What kind of philosopher is Daniel Dennett?

Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.

Is Dennett a materialist?

Although a committed materialist, Dennett recognizes that there are certain factors which seem, initially, to constitute serious obstacles to any materialist account.

What is Daniel Dennett’s theory of consciousness?

According to Dennett, consciousness is to be found in the actions and flows of information from place to place, rather than some singular view containing our experience. To put it another way, consciousness is the property of having enough influence to affect what the mouth will say and the hands will do.

Is Dennett a reductionist?

Daniel Dennett is a self-declared materialist and reductionist.

Is Dennett a pragmatist?

Several of Quine’s students, including Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett—and many of their own students after them—developed noticeably pragmatist themes in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. …

Does Dennett believe in God?

Dennett may not like it, but the vast majority of believers are exactly that: believers. They don’t believe in belief, they don’t believe that it’s good to believe in something. They believe in God, in Jesus Christ, in Mohammed or in Moses. And mind you: many of them are not stupid.

What happens to Dennett’s body when it loses contact with the brain?

What happens when Dennett’s body loses contact with its brain? Dennett’s brain and body are separated initially. The scientists decide to make a copy of Dennett’s brain which leaves him essentially with two brains.

Who invented greedy reductionism?

Daniel Dennett
Greedy reductionism, identified by Daniel Dennett, in his 1995 book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, is a kind of erroneous reductionism.

What is reductionist materialism?

The view that only the material world (matter) is truly real, and that all processes and realities observed in the universe can be explained by reducing them down to their most basic scientific components, e.g., atoms, molecules, and everything else thought to make up what we know as “matter.” For example, a reductive …

What is a Deepity?

A deepity, as Dennett characterizes it, is a sentence or other utterance that has more than one interpretation; it has “two readings and balances precariously between them. On one reading it is true but trivial, and on another it is false but would be earth-shattering if true.”

What is the nature of consciousness according to Daniel Dennett?

The analogy Dennett likes to make when speaking of the nature of consciousness is that it’s the sum total the trillions of synapses interacting robotically in such a way that the sum is (in a sense) more than it’s parts.

What is Daniel Dennett’s ididentity theory?

Identity theory says that subjective experience is identical to whatever its neural basis is (in Dennett’s case, the brain’s functional organization). Truly identical, like water is identical to H2O. It does not claim that subjectivity requires no explanation, or that it can be abandoned as a useful concept.

What is Daniel Dennett’s view of free will?

Daniel Dennett on Free Will Dennett is a compatibilist, meaning he subscribes to the belief that free will and determinism can coexist without being logically incoherent. For compatibilists, this means agents are morally responsible for their actions as long as those actions do not arise from external coercion.

Is Daniel Dennett an eliminativist?

Dennett is an identity theorist who, unlike almost all of his colleagues, is very upfront about the fact that in ID theory, subjective experience requires no further explanation. In fact, he stress that point relentlessly, in a way that makes him sound like an eliminativist.