Update: This request received an amazing response! I had to make a tough choice, but I’ve picked someone to do the paid work of making a careful outline and suggesting possible excerpts. Thanks for everyone who sent a query.
Following ideas mentioned in the comments, however, there’s no reason why anyone cannot simply volunteer their own suggestions for parts of the videos that would make good excerpts. So, if anyone is so motivated, feel free to leave suggestions in the comments to this post. We might not be able to take all of them, but anything sensible will be considered. Thanks!
It’s been a year and a half since the Moving Naturalism Forward workshop, which featured a great line-up of thinkers: Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Terry Deacon, Simon DeDeo, Dan Dennett, Owen Flanagan, Rebecca Goldstein, Janna Levin, Massimo Pigliucci, David Poeppel, Alex Rosenberg, Don Ross, and Steven Weinberg. Fortunately we got the whole thing on video, so the conversations are preserved for posterity. Unfortunately, that amounts to ten videos, each about an hour and a half long. Not a quick watch for someone who just wants the highlights!
So ever since the workshop, I’ve been wanting to go through the entire video record and make it more organized and digestible. That basically amounts to two things:
- Create a semi-detailed listing of who says what, when. So someone who wanted to hear Dan Dennett’s defense of free will could just skip right to that part of the relevant video — and could also see who mounted a challenge to it.
- Edit the long videos into much shorter highlights. Some very short bits of rhetorical brilliance, and/or some medium-length exchanges of separate interest.
I’ve been meaning to re-watch all the videos myself and do the above tasks, but it’s pretty clear that other obligations are in the way and it’s not going to happen. I have someone who will do the actual video editing, so really it’s about watching all the videos and making some intellectual/artistic decisions about what snippets might be good on their own.
So — anyone want to do it? This would be a paid gig, although it’s nothing you’d earn a living on, I promise you. I’m looking for a person with some kind of background both in science and philosophy, who can follow all the discussions and sensibly dissect them. Maybe about a week’s worth of work or a bit less, although it wouldn’t all have to be done within a week.
If you’re interested, shoot me an email (not a comment here), explaining a bit about what your background is. It’s not an enormous rush, although I’d like to get it done sooner rather than later. Could be fun!
This is fascinating. I would happily watch all the 10hours. Do you think that tagging the videos with key-phrases would be helpful? Perhaps it’s possible to get a fair number of people providing tags as well as the name of the person that talked? I was thinking of perhaps making use of the crowd that may help with some of the bulk processing? Or, that’s not helpful? I know a tiny bit of physics, but negligible philosophy.
First thoughts:
1. After having watched the taped sessions in full the first time, when you first posted them, it struck me that, cumulatively, they merely lightly brushed the surface of the topic. So now I think: What’s your motivation for reducing them – by a power? Do you really think bleeding the life out of them to get to a Coles Notes version will result in a vehicle for widening the potential audience for the full sessions, or the topic, either or both?
2. Why would you narrow the candidates to folks with training or background in both science and philosophy? That, after all, describes all the PARTICIPANTS. It makes me think you that for some reason you think it unlikely any of this will go beyond those with the same background as the participants.
It’d be fascinating to see each of the PARTICIPANTS have a go at this. I can’t think of even one whose attempt I could resist watching – tho, I strongly suspect the version Rebecca Goldstein might assemble would be the most promising (assuming the goal is one of the possibilities I’ve raised).
Outside of the participants, someone I’d like to see David Alberts take a run. His effort wouldn’t necessary promise a wider audience(!), but it’d be awesome.
3. Why not invited the world?
Set up a YouTube channel (You’ve got one already for the conference.), set up a prize, invite anyone to compete by putting their effort on the channel, YOU decide who wins (like on 3 Quarks Daily), and otherwise YouTube viewers “decide” (like on cable news).
I guarantee two things:
a) Based on the preconceptions you’ve set up, you’d certainly not pick me nor anyone like me, nor a lot of other folks more perceptive, thoughtful and interesting than me, and you’d almost guarantee getting a lesser product.
Consider the possibilities: what, for example, would Errol Morris do with this (among many, many innovative documentary filmmakers, famous or unknown)?
b) If you WERE to set up such a contest, I would enter.
Concerned about the work involved in the judging? Really? Exactly how many do you think would take up the challenge? Anyway, if it gets too much, have your readers help out, and maybe some of the participants.
4. On further consideration, I think that resorting to such a contest as in #3 could resolve the problem of goal I addressed in #1. ‘Using only the materials from this conference, put together the essence of it in X minutes.’
I was going to make a recommendation like Avattoir’s, but much less eloquently. I particularly agree that consumers should be the primary judges, not philosophers or scientists. Unless they have become your intended audience!
Crowd-sourcing seems to be a good way to go, with bounties for the most important parts.
Another alternative would be to use sites like Mechanical Turk.
What about instead of creating a highlights reel, the annotation is able to interact with the video, so that users can easily search by topic and then jump to the location of interest?
I’d also echo the thoughts of others that crowd-sourcing would be the way to go – set up a Wiki, post all the videos, then ask for contributions to annotation.
Hmmm… Daniel Dennett gets to pontificate in defense of free will but William Provine is not even invited to the party? Methinks the deck is stacked.
David Greene
Well, according to Provine the organisors had no choice in the matter.
or the organisers even 🙂
James Gallagher – I’d like to see some clarification of what you mean by your responses on Provine.
1. I’m sure the conference could have included many, many more than those invited who agreed to attend. There were mentions of several during the sessions.
2. If you have some source for your comment alleging that Provine has said something on his not being invited, I know I’d appreciate seeing it – preferably a hyperlink – and also I expect I’m not alone in this.
3. As I understand, the organization of the conference started with the lawyer/entrepreneur who spoke in the opening session and who financed it. Are you saying he limited Carroll’s choices on who to invite? I don’t see that as likely, but we’re on Carroll’s turf, so why don’t we turn to the fern he’s lurking behind and ask him: Sean?
4. I didn’t see what Dennett was doing as ‘pontificating’. To start with, I can’t see how it’d be possible to ‘pontificate’ to this group (Perhaps, given his standing, Weinberg could try to ‘pontificate’, but quite apart from him having no history of engaging in it, even he likely would be isolated and ostracized just for attempting it.). Jerry Coyne vigorously and resolutely challenged Dennett on free will, even announcing his intention to do so the first session. And even what Dennett was arguing for as ‘free will’ was pretty highly qualified, right from his concession that it could only have any reality in the context of something like this ‘advanced’ state of emergence we’re in (or, more precisely, in the state we’re in from numerous emergent outcomes, following on Simon DeDeo’s presentation on the mechanics of emergence), and limited efficacy at that.
5. I recognize Provine as an atheist and anti-creationist; I haven’t been aware he’s also a proponent of naturalism.
I don’t think there is a clear consensus meaning of the word naturalism is there?
First they will have to agree on a clear Mission Statement, from that their mutual goals/ objectives and priorities, right?
Avattoir
lol
It was an attempt (perhaps poor) at humour – Provine doesn’t believe humans can make free choices – so the attendee list was either decided around the time inflation kicked off, or was just a random fluctuation which none of the organisers had any possibility of influencing.
I think I would pass, secular humanism sounds way cooler. Why should we deny the results of the human experiment? How long will we have to pretend that we are molecular robots? I would bet that one day they will have conventions talking about how naturalism was a classical philosophy, and that was outdone by the modern philosophy of secular humanism. Then in a way it is a lot more like quantum physics. “Everyday” experience shows us that we are more than just that, but no one has any clue on how to explain how that is truly possible.
So, either we are robbed of free will by cosmic determinism or robbed of free will by quantum randomeness? Sounds like we are trapped between Scylla and Charybdis 🙂
I’m not about to volunteer into a flame war over this, so I’ll refrain from naming-of-names, or even responding to issues where even just that could identify who posted the comment; but it seems to me at least a few comments on this thread are by folks who themselves could not have actually watched the 10 hours, or, possibly, any of it.
Everyone — see new update at the top of the post. I’ve found someone to do the main work, but am happy to take volunteer suggestions for what excerpts from the videos we should produce.
Sean
You should definitely get a WHOLE trasnsript of the discussions posted – this is ~5 days work for 2 knowledgeable (student level) people – and I think there are many candidates who would do this even for no payment.
As for your issues with video excerpts- well fk you, I did offer 🙂
Fantastic stuff and I’ve actually read books, watched lectures and read blogs by them!
Great AHA! Moment at 1:13:00 , as Dan touches his Apple laptop and Rebecca takes notes on paper with a carbon pencil! Human beings symbolic representation and language at many levels. (Terrence Deacon watches on)
Free will always a non-starter for me because Dan didn’t make his laptop or even Rebecca’s pencil. Those were created by other agents or we exist as a community of agents so it is homonculi right up to the Apple Corp in California which drives your high tech fund up and makes you feel good even though you have done nothing. We are all just particles absorbed into the community background field.
Manifest image vs scientific image is fascinating but in the absence of a notion of a fossil record and a round earth, and heliocentric solar system the 6000 year old earth explanation was the manifest image back then as explained by one of my favorite philosophers as he also explains the ascent of biblical knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGrlWOhtj3g
or transcript even 🙂
Never seen a spelling correction interrupted by a crazy before
Steady David. Don’t can’t your chickens before they’ve hatched, there may be a way out! Free will may be real. I will reveal all later; possibly or possibly not. The pompous pretentious perverse intellectual poverty of pontificating philosophers always surprises me.
Moving naturalism “forward”? What is this directionality you’re implying? In a universe that appears to lack inherent teleology, purpose, etc., how can anything, including philosophy, be said to be moving “forward”? To where should it be going? I am really, genuinely curious about this, as I am of all attempts to refute the apparent total nihilism and non-directionality of our (naturalistic) existence. I, for one, find the goals of “naturalism” to be as devoid of meaning and importance as those of, say, Christian monotheism. So my question for all of you naturalists is still this: Why are you not nihilists?
Baron,
By moving naturalism “forward”, I’m sure they mean to push for making progress in the sense that any part of analytic philosophy can, by making our definitions and ideas clear and tracing their implications.
Why doesn’t naturalism imply nihilism? Because naturalism basically just means our reasoning should follow where nature leads; we should respect empirical facts and have our a priori reasonings about metaphysics and ethics follow from information we get empirically about the way nature is.
This leads very naturally for one to note that it feels like something to be one of these natural molecular robots that is a human, and there are facts of the matter about what experiences would be good or bad for us. There are also naturally good and bad ways for us to live together with others. There are very good reasons (including biological facts, probability theory, game theory, etc) to justify naturalistic ethics. See Moral Naturalism:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/
After listening to the MNF Videos, the impression I have of the discussions among the panelists is it has the same air as the discussions about the question “Why is there Something rather than Nothing?” In other words, “Why the GAP?” .
In the workshop, you talk about different kinds of gaps: manifest image vs. scientific image, atoms or neurons vs. color or meaning, freewill vs. determinism, and even bosons and fermions made their appearance.
In my opinion, there are infinitely many more other gaps. For instance, mind-body from philosophy; wave-particle from physics; gene-protein from molecular biology; syntax-semantics from linguistics; variation-selection from evolutionary biology; induction-deduction from logics; analogical-rational from thinking; computable-notcomputable from computer science; and so on in various permutations and combinations without ends. It is the stuffs that our intellectual discourses are made of. Since time immemorial.
It has been thus, and there are no exceptions: I have argued elsewhere that “Planck’s constant is the Mother of All Dualities.”