cope with that idea which which is about the aboutness it's a hug I know you I mean I know that you you will come back to in a moment then but but from your point of view Keith what I'm hearing is that that the idea of purpose has to have a a reality to it that it simply can't have yes in a purely physical X well Daniel says it emerges but the sense of purpose emerges from the from an on purpose of background and I think it's such a different concept it's the idea of causation by an idea of the future hmm she's very different from causation by being pushed from the past and what other problems for you emerge when we as it would do away with your concept of personal identity because I mean this might be a good point at which to start talking about free will and moral agency and that sort of thing well along with purpose the other the other thing that correlates with it is the idea of value now at this point again we might have a disagreement here because I do think that one of the important things about human life is that there are values which we don't invent so that that's a basic philosophical option I think that you say values are objective in the sense that some things really are worthwhile are null value even if nobody thinks they are mmm and that in thinking of a moral value you ought to be charitable for example that is true I think that's amore I think that's a moral truth and you can discover that it's true you ought to be charitable it's not something you decide or invent and so that that's another basic philosophical it's an option really but if you're going for the option of there being objective values that correlates with purposes because your purpose is to achieve something of value so they go together purpose and value and I can't see that they would enter into any physical description of the brain or of anything and so in that sense this this value that we believe exists independently of you know our brain States or anything else I'm not the word independently I mean it's obviously not there is that causal connection and but it's objective and as you say a subjective I think I would believe and I think again it's not decidable and neutrally but I believe that there are moral obligations on people whether or not they think there are and that is a truth about the universe and does this can this only make sense in the personal identity the idea that we are a person who has as well yes it is it's nighttime and is not in a sense just to a value is not a part of a physical catalogue of things and it correlates with a purpose purpose is to obtain any value so that correlates with agency and that correlates has idea of a subject self which is other than just a stream of experiences which was actually aims to produce values all those things connect together I think this will take us into the whole area as well of determinism and freewill and so please do respond yes what he's adopting is I think quite clearly a sort of top-down theory of purpose he doesn't think it can bubble up from purposeless processes the way Darwin and and people who are Darwin Ian's like me would say and and he says he doesn't see how this future-looking purpose could ever be accounted for in terms of the something like the Darwinian purpose as a Darwinian process you should learn about Bayesian predictive coding it's the big bandwagon in cognitive neuroscience right now which is precisely how the brain is always always anticipating projecting forming hypotheses in effect about what's going to happen next and then checking those hypotheses against the data coming in this is how our brains get the adroit nough sand the real-time capacity that they do they're always they're designed to look ahead they're designed by Darwinian processes to anticipate the future based on the experience of the past and since the future isn't always just like the past they make mistakes but they are also designed for those very mistakes to feedback into the system and correct those mistakes so the brain operates as a generator of anticipations which are then tested against the world which and it's a constantly revising sort of a moving target about trying to get trying to get the immediate future right and then of course that in turn permits us to have long-range goals in the future another thing you said Keith is you you thought there were values that we're not as it were human maybe because human beings maybe didn't even realize that they had these values but there's no reason why something that is ultimately a human construction a human artifact can't have surprises in it the game of chess is certainly a human construct and yet people are still learning things that you can and can't do in chess so there's there's plenty of of discovery and even something as simple as chess and the idea that the moral code that we have evolved over the last let's say 50,000 years that it's been changed it's been improved no help to it from religion there by the way religion has dragged its feet along the way all the improvements from Old Testament morality today have been hard won by rational arguments and largely fought by the churches but we've learned better than that old we've constantly improved our sense of morality and that can go on in the future and we may learn doesn't the word improve suggests there is some objective standard to which oh yeah heading oh yes and in the same way that there's a there's an when when they keep it very simple I want to deliberately have a simple example when they added the castling rule to chests they improved the game of chess why well because people who are the chess players found the game sort of too slow if you didn't have this room it was it just made the game more wonderful more interesting similarly there are practices which were not only condoned but even required in Old Testament morality which we'd completely shunned today we would never dream of aving that way well don't just see things - responses oh yeah because computers can't play chess very well of course and they could beat me any type of people you could beat me any day of the week but I don't think computer would say well I play chess because it's more interesting and gives me a sense of you know well so I don't think comedies were play chess unless they were made - I mean people pay chess for fun and you that's not something that machines do they don't do things for fun and so I know yet well I think you're taking I think here what you're doing is taking a bet on the future you're saying I bet that brain science will develop in such a way that it will show that all these things can be dumped everywhere by machine and I suppose my bet is that that's not going to happen and you could get some of the zombie which acted like a robot and like a human being but self felt and experienced nothing and didn't get thrilled by things that were happening or invent new moves because they were excited or just appear to be thrilled oh just appear to be and it would do it would guide its life by its being thrilled by this yes but that still wouldn't be the NAM be was was indistinguishable from normal consciousness externally and distinguished internally it is decisional there you never know because it was probably trained to tell you that it had deep feelings so I think we're getting into the area of artificial intelligence and sense but but coming back to your your view that this objective moral realm exists and I think Dan's view well we can simply explain that by an evolutionary history which helps us to interact better and so on and and and we don't discover these things they're they're simply emergent like everything else in our experience and he has critiques obviously if the of religion and the Old Testament in terms of saying well we can certainly see that we're better off now with the morality we've developed over the thousands of years of course I mean I have to say that I think Jesus had something to do with that that improvement and that we haven't yet lived managed to live up to any of the things that he said about it so I don't I mean religion yes okay there isn't very ambiguous felon but if if the religion is about the person who taught something like the Sermon on the Mount we've got pretty implement that very clever man yeah very good so for me goodness is a quality of the universe that is to say that not that the universe is all perfect I don't mean that I mean that the obligation to seek goodness is is a fact about the universe and I can't put that into a physicalist account of the universe I can't see how it would fit whereas well if I can introduce the word God it laughs I think if you if you had the mind of God of the mind of the Creator then the obligation to achieve true goodness not some arbitrary command that God made up that obligation would fit into a picture of the universe as founded on a morally obliging reality which would be a mind and it wouldn't be a brain I mean nobody thinks there's a cosmic brain so I think if you're wanting to rule out the idea of God by definition by saying well there couldn't be such a brain I agree I couldn't so that comes down to the question just as a thought experiment well could there not be a mind which did not like human minds depend upon the good function of a brain and I don't see why not well alright I'll go along with you on that say alright I don't think I can offer an octree or you know proof that there couldn't be a disembodied mind but I don't see how a disembodied mind of God could ground morality at all why why should we care what a disembodied mind thought we should do I mean if I tell you Lucille says this you shouldn't do that well who's Lucille not and in fact what could matter more than what we we human beings after careful consideration and in concert what we decide this is what's worth living for why doesn't that what could trump that oh I think I think God could jump that Oh Lucille was actually perfectly good herself and created us and had a purpose for us which would fulfill everything about our lives then if this you said do this we'd say that's probably yes indeed but that makes Lucille you've just defined the answer this is no you've you just helped yourself to a problem solver by defining it as a problem solver yes but I didn't make this opera it's been around for somebody maybe when race yes the idea of God is like the idea of quantum realities somebody made it up that doesn't mean that it's not true let's move on to freewill we need to because we really must touch on this before we have to close our conversation and now would you describe yourself as a determinist at Dan yes in all that matters I mean I'm happy to go along the physicist I know that there's quantum indeterminacy but I don't think it makes any difference for free will and determinism is essentially the view that every everything can be explained by the previous states of things and that in a sense careful you have I'd say that very carefully because there's there's explanation then there's explanation mmm flip a coin a fair coin nobody can predict whether it's going to come down heads or tail nobody can predict it not because it's quiet I'm unpredictable but because the forces acting on that coin involve the position of electrons at the edge of the visible universe it's just beyond the calculation it that's an epistemic point but you keep reading for me but the coin will will will be a random flip all this a so is it an undetermined coin flip no is it a random coin flip yes but in a sense if you could in principle describe every single force its actual coin then you could predict what which side it will come down and in a sense when it comes to the question of the mind and consciousness and freewill the view that everything is ultimately determined by the physics of the universe means that a lot of people have a question mark over what that does for us our the fact that we think of ourselves as free agents moral agents even our very act of reasoning and having conversations if it's all in a sense being determined there's a real question that arises of can we make sense of anything then if if if in fact everything we do say think feel has at some level been decided a long time ago by the physical attributes of the universe simply rolling out in a predetermined way so you're a compatibilist though when it comes to your view of freewill perhaps you'd like to explain how you come to terms with this question around free will and determinism from a compatibilist point of view yeah the notion of freedom that is incompatible with determinism is not the notion of freedom that matters the notion of freedom that matters is the engineering notion of freedom the notion of degrees of freedom right now you have many degrees of freedom there are lots of different ways in which you can move your parts and move your lips and so it has nothing to do with determinism and what we want to do is look at which systems in the world are autonomous and which systems in the world are in fact being controlled heteronomously by some other controller if I haven't drone and I've got the little box I am in control of that drone it is not autonomous it's its activities are being determined by me they are being controlled by me however I may be able to throw a switch which makes it autonomous it is no longer in my control and it is then no longer in the control of anything else except itself it's the cause is raining down on it and you know the gravity and the wind and all the rest of that those let us suppose they've been determined since time in the world it doesn't matter an autonomous system can be designed to deal with those in fact it depends on the reliability on the predictability of all of those forces and to some degree it samples those in order to improve its control over the situation now what we want to be as free agents is we want to be autonomous we want we don't want somebody else pulling our strings I have a have a little cartoon of a puppet that's making its legs move by by pulling strings on its legs that's what we are we are self controllers and it's it's really a bad trick of the imagination to think that if determinism is true then nature is pulling our strings mmm because nature is not an agent Nature doesn't care Nature doesn't have foresight about what it wants us to do so that there's a sense in which then we we have freedom in the senses meaningful for us absolutely but if if we'd simply were able in some way to rewind the clock 30 seconds would we have exactly the same conversation with exactly the same words with exactly the same movements because that is what would have had to have happened in a sense how we determined in that sense if we could rewind the clock perfectly yes but that's not interesting there's a famous footnote in JL Austin's where he talks about lining up a putter on the putting green and he strikes it and he misses it and he says well but I could have made it and he and and he says and this does not depend on anything like if I tried harder or something like that on that very occasion with exactly that situation I could admit it and then he says a very important thing he says and and experiments could prove that out well what quantum mechanical experience know clearly what he has in mind is we could line up the putt ten times in a row right there and his friend says well let's see and sure enough eight out of ten times he makes it but those precisely aren't the same now they're not occasions but that's what matters what matters is the robustness of our abilities if you could make that putt under opening up different circumstances highly reliably then there's a sense in which you could have done it otherwise and if you if not then you couldn't have done it and that's the sense that matters and it is neutral with regard to determinism you're not a determinist are you keen oh I'm a libertarian in this respect which means in exactly the same situation to at least two different alternative futures are possible so they if you were around the clock you know and did the putt again under exactly the same conditions you might get a different note you could get ink they're getting a different difference well it wouldn't have such make a difference but if you thought that you have an alternative set of futures and that is under your control which one of those happens that makes a difference yes but I believe that no you don't say that because you you say if you perfectly rewound it no you can't do that but I mean if it's a thought experiment obviously but but I think I think your view is key to and as a libertarian then when it comes to free will you believe we we do have genuine free will attitude to I think one of the rules in English and I think in American law too is that you can only be guilty of something if you could have done otherwise now that's precisely that JL Austin quote you use but I think lawyers would interpret this to mean I at that time he didn't have to do the things he did nothing made him not even himself he didn't make himself do that he he should not have done it he did what he should not have done that that's the problem that people like me would struggle with is guilt attributable to what people do because if there's a sense in which you know people are determined at some level by it that's in chemistry or their previous brain states or just the physics of the universe there's a sense in which they cannot be culpable for doing things wrong they were bound to do those things if somebody said to me and people have believed this that God sends people to hell but he's created them in order to senator hell I would feel morally affronted but I'm not but my moral affront would be based on the fact that if people do go to hell must be their own choice and not God's choice so now you do have somebody pulling the strings it's not just nature on this sort of view there is a personal being who's doing that to you and you fear affronted that there being should not have done that hmm and I think it'll libertarian would say and of course God's not like that anyway but people should not do the things they do and there is also the David Hume point that actually determinism it is just unprovable you can't you can't show that everything has to happen the way it does unfortunately for the libertarian if a free choice really involves the conditions you say then how could you be responsible because you can't determine which choice you make that is all of your previous education suppose it does not determine it does not determine in other words I assume that you've been raised to be a a very moral and non non violent man not volunteers if if we were to hand you a gun right now and I wish to suggest to you well why don't you shoot Justin in our I'm not gonna get thank you data straight this part yeah just to prove you have free will shoot him in the arm now I might surprise you you might but you won't and you won't because you know better and your prior experience makes this I'd bet very very large sums of money you're not going to do it and and it's going to be a free choice and you just better hope that it's not an undetermined choice because if it were then you might suddenly find yourself doing it in spite of all of your previous ah my view is not that you would find yourself doing it but that you could decide to do it which is very different well who's the you that's doing this well I've gotta you you see you might not have you just got a brain so I've gotta sell this subject self which is the soul in Christian terms is also an agent self so it has a certain agency which it decides between courses of actions so it is not determined by its pathway if you know in the kata I would not actually shoot Justin but there are things I would do to Justin if you ask them to and I'm feeling worried here better carry well and I might decide and some of them were I might vote for example if you say could you inflate how much it costs you to get here by train and and so make a bit of money on the side well I might have realistic you might not be the most moral person you might might be as moral as you think I am so I might say well I decided to do this and it would be nothing I'll pass would make it the case that I was going to decide in a particular I would at that moment make a decision I mean I mean when and when Dan says the fact that you were brought up to be a moral person and you've got a good education and so on for you those aren't determining things those even if they strongly insula wrongly influencing there's a way that you do need your life but they're not in a sense determining the attitude though I agree with a generally Aristotelian view that habit actually constrains virtue so that you if you have learned to always be understanding life there's a better chance you'll continue to do an honest thing but nevertheless there are tipping points and when people are put in crisis situations as they can be then and I think that's fine so I think the type of determinism we're talking about is different as far as Keith's concerned it's it's not a hard determinism in the sense of the that the type of physical determinism that perhaps you believe ultimately governs everything Dan if Keith has been raised in a moral environment that's an influence rather than a determining factor of how he will behave well of course still do otherwise yes and if he did otherwise we'd want to know what determined him to do otherwise it's decided well but the decision can't happen without something happening in the brain and either that thing that happened in the brain was undetermined was a quantum event of some sort that was really it was the amplification of a quantum event or it wasn't and quite frankly I don't see why it makes any difference one way I've put this I've said suppose I'm you're really going to hate this example I give you two robot babysitter's these are going to take care of your grandchildren so you really care about whether they're any good robot a is deterministic but has a random number generator which it uses all the time to get itself out of puritans ask situations in its calculations and it's wonderfully carrying an adroit and then for seeing in it it's it's a really expert at caring for and cheering for grandchildren robot B has exactly the same software running on exactly the same hardware but instead of having a pseudo-random number generator it has genuine radium randomness in it so that it there is a sense in which it is undetermined while the behavior of a is determined now tell me if you had to entrust the lives of your grandchildren to one of these would you have any reason to prefer robot be over robot a you prefer a but that's because one B is governed by randomness and I don't want people to be random well if it's undetermined than its random no no it's not one should use expression sufficiently determined and if something is sufficiently determined then if you have this set of causes you are bound to have this effect I think if it's not sufficiently determined and and I think a person morality this is where morality becomes very important for me that people are guided by whether they're going to do something because it's right or not and in if you had a if you could make a robot which could consider moral questions both both a and B do that do you think oh that's what I doubt I doubt if a robot could consider the reality of an issue and if it did I would treat it as a person I mean if I if we could apart from the moral issue for me one of the interesting questions that the idea of determinism raises is is whether we can be speak of reason and rationality yeah you're an atheist dan but if all our past events are physically determined at some level isn't your decision to be an atheist simply an accumulation of those past events and you haven't in a sense decided to be away from it you are simply the product of but what a simulation is it it is one it's been accomplished by machinery that has been designed and by evolution over billions of years to do a very good job of telling truth from falsehood and of not drawing unlicensed about conclusions we're do you think of think of an eagle for a moment the Eagles I very high fidelity very high accuracy it is a brilliant truth discover about the things that matter to Eagles and then it puts them to great use we have wonderful senses too and we can but not only can do we rely on them we have learned how to improve on them in hundreds of ways we have eyeglasses and telescopes and microscopes and all sorts of scientific devices and methods truth seeking methods now it's undeniable that we use those not perfectly but my decision to be an atheist is the product of that whole development of truth seeking processes and that's why it is but but keep something Keith is obviously is also the benefit benefactor of all those same processes down through the millennia and he's chosen to be a Christian so in some sense isn't ultimately if everything is ultimately determined that you you were going to be here and have this conversation you know if you were around the clock perfectly it would all happen in exactly the same way isn't your decision to be an atheist Keith's decision to be a Christian ultimately simply a factor of that is there's no ultimate sense in which we've freely chosen anything in our life and therefore can we not speak of the reasons and leave the truth working and so on value maybe there's an ultimate sense of freedom in which neither neither Keith no I know you were free but that's not one that cuts any ice when it comes to the question of whether we have reasons what do you think about this key I think reasoning is difficult indeed I think it's impossible to account for in purely physical terms because to try and think about somebody to decide whether it is true have a hard problem of some sort that is not like handing it over to your brain to solve it's it's like doing some really hard thinking hmm and it's that's the problem it doesn't that seems to be a directed process that there is a you which is and I think it's just the brain not the physical brain you use a brain so that this is what it comes down to I think the person the self the soul uses the brain and if the brains not operating properly it will probably come up with the wrong answer but if the brain is operating properly it it still has freedom in fact that's what the brain exists for so I think there's the soul is very dependent on the brain and I don't deny that at all I don't know either right well you deny a soul like obvious no in fact I was interviewed once by an Italian journalist and the headline in the Corriere della Sera the next day was CIB amin anima my father depandi piccoli robot yes we have a soul that's it that's right I mean we do have a soul the a colleague of mine wrote a book with the I think very bad title my brain made me do it well what else would you want to make you do it has somebody else's brain why isn't it altum Utley your brain that made you do it in your in your view because I think I use my brain I mean I think there's a way through using the brain well that's such a dirty word yes I do believe there's something other than the brain which ultimately makes human choices and finds human meaning has human focuses yes I do and of course millions of people think that that's reality itself can exist without the physical brain because when you die you've obviously got the physical brain left and belief in immortality I don't think it's an impossible belief let me put it at its minimum I think it is possible to exist without this brain and this body and I don't know what ahh but then you can't be mature anything no no that's the information the information could be information in my brain were perfectly encoded and this brain died it could be uploaded and I would still have to exist in some physical medium well of course at that point you have to ask what you in by physical because now that we have dark energy and dark matter and well it has something to do with it because you say by physical do you mean something in this space and time having these nominations and maths etc well perhaps not perhaps if you can download it into a piece of silicon perhaps you could download it into dark matter or something but but but I think one of the things we know about robots that makes them profoundly unlike moral agents is that they are potentially immortal because you can download all this off you can just keep uploading a fresh shot you can you can that's a sort of immortality and though your sort of information without any oh you gotta have it on a hard drive you're gonna have a hard drive that's it look this is a really important moral point I think you should never make a you should never sign a contract with the robot because you know where it's acting on it so not as a surrogate for my videos because robots aren't people they aren't fragile they aren't mortal like us they can be they can just be rebooted the next day you can't you can't threaten to punish a robot you can't extract and or else but when a robot makes a promise you'd be a fool to accept it but you do see I mean didn't you just say that we could be rebooted as well in principle I did yes in a purely immaterial way there's that there's a form of immortality digital immortality in a sense that I think it's preposterous that they would be yes if you have Beethoven's symphonies on digital things with strings of notes and ones and you say well there's the information so it so Beethoven's Symphony is immortal well you'd need to have the kids turn it in something that somebody could hear before it was very heavy which brings us back to to where we started why don't we that wrap this up gentlemen because I could go and chat into you both all day but but time is against us I just wonder at the end of the day whether both of your world views that you come to this area with obviously are going to influence the conclusions you make so yeah Keith you're a theist ultimately you're an idealist and you interpret in a sense the world through that lens through the idea that there is ultimate purpose there is ultimate you know value and that explanations cannot simply be physical but there can be in a sense purpose of explanations for the things we do and that kind of thing so in a sense you're you you you're bound to impose then on the physical world that you do obviously it recognizes there that that that element that that theistic way of looking at life that that is full of purpose and kind of a metaphysical view of reality well that's right I mean when you say impose that sounds wrong brutal but that's the way I think it's the filter through which you naturally she thinks yeah and that is the in a sense what a worldview is so so and when you see what Dan does do you equally see that he has a naturalistic filter by which he then presumably in your view reduces all of that stuff to and I think these are both highly defensible philosophical views which is why I don't think philosophy answers our ultimate questions you you you don't think the idealist view is obviously as defensible as your naturalist view I think certain gratuitous mystery about it and the things that Keith thinks are and ad better remain mysterious can in fact be accounted for quite adequately in a naturalistic framework we can make sense of purpose we make sense for beauty joy love promising death the urge for immortality all of these things have naturalistic accounts and when we've given them it doesn't diminish the wonderfulness of life or the wonderfulness of people at all the I just like to ask one question do you regard this as work in progress yet to be done I'm to complete this oh sure yes yes in that sense do you have faith in the naturalistic project that it will ultimately describe everything faith in the same sense I have faith in engineers to make bridges in general fall down that's why I don't tremble with fear when I cross a bridge it's it's a faith based on evidence and and many people do accuse the naturalist sort of that it's protective as being reductionistic because ultimately Beauty truth love is all ultimately reducible to chemicals reducible as a is just a bad word here there are levels and levels and levels of explanation and you can't look can't explain dollars to take something very mundane you can't explain the economic value of the dollar or a pound using atoms and electrons that's just the wrong level at which to explain that doesn't mean that there's anything as it were metaphysically irreducible about dollars it just means that if you want to explain them you go to row Priya level to explain it and for you when it comes to explanation ultimately you find that you're more satisfied with a view that that goes beyond the natural is view I think for me the most important kind of explanation is explanation of behavior in terms of value that that behavior is a explicable in terms of seeking to realize a value and that's what's important in my life and I wouldn't I I can't see the what is most important in my life is really an illusion or that my sense of being a continuing self which makes these decisions is an illusion and for that reason I'm reluctant to say that I am just my brain well certainly neither of you have been brainless today it's been a really fascinating discussion thank you very much both for being with me on the program okay really excellent conversation my guests today have been dan Dennett and Keith ward but updates bonus content and exclusive debate clips from the series of sign up at the big conversation dot show you

Channel: Unbelievable?

Views: 208,297

Rating: 4.8629079 out of 5

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, Daniel Dennett, Keith Ward, robots, free will, consciousness, richard dawkins, science, mind

Id: mongL_2KMGg

Length: 83min 19sec (4999 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/carpekarma]

No. We are matter. You can cut parts of the brain and change the "mind". Mind to brain is what the soul was to the body. Humans have a tendency to assign to the immaterial or mystical the physical that we don't understand.

To fill in our lack of understanding of physiology and biology, we created the idea of the soul. To compensate for our lack of understanding of the brain and consciousness, we invented the mind. Just like we invented gods to make up for our lack of understanding of the cosmos and astronomy.

[u/jsuth]

Dan debates a theologian on English Christian radio. While I didn't find the theologian to be very sophisticated, it seems to be a fair platform and was interesting to see Dan defending against opposing views.

I noticed that Steve Pinker and Susan Blackmore have been on as well.

[u/victor_knight]

I like the part where Dan basically claims that "randomness" can produce beings with "agency" and then it's not random anymore. Hence his position on free will.