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Dennett was recently interviewed by Reason magazine. Here he dances around a discussion of Hayek's notion of cultural filtering intermediated by group success:

Reason: One of the arguments the social theorist Friedrich Hayek made is that cultures that have better rules tend to spread while cultures that have worse rules don’t, and one of the ways you find out whether something is good or bad is, pretty crudely, which cultures are winning over other cultures.

Dennett: This is a claim that I’m cautiously skeptical of. But if you couch it very carefully, I think there is something to it. Change the topic from moralities to, say, scientific theory. There’s no question, contrary to some of the blather you see, that good, coherent, true scientific theories in general tend to win out over second-rate, formless, incoherent theories. We’ve improved our understanding of the world over the years. The good theories spread. Bad theories don’t. Well, not always. Sometimes they get a foothold, and they’re sort of like diseases and they’re hard to eradicate, but those are the exceptions. I think it’s an uphill battle for falsehoods to get established.

Dennett's new book is Freedom Evolves.

Posted by Greg Ransom