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Daniel Dennett, a giant of cognitive science and philosophy and professor emeritus at Tufts University, has passed away at the age of 82.
Dennett has made significant contributions to the field of philosophy, is known as one of the "Four Horsemen of Evolution", and has been a leading figure in the Western neo-atheist movement for nearly two decades.
His magnum opus, The Explanation of Consciousness, is considered one of the most important works in the philosophy of mind and even contemporary philosophy, and explores the phenomenon of consciousness in all its aspects.
His unique views on "consciousness" stem from his deep connection with computers and artificial intelligence, and he has absorbed a wide range of information from neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence and other fields.
At the same time, his thoughts and words have profoundly influenced people's understanding of artificial intelligence, consciousness, and thought.
For example, Dennett once said:
The question is not whether machines can think, but whether humans can think.
Intelligence is not limited to humans;
AI is not a threat to human autonomy;
We should embrace the possibilities of AI and use it as a tool to understand ideas and advance knowledge.
AI has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of mind and consciousness, but it is not a substitute for human experience.
Therefore, Dennett is also known as an "AI pioneer" in the industry.
Even at the end of his life (a month ago), Dennett was active on social media, sharing his thoughts on cutting-edge technologies such as large language models and ChatGPT.
Now, Dennett's tragic fall has many tech leaders lamenting.
正如DeepMind CEO哈萨比斯所缅怀的那般:
We were very saddened to hear the news of Dennett's passing.
I also remember the wonderful and wide-ranging conversations we had about artificial intelligence, creativity, sensibility, and of course, consciousness, including Theseus' ship on artificial intelligence.
He was a great thinker and will be sorely missed.
Now, let's take a closer look at this giant of thought.
The legendary life of an AI consciousness pioneer
Dennett was born in Boston, USA, in 1942, but spent part of his childhood in Lebanon.
When he was five years old, his father died in a plane crash, and Dennett's mother took him and his two sisters back to Boston.
Dannett's bond with philosophy and cognitive science begins with his childhood experience.
Because when he was a little boy, all he thought about was "how things work" and liked to take things apart and see what was inside that made them work.
Based on this, Dennett recalled:
I'm essentially like an engineer myself.
And as it turns out, as a philosopher, it's not bad to have such an attitude.
By extension, figuring out what makes an idea work, and why.
So, in Dennett's view, he particularly supports the first idea, which is that if you want to be a philosopher, you need to understand the world, you need to understand science.
And he also affirmed that
A philosopher trained in science is far stronger than I once was.
At the age of 11, during a summer camp, a camp director labeled young Dannett a "philosopher," which became a small omen of his life's journey.
After graduating from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree from Harvard University, Dennett studied at Oxford University under the tutelage of Gilbert Ryle, where he received his Ph.D. in 1965.
Ryle's term "soul in a machine" had a profound impact on Dennett, prompting him to educate himself in neuroscience and explore fields such as psychology, computer programming, linguistics, and artificial intelligence.
The title of his doctoral dissertation was "The Mind and the Brain: An Introspective Description Based on Neurological Findings."
During his stay at Oxford, Dennett also recalled an interesting incident.
He and a group of graduate students were discussing a topic one day about what happens if your arm falls asleep and you can't control it.
Dennett was curious at first, so he asked, "What is the problem? Is the nerve in the arm pinched? Or is it bleeding or something?"
However, it was this question that surprised everyone as to why a philosopher would pay attention to the physiological changes in the human body and think that Dennett was abandoning philosophy.
So Dennett rushed to the library and "flooded" himself with knowledge about how the nervous system worked.
This event was a very important turning point in Dennett's life. ：
When I learned about neurons, I suddenly thought of the cells in the brain that send signals, and they can be part of the evolution of your brain, which is learning.
Individual learning is just another Darwinian process.
At the time, Dennett didn't know much about Darwinian evolution and the concepts of natural selection, but the more he learned, the more he felt that this was the key to putting things together.
For the next six years, Dennett taught at the University of California, Irvine, until 1972, when he began working at Tufts University.
During this time, he also taught as a visiting professor at Harvard University and several other schools. He describes himself as "self-taught," or rather, the beneficiary of hundreds of hours of informal mentoring provided by many of the world's top scientists.
Why?
Because in 1976, something happened that made him one of the "biggest eye-opening moments" - he read Richard Dawkins's book "The Selfish Gene" and learned about the concept of memes.
When Dawkins coined the term "meme," his ideas were still very general.
Nowadays, people think of the term as a "popular term", but Dawkins proposes a very general theory of the evolution of human culture, which greatly expands the capabilities of the human brain.
Dennis admits this:
The difference between chimpanzees and humans is that chimpanzee brains are basically unfurnished, whereas ours brains are full of memes.
Just like your phone and computer, before downloading and installing a lot of apps, it is not a powerful device, the memes in our brains are like these apps.
In 1978, Dennett published the short story "Where Am I?", which explored the relationship between consciousness and the body through a thought experiment.
After the start of his academic career, he began to build a reputation in the academic community in 1981 with the publication of Brainstorming: Philosophical Essays on Thought and Psychology.
In 1992, his book The Explanation of Consciousness was published, which provided an in-depth exploration of the philosophical and scientific foundations of consciousness, and he went on to publish important books such as Darwin's Dangerous Idea, in which he explored the implications of evolutionary theory for human self-knowledge.
而在回看自己的研究中，丹尼特认为最好的idea，便是“有意的立场”（The Intentional Stance）：
We automatically take a strategy for anything complex and interesting.
If we could be an agent, what would it want, what would it know, or what would it believe?
Dennett argues that we have been using an "intentional" gesture to give other complex things, such as beliefs and desires.
It makes sense that this kind of thing happens in the physical world we live in, but what if it's in the world of artificial intelligence?
Especially full of false, deliberate systems, fake thoughts, and even false "people" that we seem to be irresistibly thinking as if they are real, as if they really have desires and beliefs.
And this incident is a very dangerous meme in Dennett's opinion:
We will not be able to take our attention away from them;
Current AI large language models, such as GPT-4 and so on, aim for "truthiness" rather than truth.
A more figurative metaphor is that they are more like historical novelists than historians.
The difference between humans and AI is that we can take the truth seriously unless we want to lie intentionally, but LLMs currently don't have the ability to intentionally lie:
Technology still has a long way to go, and at the same time, we need laws to protect the authenticity of AI.
It has also been criticized
Dennett's achievements in areas such as philosophy and cognitive science earned him the title of "Humanist of the Year" by the American Humanities Association in 2004.
In 2012, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his ability to convey the cultural significance of science and technology to a wide audience, and in 2018, he was awarded an honorary degree by Radborough University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, for his contributions and impact on interdisciplinary science.
While exploring philosophy and science, Dennett also had his own unique insights.
For example, when it comes to scientists, he will say:
Scientists are valuing philosophy because they are also mortal and can also fall into philosophical errors or philosophical confusions, and they need the help of philosophers.
Many people will only bury their heads in hard work, and do not listen to or even reject criticism from the outside world, but this will only make us farther and farther away from the truth of the matter.
A lot of people are very fond of ideas and research:
But his views are so unique and sharp that he is not immune to some opposition.
For example, when he speaks of philosophers, he criticizes:
I am shocked that so many philosophers are so complacent about their ignorance of evolution.
They think that if we have a physiological, mechanistic-physical explanation, it devalues the wonderful things of creativity, understanding.
Dennett firmly believes that even philosophers need to understand the intricacies and subtleties of nature, which allows us to better understand and create.
All in all, Dennett's passing is definitely a very regrettable thing, but his ideas and works, like seeds sown around the world, will continue to sprout, blossom and bear fruit in the field of human culture.
R.I.P
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