Humanism, Dennett, and AI: An Interview with Dr. Anthony Grayling

Anthony Grayling CBE, MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, FRSA is Master of the New College of the Humanities, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. Until 2011 he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are “The Good Book,” “Ideas That Matter,” “Liberty in the Age of Terror,” and “To Set Prometheus Free.” For several years he wrote the “Last Word” column for the Guardian newspaper and a column for the Times. He is a frequent contributor to the Literary Review, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, Index on Censorship and New Statesman, and is an equally frequent broadcaster on BBC Radios 4, 3 and the World Service. He writes the “Thinking Read” column for the Barnes and Noble Review in New York, is the Editor of Online Review London, and a Contributing Editor of Prospect magazine.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Hello, again! It has been a little over 8 years since the Conatus News interview–thanks to the link of Benjamin David, who has since moved onto another field than publishing. Obviously, we’ve had quite a few changes with the uptick in the conflict in Ukraine and a bit of the Russian Federation, and in Israel-Palestine. Elections have continued in leadership for humanists. Life keeps going. How has the United Kingdom political context been for the humanist community there, since 2016?

Dr. Anthony Grayling: The UK political context since 2016 has itself been a largely disastrous time: Brexit, an increasingly right-wing government which has assaulted civil liberties, exacerbated the economic difficulties created by Brexit, widened inequality, deepened divisions in society, and increased dissatisfaction with democracy. But from the humanist perspective there have been promising signs: safe spaces around abortion clinics, a positive change in sentiment over physician-assisted suicide, increased visibility of the debate over religion in education and bishops in the House of Lords, to name a few. These have been long-term outcomes of increasing secularism in society, and the greater purchase of humanistic ideals. The headline political issues that have dominated the media have been so vexing to many that these gains have happened without too much fanfare; an example of the unfortunate truth that chaotic conditions can be times of opportunity too.

Jacobsen: Christianity has been, and is, a rapidly diminishing demographic of the United Kingdom. How has this altered the discussions around religion, faith schools, and the necessity of humanism to step up?

Grayling: There is still a long way to go on the question of religion in education, and in one respect there has been a backward step: the fact that the religious education curriculum in schools has made humanistic alternatives less salient – but as indicated in the previous answer, the debate about this has increased in volume as a consequence of opposition to the change by humanists and other secularist organisations, benefitting from the increasing shift in public opinion, which travels in a direction contrary to what government policy has been under the Conservatives.

Jacobsen: Any thoughts on the updates to the Amsterdam Declaration in 2022?

Grayling: If you look at the various resolutions and statement emanating from humanist conferences in the two decades since 2002, e.g. in Paris, Brussels, Oxford and New Zealand, you see how evolving circumstances in the world, together with the spread of humanism as a movement from the ‘global North’ to become truly global, you see that humanism is a living, responsive outlook that applies its principles – these at base unchanging – to new challenges and circumstances. The 2022 Declaration wording addresses the way humanist principles apply to the evolving nature of the challenges, as well as to their exercise in places where humanism had not been a visible presence until recently. This is appropriate; as a living and growing movement, concerned to promote rational and progressive responses to social problems in the interest of human flourishing, humanism needs to reassert its principles periodically in terms that meet the environment it works in. The 2022 Declaration will not be the last iteration – humanism will always speak to people in the language of their time, showing how its fundamental tenets apply to that time.

Jacobsen: Daniel Dennett died recently. Any words on his personal meaning, to you, and his intellectual importance to the advancement of philosophical clarity and understanding, generally?

Grayling: Dan’s departure from among us is a great loss. The combination of his intellectual powers and personality made him a wonderful advocate for the causes he was committed to. When adjectives were applied to the more vocal atheists of recent note, among whom my friends Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins appeared to their opponents as rebarbative and threatening, Dan was thought of as ‘cuddly,’ and apologists for religious outlooks found it harder, indeed impossible, to demonise him as they did the others. He was amused by the description of me as ‘the velvet atheist,’ which he rightly saw could be construed as something other than a compliment. I always enjoyed his company, which was genial as well as invariably educative; and his lectures to my students at the New College of the Humanities were a high point for them as they were to me and our other colleagues. One of the first things he said to our students was that use of the word ‘surely’ in any argument marked its weakest point. That, I’m sure, has stuck with all of them, to their benefit. His memoir I’ve Been Thinking is a marvellous read; he lives on in it.

Jacobsen: Large Language Models and similar algorithmic schema for robotic statistical generativity pose intriguing additions to the humanist philosophical reflection on the meaning of information processing and consciousness. What does humanist philosophy have to contribute to the discussion on more ergonomically interactive artificial intelligence systems in the near future?

Grayling: This is a complicated matter. The truth is that it is early days in the impact of all forms of AI on life and society, and understanding the consequences of what such innovations as Chat will be are still being groped for. It is as if a bomb has landed among us and we cannot see clearly because the smoke and dust is still flying about. Without doubt, there will be many good things as a result of this particular technological advance – and many bad things, unless we find sensible ways of managing it, few such ways being on the horizon yet. I am concerned about the impact on education, whose benefits lie largely in ‘doing the work oneself’ of finding out, analysing, drawing inferences, making rational calculations, choosing and justifying; if too much of the spadework is done by systems other than the ones inside one’s own head, that will be a serious loss. On the other hand, we could and probably will see an expansion of creative possibilities, some we can’t yet even imagine. As to consciousness: given that we still do not know what it is, how it works, and how it arises, and that the degree of its prevalence in nature beyond the higher animals is still unknown, if indeed it occurs there at all, it is hard to know what would count as securely recognising it in an AI system. What any such system could teach us about our own consciousness is made moot by that thought – though once again: who knows? In the present smoke and dust we don’t see our way clearly on any of this.

Jacobsen: When computer systems develop higher levels of autonomy, how can humanist philosophy deliver an ethical framework for making them human-friendly?

Grayling: It is already a good thought that AI systems should have built into them from the get-go a bar on doing harm to people and the environment. This assumes that such systems cannot escape any constraints placed on them by the builders of their ground architecture; since they teach and develop themselves beyond that origin there has to be a risk that a system could reach the point at which it asks itself, ‘What is the most destructive thing on the planet’ and answer, as logic would oblige it to, ‘Human beings.’ What it might do next – if it has directed itself to combat harms – might inspire a sci-fi writer to some creative ideas. But while there are humans on the planet, their ethical obligations remain just that: their ethical obligations, and no amount of machinery removes their responsibility. Humanism enjoins rationality and kindness as fundamental to how we act in every situation involving other sentient beings – indeed, the world itself. If we can infect AI so deeply with the same principle that any system would exemplify good humanist behaviour in all its activities, we will have done ourselves an immense favour.

Jacobsen: With new technologies and new political galvanizing of religiously dogmatic communities in some of the West, what does humanism need to continue to meet these challenges head-on?

Grayling: A continued persistence in presenting the arguments for, and a model of, humanism: that is the open-ended task, until the day, if ever it comes, in which people are capable, on the basis of reflection and understanding, of overriding the impulse to act on tribalism, self-interest, greed and aggression, together with a rejection of cheap and easy answers to life’s questions such as are found in superstitions and one-size-fits-all ideologies. Given that tribalism and aggression are evolved tendencies, built into the psychological DNA of human beings, it is a major task; but the fact is that most people in most ordinary situations manage to achieve it if only to a degree. Most of us do not go about impulsively hitting people we dislike or stealing whatever takes our fancy in a shop; we are capable of self-management, of educating our emotions and sensibilities, just as we are capable at times of deferring present satisfactions for greater longer-term gains on rational grounds. Humanism enjoins individuals to achieve such self-management, and enjoins society to generalise it to all human affairs. On this basis, holding the line against dogmatisms – and better still, refuting them and loosening their grip on minds and societies – and mastering rather than becoming the slaves of our technologies, remains among the chief aims of humanism.

Jacobsen: Do you have any new projects–literary, academic, or activist–that can be plugged here?

Grayling: I have a book [that came out] out in April 2025 on how to achieve peace in the culture wars that dog our times, called Discriminations, and I’m in process of writing another two. One concerns how to defend democracy against the loss of faith it is experiencing – because it does not deliver for the people, having become trapped in party-politicking; because international business lies outside its control and causes great harms, widening wealth inequalities and environmental damage; because politico-economic models such as China seem, to some, more attractive than democratic arrangements; because anti-democratic agencies such as Russia are actively undermining democracy with interference, propaganda and misinformation, empowered by social media – and I argue that democracy is hugely worth defending because the rule of law, civil liberties and human rights associated with it really matter; we take them so for granted in our democracies that we are in danger of losing them by inattention. The other is about philosophical themes in major works of literature, literature being one of the greatest resources for exploration of human nature and the human condition, rich in philosophical insight and comment accordingly; I discuss the treasures there, agreeing with some, disagreeing with others, and explaining why.

As to activism: I remain involved with efforts to promote secularism in society and education, to achieve the aims of ‘dignity in dying,’ to support human rights endeavours and efforts to mitigate climate change effects, and to reverse Brexit. Most of this is done through speaking and writing, but I get onto the streets at times.

Jacobsen: What are your favorite humanism coda quotes?

Grayling: One is the Humanist UK slogan itself: ‘Think for yourself, act for others.’ Another is Dick McMahan’s definition: ‘A humanist is someone who does the right thing even though she knows no-one is watching’. Kant’s ‘Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end’ and Hume’s ‘A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence’ provide further defining quotables. And so does Russell: ‘A good world needs knowledge, kindness and courage; it does not need the fettering of free intelligence by words uttered long ago by ignorant men.’ Between them these quotations amount to a credo, certainly for me.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Anthony.

Grayling:  My thanks in return, Scott, and warm good wishes to you.