Daniel Dennett



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

Biography
Daniel Dennett attended Phillips Exeter Academy then received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) in 1963. In 1965, he received his D.Phil. in philosophy from University of Oxford (Oxford, England), where he studied under the famed philosopher Gilbert Ryle. Dennett is currently (August 2005) the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, University Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies (with Ray Jackendoff) at Tufts University (Medford, MA).

He 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 also an avid sailor.

Dennett is the author of several major books on evolution and consciousness. He is a leading proponent of the theory known by some as Neural Darwinism (see also greedy reductionism). Dennett is also well known for his argument against qualia; he claims 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. This argument was presented most comprehensively in his book Consciousness Explained.

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 which 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.

While it is abundantly 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:

Dennett will self-identify 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 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. Much of his 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.

Role in Evolutionary Debate
Dennett's views on evolution are identified as being strongly adaptationist, in line with the views of zoologist 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.

Partial bibliography

 * Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (MIT Press 1981) (ISBN 0262540371)
 * Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (MIT Press 1984) - on free will and determinism (ISBN 0262040778)
 * The Mind's I (Bantam, Reissue edition 1985, with Douglas Hofstadter) (ISBN 0553345842)
 * Content and Consciousness (Routledge & Kegan Paul Books Ltd; 2nd ed edition January 1986) (ISBN 0710208464)
 * The Intentional Stance (MIT Press; reprint edition 1989) (ISBN 0262540533)
 * Consciousness Explained (Back Bay Books 1992) (ISBN 0316180661)
 * Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition 1996) (ISBN 068482471X)
 * Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (Basic Books 1997) (ISBN 0465073514)
 * Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds (Representation and Mind) (MIT Press 1998) (ISBN 0262041669) - A Collection of Essays 1984-1996
 * Freedom Evolves (Viking Press 2003) (ISBN 0670031860)
 * Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (Jean Nicod Lectures) (Bradford Books 2005) (ISBN 0262042258)
 * Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Penguin Group 2006) (ISBN 067003472X)
 * ''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 0745621171)
 * Daniel Dennett edited by Andrew Brook and Don Ross (Cambridge University Press 2000) (ISBN 0521008646)
 * Dennett's Philosophy: A Comprehensive Assessment edited by Don Ross, Andrew Brook and David Thompson (MIT Press 2000) (ISBN 0262182009)
 * Dennett, among others, is discussed in John Brockman's The Third Culture.
 * On Dennett John Symons (Wadsworth Publishing Company 2000) (ISBN 053457632X)
 * 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 0195117891).