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Comment by stiff | Hacker News Reader

Nothing new in the philosophy departments: thousands of words and nothing to say at all that would be connected to reality. I heard he cites some experimental works sometimes, but his own work seems still to be in this good old tradition of medieval scholasticism of thinking very hard what "ought to be", he even personifies neurons and throws in some "emergence". Missing is only some chaos theory and Goedels theorem, but Plato is there, so maybe this makes up for it. Worst is that he will inspire hundreds of cranks to do similar attempts at "explaining how brain works" and people doing real research will receive still more letters with "revolutionary" ideas of no use.

On the topic of the brain, I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher.

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> I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher.

The way you get data is by asking questions, and the way you get questions to ask is by following hunches. Don't be so quick to throw away the playful turning-over of ideas that necessarily precedes rigorous analysis.

I assume this is just a troll, anyone who doesn't know who Daniel Dennett is should peruse his CV sometime http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettdcv.htm

I know "who he is". Do I have to agree with him because he is a professor? Every piece of his writing I saw used the most complicated language possible and the largest amount of digressions to in the end convey nothing concrete whatsoever and this is all the more true of this article. Moreover I think one can not make any serious contribution to cognitive science using the methodology he uses and that what he is doing is akin to people trying to explain "what gravity is" before Galileo came, abandoned the question, and used equations to predict effects of gravity instead. If I am wrong, I seriously would love an explanation of why do you think so.

As others have said Marvin Minsky, who I by the way respect way more than Dennett because in his prime he actually did do real research, had this idea of a "community of agents" thirty years ago or more, in fact he several time claimed that if only he would receive the money to hire programmers he would produce revolutionary AI programs in a matter of months. How this is looked upon by more mainstream scientists one can guess. To me the whole theory is as vague as saying that the brain is made up of cooperating parts. Does any of this lead to testable scientific predictions?

I admire your healthy level of skepticism. I've been intrigued by Dennett for years, but I haven't drunk his Kool-Aid.

How do you find triune brain theory? I'm finding it a very useful model. Want to know what I think many of these "brain guys" get wrong? The fact that many neural circuits include loops through the body at various distances. Doesn't it seem like many theories are actually projections of social models? (consider the shift from cleverly-connected agents to "decentralization" to competing individual neurons). There's a theory somewhere that says technocracies develop products that mimic their internal communication/social structure. I see startups go through this all the time. anyhoo...

It would have been good if you included your references instead of halfheartedly telling us the keywords why you maybe disagree. I still upped your comment, because despite your ignorance, you've developed your own views to things, which as I said, just lack the references. Have an open mind and go beyond the words, start with your own imagination. To me it sounds, as if you cannot reason Dennett, but you leave us unclear what "that" logic inaccuracy is, thus making you appear ignorant.

The missing links (please complete them, if there was more that you'd like to share):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain

I recently read "Intuition Pumps And Other Tools For Thinking" by Dennett (http://www.amazon.com/Intuition-Pumps-Other-Tools-Thinking/d...). I think you are not giving him enough credit. He actually spends most of the book arguing against popular ideas in philosophy that either have no support in science, or have counter-evidence in science. I found the book was written clearly, with very little philosophical jargon.

Amen. To me that article should be littered with [citation required] -- it is just full of wild assertions with no hint of reference to research. As in "Maybe a lot of the neurons in our brains are not just capable but ... motivated to be more adventurous, more exploratory or risky in the way they comport themselves... They're struggling amongst themselves with each other for influence... there's competition going on between individual neurons." Such anthropomorphizing of individual damn cells is completely unjustified without some kind of support.

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