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October 08, 2004

Did Daniel Dennett admit that there is a "higher purpose" to life?

Andrew Sullivan thinks that this interview with Daniel Dennett shows Dennett admitting that evolution has a larger purpose (higher than the propagation of genes to succeeding generations, that is). I didn't see it that way, although I did see Robert Wright talking far more than he was conducting an interview.

Wright: "Is it inconceivable to you that . . . there is some larger purpose unfolding or that natural selection is the product of design? . . . that there was a designer of natural selection . . ."

Dennett: "I can imagine that in some loose sense? I don't know if that's a coherent idea, but it's not obviously incoherent."

Wright: "But you certainly don't buy it, in any sense."

Dennett: "I don't buy it."

Also check out the interviews with Freeman Dyson, John Maynard Smith, Steven Pinker, Robert Pollack, Francis Fukuyama, and others.

UPDATE: Dennett's sent an email to Sullivan objecting to the characterization. I can't find it on Sullivan's website, but here's a segment.

“Wright misinterprets his own videoclip (I am grateful that it is available uncut on his website, so that everybody can see for themselves). All I agreed to was that IF natural selection had the properties of embryogenesis (or "an organism's maturation"), it would be evidence for a higher purpose. But I have always insisted that evolution by natural selection LACKS those very properties. And I insisted on that in the earlier portions of the videoclip.”

Sullivan does, however, provide a full link to Wright's reply. Here's the link to Wright's original account of the interview, in which he begins, " I have some bad news for Dennett's many atheist devotees. He recently declared that life on earth shows signs of having a higher purpose."

Posted by Robin Varghese at 04:44 PM | Permalink

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» Dennett, evolution, and "higher purpose" from Majikthise
Did Daniel Dennett admit that there is a "higher purpose" to life? asks Robin Verghese of 3quarksdaily. This strikes me as an odd way of putting the question. The alleged "admission" is to be found in an interview between Robert [Read More]

Tracked on Oct 9, 2004 4:12:12 PM

Comments

Wow, that is a great site. Thanks for the link!

Posted by: Randy | Oct 9, 2004 11:18:45 AM

Some of the uncertainty people are having about Dennett's position could be cleared up in a talk he will be giving in Europe soon : he will speak on (amoungst other subjets) what he calles "evolutionary economics".

Cf. http://www.iut-laval.univ-lemans.fr/i-CaP_2006/
or http://www.iut-laval.univ-lemans.fr/I-CaP_2006/

Colin SCHMIDT

Posted by: cta SCHMIDT | Sep 18, 2005 6:38:02 AM

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