How to Think Like a Philosopher, with Daniel Dennett | Big Think Mentor
Daniel Dennett, one of the best-known living philosophers and a professor at Tufts University, feels it's time to unmask the philosopher's art and make thought ...
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Intuition pumps are sometimes called thought experiments. More often they're called thought experiments. But they're not really formal arguments typically. They're stories. They're little fables. In fact, I think they're similar to Aesop's fables in that they're supposed to have a moral. They're supposed to teach us something. And what they do is they lead the audience to an intuition, a conclusion, where you sort of pound your fist on the table and you say, "Oh yeah, it's gotta be that way, doesn't it." And if it achieves that then it's pumped the intuition that was designed to pump. These are persuasion machines. Little persuasion machines that philosophers have been using for several thousand years. I think that intuition pumps are...
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Intuition pumps are sometimes called thought experiments. More often they're called thought experiments. But they're not really formal arguments typically. They're stories. They're little fables. In fact, I think they're similar to Aesop's fables in that they're supposed to have a moral. They're supposed to teach us something. And what they do is they lead the audience to an intuition, a conclusion, where you sort of pound your fist on the table and you say, "Oh yeah, it's gotta be that way, doesn't it." And if it achieves that then it's pumped the intuition that was designed to pump. These are persuasion machines. Little persuasion machines that philosophers have been using for several thousand years. I think that intuition pumps are...
