The 4 biggest ideas in philosophy, with legend Daniel Dennett for Big Think+

**🔍 The Magician’s Trick of Philosophy: Daniel Dennett on Why Truth, Darwin, and Dangerous Memes Matter**

What do you do when a magician “saws a woman in half”? You ask how. And if someone says, “It just looks that way,” you’re not satisfied. Philosopher **Daniel Dennett** thinks too many philosophers stop at that lazy answer — and he’s spent his career digging deeper.

Dennett doesn’t just want clever ideas. He wants *explanations*. Like an engineer, he wants to know how minds, beliefs, and culture *actually work*. That’s why he turned to science — especially **evolution** — to fix what he calls philosophy’s biggest blunders.

🔧 From an early curiosity about numb arms to reading about neurons and natural selection, Dennett came to see learning itself as a **Darwinian process**. To him, **consciousness, creativity, and genius** aren't magic — they’re biological, evolutionary outcomes.

🧠 And that’s why he champions **memes**, those units of culture we pass on like digital apps. According to Dennett, our **minds are filled with memes** — unlike a chimpanzee’s “unfurnished brain” — and these shape everything from language to belief.

But in today's world, Dennett warns, we're swimming in **toxic memes** — especially the seductive lie that *truth doesn’t matter*. When “your truth” replaces **the truth**, manipulation thrives.

🤖 Even worse? **AI is now mimicking minds**, creating fake intentional systems that lure us in and hijack our attention. Dennett believes that current AI — like ChatGPT — doesn’t aim for *truth*, just *truthiness*. They're like historical fiction authors, not historians.

So how do we defend reality?

By building systems — both legal and technical — that can **detect and label counterfeit people and information**, just like we do with counterfeit money. But we’ll need smart laws, informed governments, and a collective will to act — *fast*.

**Dennett’s bottom line?** Philosophy shouldn’t stop at the “how it looks” explanation. It should *demand* to know how it really works — and defend that truth, no matter how inconvenient.

-------------------

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices