Thank you! I was laughing out loud @ Hart's great writing. He was equally interesting to listen to @ the Hunsinger/AAR meeting. I have his magnum opus on the way in the mail now! I really look forward to his future writings.
"And there are rather too many instances when Dennett seems either to clumsily to miss or willfully to ignore pertinent objections to his views and so races past them with a perfunctory wave in what he takes to be their general direction - though usually in another direction altogether."
What a great writer--Hart's touch of whit drives the sword that much deeper. Thanks for highlighting his response.
On a related note, you might want to check out the Dennett/McGrath debate on the subject.
I just clicked on the link that i typed and it proved false, strange - anyway, here's the link to the debate. McGrath raises some of the same objections, but doesn't field the last round of questions too well.
Thanks for this Steven. I finally got around to listenting to it. I think the problem at the end was more with poor moderation that either speakers' poor performance.
I've been a fan of McGrath ever since Denise and I showed up early to the talk he gave at PTS. We wondered who the guy was in the back who was praying an hour before the lecture began. It turned out to be McGrath, who turned out a fantastic lecture. I thought he did quite well in this as well.
My favorite line: "The meme theory is not awaiting its Crick and Watson, but its Michelson and Morley."
You could be right about the moderator's inability to properly steer the discussion - I listened to the end again and can't help but wonder if perhaps the deck (speaking at the RSA) was stacked from the beginning. McGrath's criticism of memes as entities that essentially override rationality is particularly interesting.
By contrast, Dennett's likening of religious memetic behavior to the Cukoo chick's genetic instincts is typical of the sort of arrogance that grips the new atheism. Of course religious people can't see what they're doing - only we scientists (if Prof. Dennett can properly be called a scientist) can really see what's going on.
I agree with you about his lecture at Princeton - it was one of my favorites.
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