The Natural Philosophy Forum at Johns Hopkins is pleased to welcome Daniel Dennett from Tufts University to give the first Distinguished Annual Lecture, which will be at 6:00pm in the Glass Pavilion at Levering Hall.
How, when and why can we trust our brains?
If we didn’t think we could trust our brains, we wouldn’t bother with inquiries like this. But our brains are composed of cells that don’t know much of anything and there’s no magical Self in the control room. Can we bootstrap our way to a well- grounded conviction that we know at least much of what we think we know?
Dennett has been one of our most influential and important philosophers for five decades. He is author of Content and Consciousness (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Bradford Books, 1978), Consciousness Explained (Penguin, 1992). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (Simon & Schuster, 1995), Freedom Evolves (Penguin, 2003), From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds ( Norton & Co., 2017), Just Deserts (with Gregg Caruso, Polity, 2021) and many others.