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Daniel Dennett

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Daniel Dennett
Era21st-century philosophy
RegionWestern Philosophy
SchoolAnalytic Philosophy
Main interestsphilosophy of mind, philosophy of biology, philosophy of science
Notable ideasHeterophenomenology, the Intentional stance

Daniel Clement Dennett (b. March 28 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts), is a prominent American philosopher. Dennett's research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently a professor at Tufts University.

Biography

Dennett spent part of his childhood in Beirut, where, during World War II, his father, a counter-intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services, had a cover job at the American Legation. The young Dennett and family returned to Massachusetts in 1947 after his father died in an unexplained plane crash.

He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, and received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W.V. Quine. In 1965, he received his D.Phil. in philosophy from University of Oxford, where he studied under the ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle. While at Oxford, Dennett has claimed, he introduced the first frisbee to the United Kingdom. Dennett is currently (January 2007) the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, University Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies (with Ray Jackendoff) at Tufts University.

However, Dennett describes himself as "an autodidact — or, more properly, the beneficiary of hundreds of hours of informal tutorials on all the fields that interest me, from some of the world's leading scientists."

Daniel Dennett in Tahiti in 1984

Dennett gave the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. In 2001 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize and gave the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts University, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is also an avid sailor.

In October 2006, Dennett was hospitalized because of a dissection of the aorta. After a nine-hour surgery, he was given a new aorta and aortic arch. As of November, he was recuperating from the surgery. In an essay posted on the Edge website, Dennett gives his firsthand account of his health problems, his consequent feelings of gratitude towards the scientists and doctors whose hard work made his recovery possible, and his complete lack of a "deathbed conversion".

Philosophical views

Dennett has remarked in several places (such as "Self-portrait", in Brainchildren) that his overall philosophical project has remained largely the same since his time at Oxford. He is primarily concerned with providing a philosophy of mind that is grounded in and fruitful to empirical research. In his original dissertation, Content and Consciousness, he broke up the problem of explaining the mind into the need for a theory of content and for a theory of consciousness. His approach to this project has also stayed true to this distinction. Just as Content and Consciousness has a bipartite structure, he similarly divided Brainstorms into two sections. He would later collect several essays on content in The Intentional Stance and synthesize his views on consciousness into a unified theory in Consciousness Explained. These volumes respectively form the most extensive development of his views, and he frequently refers back to them in subsequent writings.

In Consciousness Explained, Dennett's interest in the ability of evolution to explain some of the content-producing features of consciousness is already apparent, and this has since become an integral part of his program. He defends a theory known by some as Neural Darwinism. He also presents an argument against qualia; he argues that the concept is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of physicalism. Much of Dennett's work in the 1990s has been concerned with fleshing out his previous ideas by addressing the same topics from an evolutionary standpoint, from what distinguishes human minds from animal minds (Kinds of Minds), to how free will is compatible with a naturalist view of the world (Freedom Evolves). His most recent book, Breaking the Spell, is an attempt to subject religious belief to the same treatment, explaining possible evolutionary reasons for the phenomenon of religious groups.

While it is clear that Dennett does not subscribe to a number of categories (such as Cartesian materialism and Dualism), it is less clear which ones he fits into. As Dennett discussed:

note that my 'avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters' often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless — a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors.

— Daniel Dennett, The Message is: There is no Medium

Dennett self-identifies with a few terms. In Consciousness Explained, he admits "I am a sort of 'teleofunctionalist', of course, perhaps the original teleofunctionalist'". He goes on to say, "I am ready to come out of the closet as a sort of verificationalist". In Breaking the Spell he admits to being "a bright", and defends the term on several occasions. A qualophile is Daniel Dennett's nickname for a philosopher who believes in qualia.

Role in evolutionary debate

Dennett's views on evolution are identified as being strongly adaptationist, in line with the views of ethologist Richard Dawkins. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett showed himself even more willing than Dawkins to defend adaptationism in print, devoting an entire chapter to a criticism of the views of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. This has led to some backlash from Gould and his supporters, who allege that Dennett overstated his claims and misrepresented Gould's.

References

  1. ^ Dennett, Daniel C. (2005-09-13) . "What I Want to Be When I Grow Up". In John Brockman (ed.). Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 1-4000-7686-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |origmonth= ignored (help)
  2. The semantic engineer, Guardian Unlimited Books, April 17 2004 http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,6000,1193371,00.html
  3. 'Thank Goodness!', edge 195, Nov. 3, 2006
  4. 'Evolution: The pleasures of Pluralism' — Stephen Jay Gould's review of Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Partial bibliography

  • Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (MIT Press 1981) (ISBN 0-262-54037-1)
  • Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (MIT Press 1984) — on free will and determinism (ISBN 0-262-04077-8)
  • The Mind's I (Bantam, Reissue edition 1985, with Douglas Hofstadter) (ISBN 0-553-34584-2)
  • Content and Consciousness (Routledge & Kegan Paul Books Ltd; 2nd ed edition January 1986) (ISBN 0-7102-0846-4)
  • The Intentional Stance (MIT Press; reprint edition 1989) (ISBN 0-262-54053-3)
  • Consciousness Explained (Back Bay Books 1992) (ISBN 0-316-18066-1)
  • Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition 1996) (ISBN 0-684-82471-X)
  • Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (Basic Books 1997) (ISBN 0-465-07351-4)
  • Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds (Representation and Mind) (MIT Press 1998) (ISBN 0-262-04166-9) — A Collection of Essays 1984–1996
  • Freedom Evolves (Viking Press 2003) (ISBN 0-670-03186-0)
  • Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (Jean Nicod Lectures) (Bradford Books 2005) (ISBN 0-262-04225-8)
  • Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Penguin Group 2006) (ISBN 0-670-03472-X)
  • Dove nascono le idee", Di Renzo Editore, 2006, Italy

Texts on Dennett

  • "Dennett: Reconciling Science and Our Self-Conception" Matthew Elton (Polity Press, 2003) (ISBN 0-7456-2117-1)
  • Daniel Dennett edited by Andrew Brook and Don Ross (Cambridge University Press 2000) (ISBN 0-521-00864-6)
  • Dennett's Philosophy: A Comprehensive Assessment edited by Don Ross, Andrew Brook and David Thompson (MIT Press 2000) (ISBN 0-262-18200-9)
  • Dennett, among others, is discussed in John Brockman's The Third Culture.
  • On Dennett John Symons (Wadsworth Publishing Company 2000) (ISBN 0-534-57632-X)
  • Dennett is mentioned on numerous occasions in David J. Chalmers' The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, as Chalmers discusses his theory (ISBN 0-19-511789-1).
  • See Peter Wilberg's critique of all Dennett-style 'explanations' of consciousness in 'Consciousness beyond Explanation'

Select quote

The first stable conclusion I reached … was that the only thing brains could do was to approximate the responsivity to meanings that we presuppose in our everyday mentalistic discourse. When mechanical push comes to shove, a brain was always going to do what it was caused to do by current, local, mechanical circumstances, whatever it ought to do, whatever a God's-eye view might reveal about the actual meaning of its current states. But over the long haul, brains could be designed — by evolutionary processes — to do the right thing (from the point of view of meaning) with high reliability. … Brains are syntactic engines that can mimic the competence of semantic engines. … The appreciation of meanings — their discrimination and delectation — is central to our vision of consciousness, but this conviction that I, on the inside, deal directly with meanings turns out to be something rather like a benign 'user-illusion.'

— Daniel Dennett, Brainchildren

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