Deborah Solomon poses some Questions for Daniel C. Dennett. Here are some of his answers:
- We have a built-in, very potent hair-trigger tendency to find agency in things that are not agents, like snow falling off the roof.
- When a person dies, we can’t just turn that off. We go on thinking about that person as if that person were still alive. Our inability to turn off our people-seer and our people-hearer naturally turns into our hallucinations of ghosts, our sense that they are still with us.
- I certainly don’t believe in the soul as an enduring entity. Our brains are made of neurons, and nothing else. Nerve cells are very complicated mechanical systems. You take enough of those, and you put them together, and you get a soul.
- Churches have given us great treasures. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.