Daniel Dennett

Dennett was an incredibly powerful and original thinker and contributed a lot, not just to the discussion of atheism, but to thinking about philosophy of mind, cognitive science, philosophy of biology, theories of teleology, philosophy of language… He was genuinely an intellectual giant, and we’ll all be worse off without him.

I'm trying to understand what distinction Dennett makes between "control" and "determined." He claims we are determined but that we have control. I can't fathom what on earth this means.

Is anyone familiar with his work? I only know him through Harris and Sapolsky refuting his arguments. I'd like to have a stronger appreciation of compatibilism, but so far it seems like compatibilists just concede the truth of determinism and then claim free will is none the less true. Is it really just doublethink or is there something to it?

Daniel Dennett died a few days ago, at the age of 82. I just wanted to log on here and say a few brief words about this man, whose work has influenced my beliefs regarding the mystery of human consciousness.

When I was in college, my mind was blown when I learned about the mind-body problem. I could not come up with a solution. I did not agree with Descartes' theory. And I just knew something was off, something was not right in our thinking, with how we understood the mystery of mind to be. Ever since then, I've been hooked on philosophy. And more specifically, hooked on reading all things mind, brain and consciousness related.

Later on, I read Dennett. And my mind was blown again. Here was an extremely serious, accomplished academic who had the same hunches as I did with respect to the mind and consciousness. And I later learned he dedicated his life to dissecting these problems and writing about them. I eventually read Consciousness Explained and From Bacteria to Bach and Back. As well as a few of his papers accessible online. And he kept on wowing me with his brilliance and capacity to say what I was thinking on this subject, and so much more.

While I cannot say I agreed with all of Dennett's views, and he certainly turned off a lot of folks with his style of thinking and writing, I can say that Dennett has espoused a theory that I believe closest to the truth of mechanical consciousness. And he did so passionately, without fear, unlimited in his quest to speak what he believed to be the truth.

Dennett was a great modern day philosopher. And I genuinely appreciated living in an age where I could read what he had to say. I firmly believe his core writings on consciousness will appear in the textbooks some day, and rightfully so.

RIP, Professor Dennett.

Daniel Dennett passed away a few days ago. He was a philosopher, author and a great champion of secular humanism. He supported the Bright movement some time back, which tried to get secular people to identify in positive ways rather than using terms like atheist, ex-Christian, nonbeliever or other negative labels.

I always felt like Dennett was the odd man out in the Four Horsemen bunch, because his work was very thoughtful and nuanced while the rest wrote crude polemics. In my time writing for and running sites in the atheist blogosphere, I noticed that atheists tend to denigrate and dismiss philosophy a lot more often than I think is reasonable coming from people who claim to be proud of their commitment to logic and reason. So I was glad that Dennett was always around to remind people that all of our ideas about existence, knowledge and morality are laden with philosophical baggage.

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

Has anyone else here read Dennett's work?

Qualia detractors seem to have fundamentally different experiences than those of us who find the special nature of phenomenological experiences brutally apparent.

How unlikely is it that they are in fact walking and talking like us Qualia-people, but simply lack what we are experiencing as consciousness?

If there was any indicator to be had, that would be it.

Sam Harris believes that free will is an illusion, and consciousness is the realest thing in the universe. Daniel Dennett believes the exact opposite: that consciousness is an illusion, and free will is somehow real.

To me, it seems like Dennett's positions are the result of motivated reasoning. He wants consciousness to be an illusion in order to preserve physicalism, and he wants free will to be real in order to preserve moral responsibility.

Does anyone actually agree with him?

For those who do not know, he was one of the 4 horsemen of new Atheism.

Please feel free to mark this a low effort post, but just wanted to share it here.

I found Daniel Dennett through the four horseman of atheism videos. I deeply appreciated, though could never fully agree with, his compatibilist pushback against Sam and Sapolsky’s position on free will. I loved evolutionary biology based reasoning and his dismissal of facile arguments as “deepity.” He and Sam’s bar conversation about “free will” contributed to helping me wake up from a religious cult and challenged me to think critically.

The news of his passing was a shock: just yesterday I remember thinking I want to age like him, ever thinking, ever questioning, ever advocating for rationality and morality. He will be dearly missed…

What did you admire or will miss most about him?