Daniel Dennett Biography
Summary
"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. Dennett is currently the 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 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'.
Dennett will be debating Dinesh D'Souza at Tufts University on November 30, 2007 on the existence of a deity.
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 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 adherence.
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 himself puts it:
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 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, Richard Lewontin, and John Maynard Smith 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 has also written about and advocated the notion of memetics.
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. 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 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
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).
"Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience", P. Hacker and M.R. Bennett (Blackwell, Oxford, and Malden, Mass., 2003) (ISBN 1-4051-0855-X) has an appendix devoted to a strong critique of Dennett's philosophy of mind
External links
General pages
(Daniel C. Dennett's homepage at Tufts University)
(The Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University)
(Scientific American Frontiers Profile: Daniel Dennett)
(Edge/Third Culture: Daniel C. Dennett)
(Searchable bibliography of Dennett's works)
(Daniel Dennett multimedia files)
Interviews and biographies
('The Semantic Engineer') - a biographical essay from The Guardian, April 17, 2004.
(The Philosophers Magazine: Philosopher of the Month, April 2003: Dan Dennett)
(Radio interview) about Intelligent Design on Philosophy Talk, January 2006.
(Article about Dennett's naturalistic worldview from the New York Times, July 2003)
(Pulling Our Own Strings) - "Reason" magazine interviews Dennett.
(Video interview with Robert Wright at MeaningOfLife.tv)
("The Atheism Tapes", program 6) , transcript of an extended interview with Dennett for the Jonathan Miller BBC TV series, 2004.
("Point of Inquiry", March 10, 2006) audio interview with Daniel Dennett on 'Breaking the Spell'.
"A Glorious Accident: Understanding Our Place in the Cosmic Puzzle," a PBS documentary and book interviewing 6 leading thinkers, Dennett among them. (... more) (... more)
Reviews
(The God Genome) - A highly critical review of Dennett's latest book "Breaking the Spell", by Leon Wieseltier.
(Religion and science) - A response to Leon Wieseltier by James Brookfield.
(Dennett and the Darwinizing of Free Will) - A review of Dennett's book "Freedom Evolves", by David P. Barash.
(Review in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy (pp. 295-298)) - A review of Dennett's book "Freedom Evolves", by Jasper Doomen.
Other
(Exchange with philosopher) on science and religion.]
(Video) of Dennett's response to the claims made in "The Purpose Driven Life" by Pastor Rick Warren. Presented after a (talk) by Warren at the TED Conference February 2006 in Monterey, CA. 26 mins.
(Dan Dennett: Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes) TED, Feb. 2002
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Daniel Dennett.
