Atheist Daniel Dennett CATCHES Keith Ward Making A Circular Argument For God

[00:00:00]But I don't see how a disembodied mind of God could ground morality at all.

[00:00:06]Why? Why should we care what a disembodied mind thought we should do?

[00:00:11]>> Hey everyone, welcome back to the channel. Genuinely glad you're here for this one. So, what we have in this video is a conversation between two people who are operating from completely different understandings of reality. Daniel Dennett, one of the most recognized philosophers of mind in the world and a committed naturalist, goes head-to-head with Keith Ward, a Christian philosopher and theologian who believes that the physical world alone simply cannot explain what makes us human. They get into morality, purpose, the soul, and whether science can actually answer the deepest questions about life. And it gets intense. Do yourself a favor and stay all the way through this one because the second half of this clip is where the entire debate shifts and you do not want to miss what Daniel does when the conversation turns to God and moral obligation. Also, before we get into it, drop a comment and let me know where in the world you're watching from right now. It genuinely makes my day seeing where you all are coming from.

[00:01:18]And this community has people from places that always surprise me. All right, let us get into it.

[00:01:26]>> You should learn about basian predictive coding. It's the big bandwagon in cognitive neuroscience right now, which is precisely how the brain is always, always anticipating, projecting, forming hypotheses in effect about what's going to happen next and then checking those hypotheses against the data coming in. This is how our brains get the aditess and the real time capacity that they do. They're always they're designed to look ahead. They're designed by Darwinian processes to anticipate the future based on the experience of the past. And since the future isn't always just like the past, they make mistakes, but they are also designed for those very mistakes to feed back into the system and correct those mistakes. So the brain operates as a generator of anticipations which are then tested against the world which and it's a constantly uh uh revising uh sort of a moving target about trying to get trying to get the immediate future right and then of course that in turn permits us to have long range goals in the future. Another thing you said, Keith, is you you thought there were values that were not as it were human. Maybe because human beings maybe didn't even realize that they had these values. But there's no reason why something that is ultimately a human construction, a human artifact can't have surprises in it.

[00:03:14]The game of chess is certainly a human construct and yet people are still learning things that you can and can't do in chess. There's there's plenty of of discovery in even something as simple as chess.

[00:03:31]And the idea that the moral code that we have evolved over the last let's say 50,000 years that it's been changed. has been improved.

[00:03:45]No help to from religion there by the way. Religion has dragged its feet along the way. All the improvements from Old Testament morality today have been hard won by rational argument and largely fought by the churches. But we've learned better than that old morality. We've constantly improved our sense of morality. And that can go on in the future and we may learn. Doesn't the word improve suggest there is some objective standard to which we are heading?

[00:04:16]>> Oh yes. And in the same way that there's a it's there's an when when when they to keep a very simple I want to deliberately have a simple example. Um when they added the castling rule to chess they improved the game of chess.

[00:04:33]Why? Well, because people who are the chess players found the game sort of too slow if you didn't have this move. It was it just made the game more wonderful, more interesting.

[00:04:47]>> This is the moment where Daniel Dennett completely reframes the entire argument because Keith Ward just finished saying that a physical process cannot account for future directed purpose. that the brain cannot explain how we think about things that don't exist yet. And Daniel's response is not defensive. It is not hesitant. He comes back with actual science.

[00:05:15]Beijian predictive coding. Now, if you haven't heard of this before, here is what it actually means. The brain is not passively receiving information from the world. It is constantly generating predictions about what is going to happen next, checking those predictions against reality and updating itself when it gets things wrong. This is not philosophy. This is neuroscience.

[00:05:40]This is how your brain processes everything from catching a ball to having a conversation. The brain is literally built to anticipate the future. Daniel is not guessing here. He is pointing to a documented researchbacked framework that was already transforming cognitive science.

[00:05:57]And here is what blows my mind about this exchange. Keith presents the inability to account for future directed thought as if it is some kind of fatal wound to naturalism. But Daniel does not just patch the wound. He shows that the entire foundation of Keith's objection was already answered by science before this debate even happened. Then Daniel shifts to morality. And this is where it gets even better. He makes this point that a human constructed system can still contain genuine discoveries.

[00:06:32]Chess was invented by humans and yet people are still finding things inside that game that nobody knew before. So the fact that our moral framework evolved does not mean it cannot contain real truths worth discovering. And then Daniel Dennett says it plainly, "Religion has dragged its feet along the way. Every improvement from ancient moral codes to modern ethics was hardened by rational argument and the churches largely fought against those improvements." You have to understand how significant that statement is because Keith's entire position depends on the idea that objective morality needs a divine foundation. But Daniel is pointing to the historical record and saying the opposite is true. The people closest to that supposed divine foundation were the ones resisting moral progress the longest.

[00:07:28]>> And similarly, there are practices which were not only condoned but even required in Old Testament morality which we completely shun today. We would never dream of behaving that way.

[00:07:44]>> Well, can I just few things to respond to that? Well, because computers can play chess very well, of course, and they could beat me any time and Deep Blue could beat me any day of the week.

[00:07:54]>> But I don't think a computer would say, well, I play chess because it's more interesting and uh gives me a sense of, you know, whatever imaginative creativity.

[00:08:04]>> Well, so I don't think comedies will play chess unless they were made to. I mean, people play chess for fun.

[00:08:11]>> [snorts] >> And uh that's not something that machines do. They don't do things for fun. And so I >> not yet. Well, I think you're taking I think [snorts] here what you're doing is taking a bet on the future. You're saying I bet that brain science will develop in such a way that it will show that all these things can be done perfectly well by machine. And I suppose my bet is that that's not going to happen. Uh, and that uh you could get um somebody a zombie which acted like a robot like a human being but still felt and experience nothing and didn't get thrilled by things that were happening or invent new moves because they were exciting.

[00:08:53]>> It would just appear to be thrilled.

[00:08:55]>> It would just appear to be >> and it would it would guide its life by its being thrilled by this.

[00:09:02]>> Yes. But that still wouldn't be the same.

[00:09:05]>> Just wanted to make sure that your zombie was was indistinguishable from a normal conscious human being.

[00:09:12]>> It's externally and indistinguishable, but internally it is distinguishable.

[00:09:18]Though you'd never know because it was probably trained to tell you that it had deep feelings. So you you still couldn't >> I mean we we're getting into the whole area of of artificial intelligence in a sense. But but coming back to your your view that that this objective moral realm exists and and I think on Dan's view well we can simply explain that by an evolutionary history which helps us to interact better and so on and and and the we don't discover these things they're they're simply emergent like everything else uh in our experience and and he has critiques obviously of the of religion and the Old Testament in terms of saying well we can certainly see that we're better off now with the morality we've developed over the thousands of years since >> of course I mean I have to say that I think Jesus had something to do with that that improvement and that we haven't yet live managed to live up to any of the things that he said about it uh so I don't I mean religion yes okay is a very ambiguous film but if if the religion is about the person who taught something like the sermon on the mount we've got a pretty improve >> I'm happy to accept that I think he was a very clever man >> yeah and uh >> and a very good man >> and a good man >> but not Perfect.

[00:10:26]>> So for me, goodness is a quality of the universe. That is to say that not that the universe is all perfect. I don't mean that. I mean that the obligation to seek goodness is is a fact about the universe and I can't put that into um a physicalist u account of the universe. So I can't see how it would fit. Whereas well if I can introduce the word God at last [laughter] um I think if you if you had some the mind of God or the mind of the creator then um the obligation to achieve true goodness not some arbitrary command that God made up. uh that obligation would fit into a picture of the universe as founded on a morally um obliging reality which would be a mind and it wouldn't be a brain. I mean nobody thinks there's a cosmic brain. So I think if you're wanting to rule out the idea of God by definition by saying well there couldn't be such a brain. Um I agree there couldn't.

[00:11:33]So that comes down to the question just as a thought experiment. Well, could there not be a mind which did not like human minds depend upon the good functioning of a brain? And I don't see why not.

[00:11:46]>> Well, all right. I'll go along with you on that and say, all right, I I don't think I can offer an op priori knockdown proof that there couldn't be a disembodied mind.

[00:11:56]>> Now, here is something genuinely fascinating. Keith Ward actually agrees with Daniel on this point. He acknowledges that Old Testament morality contains things we would never accept today and he does not try to defend those things. That is actually an intellectually honest moment from Keith and it deserves to be recognized. But then watch what happens next because Keith tries to separate Jesus from religion as an institution. He says, "The sermon on the mount represents something genuinely good, something we have not even managed to live up to yet." And look, that is a fair point.

[00:12:36]Historically, the ethical teachings in that text influenced centuries of moral thinking in ways that are well documented.

[00:12:46]But here is the problem. Keith cannot have it both ways. You cannot say religion dragged its feet on moral progress and also say religion is the foundation of objective morality.

[00:13:01]Those two things are in direct tension with each other. If the institution built around your moral foundation was the primary obstacle to moral improvement for centuries, that tells you something important about the foundation itself. And then Keith does something that I find genuinely interesting from a philosophical standpoint. He says goodness is a quality of the universe. That the obligation to seek goodness is a fact about the universe, not something humans invented. Not something that emerged from social cooperation. A fact built into reality itself. This is what philosophers call moral realism. the idea that moral truths exist independently of what anyone thinks or feels about them. And Keith is being consistent here. This position actually fits his overall world view. If God is real and goodness flows from the nature of God, then yes, moral obligations would be objective in the deepest possible sense. But then Daniel responds with something that stops that entire argument cold. He says he cannot prove a disembodied mind is impossible.

[00:14:14]He actually conceds that point and that matters because what comes next is not about whether God could exist. It is about whether God existing would actually solve the problem Keith thinks it solves.

[00:14:29]>> But I don't see how a disembodied mind of God could ground morality at all.

[00:14:35]Why? Why should we care what a disembodied mind thought we should do? I mean, if I tell you Lucille says that you shouldn't do that. Well, who's Lucille?

[00:14:45]>> Right?

[00:14:46]>> And in fact, what could matter more than what we we human beings after careful consideration and in concert what we decide this is what's worth living for.

[00:15:01]Why doesn't that what what could trump that? Oh, I think I think God could trump that. But if Lucille >> uh was actually perfectly good herself and created us >> and had a purpose for us which would fulfill everything about our lives. Um then if Lucille said do this, we'd say that's probably >> yes indeed. But that makes Lucille you've just defined the answer. This is No, [laughter] you've you've just helped yourself to a problem solver by defining it as a problem solver.

[00:15:34]>> Well, yes, but I didn't make this up.

[00:15:35]It's been around for since the human race. Well, [laughter] >> yes, but it but the idea of God is like the idea of um quantum reality. Somebody made it up, but that doesn't mean that it's not true. Let's move on to free will. We need to because we really must touch on this before we have to close our conversation. Um now would you describe yourself as a determinist Dan?

[00:16:02]>> Um yes in in all that that matters. I mean uh I'm happy to go along with the physicists that say that there's quantum indeterminacy but I don't think it makes any difference for free will >> and determinism is essentially the view that um every everything can be explained by the previous states of things and that that in a sense >> no carefully you have to say that very carefully because there's >> um there's explanation then there's explanation >> flip a coin a fair coin Nobody can predict whether it's going to come down heads or tail. Nobody can predict it.

[00:16:40]>> Not because it's quantum unpredictable, but because the forces acting on that coin involve the position of electrons at the edge of the visible universe.

[00:16:50]It's just beyond >> calculation. Now, that's an epistemic point.

[00:16:56]>> But the coin but the coin will will will be a random flip all the same. So, is it an undetermined coin flip? No. Is it a random coin flip? Yes.

[00:17:07]>> But in a sense, if you could in principle describe every single force that's acting on that coin, >> plus >> then you could predict what which side it will come down and and in a sense um when it comes to the question of the mind and consciousness and free will, the view that that everything is ultimately determined by the physics of the universe. This is the moment right here because Daniel Dennett just did something that most people in this kind of debate are not willing to do. He gave Keith the benefit of the doubt. He said, "Fine, let us assume a disembodied mind is possible. Let us grant you that." And then he asked the question that completely dismantles the argument. Why should we care what a disembodied mind thought we should do? Think about that for a second because this is not a cheap point. This is a genuinely serious philosophical challenge. The whole purpose of grounding morality in God is supposed to give moral obligations their weight, their authority, their binding force. But Daniel is asking where does that authority actually come from? Just because a mind exists and that mind tells you something is wrong, why does that obligate you to follow it? Keith's answer is that God created us and has a purpose for us that would fulfill everything about our lives. And Daniel immediately catches it. He says, "You've just helped yourself to a problem solver by defining it as a problemolver." And that line is devastating because what Keith did is exactly what Daniel described.

[00:18:52]He loaded all the necessary qualities into the definition of God and then pointed to God as the solution. That is circular. That is not an argument. That is a conclusion dressed up as a premise.

[00:19:05]Here is what makes Daniel's approach so effective throughout this entire segment. He is not dismissing the questions Keith is raising. Purpose, value, moral obligation, the nature of the self. These are real and serious questions. What Daniel is doing is showing that the naturalistic framework does not run away from those questions.

[00:19:29]It walks straight toward them with actual tools. And then the conversation moves toward free will and determinism, which tells you that the morality exchange ended without Keith landing a single clean response. The topic shifted because the argument had nowhere left to go. This is what good philosophical debate looks like. Not who sounds more confident, not who uses bigger words, but who actually follows the logic all the way to the end without flinching.

[00:19:58]And in this segment on this topic, Daniel Dennett did exactly that. So, what do you guys think of this? Leave your thoughts down in the comments.

[00:20:09]Please like and subscribe, and I will see you in the next video.