Everything about Daniel Dennett totally explained
Daniel Clement Dennett (born
March 28 1942 in
Boston,
Massachusetts) is a prominent
American philosopher whose 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 the Co-Director of the
Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at
Tufts University. Dennett is also a noted
atheist and advocate of the
Brights movement.
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
Christ Church, 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 (May 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.
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."
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 due to an
aortic dissection. After a nine-hour surgery, he was given a new aorta. 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".
He lives with his wife in North Andover, Massachusetts, and has a daughter, a son, and two grandsons.
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's grounded in
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 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 can't be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore doesn't 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 adherence.
Dennett self-identifies with a few terms:
[Others] 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'm saying and what I'm 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. |
Yet, 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 Dennett's nickname for any philosopher who believes in the reality of
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 stems from Gould's long-running public debate with
E. O. Wilson and other evolutionary biologists over human
sociobiology and its descendant
evolutionary psychology, which Gould and
Richard Lewontin opposed, but which Dennett advocated, together with Dawkins and
Steven Pinker. Dennett's debate with Gould has led to some backlash from Gould and his supporters, who allege that Dennett overstated his claims and misrepresented Gould's.
Dennett's theories have had a significant influence on the work of evolutionary psychologist,
Geoffrey Miller.
Dennett has also written about and advocated the notion of
memetics.
Selected books
- 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. 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)
- (Penguin Group 2006) (ISBN 0-670-03472-X)
- Dove nascono le idee (Di Renzo Editore [Italy] 2006)
- Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language (Columbia University Press 2007) (ISBN 978-0-231-14044-7), co-authored with Maxwell Bennett, Peter Hacker, and John Searle
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