Professor Daniel C. Dennett
Daniel C. Dennett, D.Phil., was a Philosopher, Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Distinguished Arts and Sciences Emeritus Professor at Tufts University. He is the Author of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Freedom Evolves, Consciousness Explained, and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.
Watch The 4 biggest ideas in philosophy, with legend Daniel Dennett for Big Think+.
Dan is best known in cognitive science for his concept of intentional systems, and his multiple drafts model of human consciousness, which sketches a computational architecture for realizing the stream of consciousness (the “Joycean machine”) in the massively parallel cerebral cortex. His uncompromising computationalism has been opposed by philosophers such as John Searle and Jerry Fodor, who maintain that the most important aspects of consciousness—intentionality and subjective quality—can never be computed. He is the philosopher of choice in the AI community.
His career is a model of inter-disciplinarity and scientifically-engaged philosophy. Three major themes in his work are the power of computational, neuroscientific, and evolutionary approaches to explain the nature of intelligence and mind. Dan persistently opposed any suggestion that the human mind is mysterious or magical.
If consciousness or free will appear to be beyond the range of scientific explanation, we are most likely in the grip of an illusion, Dan argued. Of course, we are conscious and free, Dan would say, but perhaps not in the sense that we originally thought. Consciousness is explained (or at least eminently explainable) once we dump the illusions.
He was also a major contributor to the understanding of the conceptual foundations of evolutionary biology. In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, he argued that the “universal acid” of evolutionary explanation extends well beyond biology to re-conceptualize culture and science itself. He exposed some of the internal conflicts and misconstruals on the contrary claims of Stephen Jay Gould.
An outspoken atheist, Dan was dubbed one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism. He was also a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and an honored Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. He was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Organization. Read The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution.
Dan was a preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist and has spent his career considering the hardest, most fundamental mysteries of the mind. Do we have free will? What is consciousness, and how did it come about? What distinguishes human minds from the minds of animals? Dan’s answers have profoundly shaped our age of philosophical thought. In the last book he published, I’ve Been Thinking, he reflects on his amazing career and lifelong scientific fascinations. Read An Interview with Daniel Dennett The philosopher and cognitive scientist discusses his memoir.
His relentless curiosity has taken him from a childhood in Beirut and the classrooms of Harvard, Oxford, and Tufts, to “Cognitive Cruises” on sailboats and the fields and orchards of Maine, and to laboratories and think tanks worldwide. Along the way, I’ve Been Thinking provides a master class in the dominant themes of twentieth-century philosophy and cognitive science―including language, evolution, logic, religion, and AI―and reveals the mistakes and breakthroughs that shaped his theories. Read Daniel Dennett’s Been Thinking About Thinking—and AI.
Key to his journey were Douglas Hofstadter, Marvin Minsky, Willard Van Orman Quine, Gilbert Ryle, Richard Rorty, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, Gerald Edelman, Stephen Jay Gould, Jerry Fodor, Rodney Brooks, and more―whose ideas, even when he disagreed with them, helped to form his convictions about the mind and consciousness. His last work also instills the value of life beyond the university, one enriched by sculpture, music, farming, and a deep family connection.
Dan makes us ask ourselves: What do I really think? And what if I’m wrong? His memoir by one of the greatest minds of our time will speak to anyone who seeks to balance a life of the mind with adventure and creativity.
His first book, Content and Consciousness, appeared in 1969, followed by Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (1978), Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995), Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (1996), and Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds 1984–1996 (MIT Press and Penguin, 1998).
He co-edited The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981. He is the author of over four hundred scholarly articles on various aspects of the mind, published in journals ranging from Artificial Intelligence and Behavioral and Brain Sciences to Poetics Today and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
Dan lived with his wife, daughter, son, and six grandchildren, in Maine. He was born in Boston in 1942, the son of a historian by the same name.
He earned his Bachelor’s Degree of Arts in Philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he earned his D.Phil. in Philosophy in 1965.
He taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
Dan 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 awarded the Erasmus Prize, The Netherlands’ highest honor, in 2012.
He was the Cofounder (in 1985) and Codirector of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts 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.
Dan was on the Editorial Board of Adaptive Behavior, Artificial Intelligence Review, Artificial Life, Biology and Philosophy, Brain and Mind, Consciousness and Cognition, Evolutionary Psychology, Journal of Consciousness Studies, and PHILO.
Dan spent most of his summers on his farm in Maine, where he harvested blueberries, hay, and timber and made Normandy cider wine when he was not sailing. He was also a sculptor. In 2014, after more than forty summers of hobby farming in Maine, he sold his farm and bought a house on an island in Maine, where he could pursue less strenuous activities while continuing his research.
Watch his one-hour interview Robert Wright & Daniel Dennett (2003). Read his Edge interview, The Computational Perspective, and watch his Edge interview The Normal Well-Tempered Mind. Read his New York Times interview — The Nonbeliever. Watch Daniel C. Dennett — Do Lobsters Have Free Will? and Prof. Daniel Dennett: Is Science Showing That We Don’t Have Free Will?
Listen to Daniel C. Dennett — “A Difference That Makes a Difference” (2nd Link).
Read How to Live a Happy Life, From a Leading Atheist and Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul.
Watch David Chalmers: A Philosophical Eulogy for Daniel Dennett. Watch Daniel Dennett: Arc of Life | Full interview, Daniel Dennett on the Mysteries of the Mind | Closer To Truth Chats, and Daniel Dennett | Johns Hopkins Natural Philosophy Forum Distinguished Lecture, 2023.
Read Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, 82, Dies, In memoriam: Daniel C. Dennett, Remembering Daniel C. Dennett, University and Fletcher Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, and Daniel Dennett: The man who saw reality’s patterns. Read some of the Tributes to Dan Dennett. Read Leadership Lessons From The Late Great Philosopher Daniel Dennett. Read Daniel Dennett: Autobiography Part 1 and Part 2.
Watch his Contributions on Closer To Truth. Watch Information, Evolution, and Intelligent Design — With Daniel Dennett, Daniel Dennett — Information & Artificial Intelligence, Dangerous Ideas | Daniel Dennett, and Jordan B Peterson Exploring the Philosophical and Scientific | Dr. Daniel Dennett | EP 438.
Read Cognition all the way down and Just deserts.
Visit his Academic Homepage, Wikipedia page, Britannica page, and his Google Scholar page. Visit his Twitter and Open Mind profile. Read his Curriculum Vitae, his Recent Work, and his Full Bibliography of Publications.