Daniel Dennett (1942--2024)

Last update: 13 Apr 2026 12:54
First version: 19 February 1998; substantial expansion, 22 August 2004; acknowledgment of mortality and repair of link-rot, 8 April 2026

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There's a party in my mind
And the party never stops
Party up there all the time
Gonna party till they drop

One of my favorite writers, whose books have changed my mind about things like what a self really is and whether or not there's free will. He was Quine's student, and I rather expect he'll one day hold a similar position to his teacher's. He now has a homepage of his own. [The original entry from 1998, sentimentally left alone]

See also:
• Adaptation
• Artificial Intelligence
• Artificial Life
• William Calvin
• Cognitive Science
• Richard Dawkins
• Darwin Machines
• Ethics, Game Theory and Biology
• Evolution
• Evolutionary Epistemology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• William James
• Julian Jaynes
• Memes, and Related Ideas about the Evolution of Culture
• Narratives
• Nietzsche (whom Dennett calls the "second sociobiologist," the first being Hobbes)
• Neuroscience
• Philosophy of Mind
• Possession and Multiple Personality Disorder
• Universal Images and Cultural Universals

Recommended:
• Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds [Essay collection, including many of his best pieces, some formerly available at his web-site, like "Real Patterns" (on reductionism and emergent properties, and complexity and cellular automata), "Speaking for Our Selves" (on multiple personality), "The Practical Requirements for Making a Conscious Robot", "Artificial Life as Philosophy", "Information, Technology and the Virtues of Ignorance" (one of the most disturbing things I've ever read about the consequences of computerization), etc. Review: An Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects by your humble narrator]
• Consciousness Explained [Review by Danny Yee]
• Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life [Possibly his best-written book. When it showed up at the local yuppie bookstore, costing what was then a significant fraction of my disposable income, I told myself "I can't afford this" all the way to the cash-register. Reviews by John Maynard Smith and by Danny Yee.]
• Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting [Review by Danny Yee]
• Kinds of Minds [a.k.a. "Dennett for Beginners"]
• A whole bunch of papers, via the Tufts Center for Cognitive Studies
  • "Cog as a Thought Experiment"
  • "Did HAL Commit Murder?"
  • "On Failures of Freedom and the Fear of Science", Daedalus, Winter 2003, pp. 126--130
  • "Faith in the Truth" (Amnesty Lecture, 1997)
  • "Fun and Games in Fantasyland", Mind and Language 23 (2008): 25--31 [Controversy with Jerry Fodor over natural selection]
  • "Higher-Order Truths about Chmess"
  • "Memes and the Exploitation of Imagination", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48 (1990)
  • "Memes: Myths, Misunderstandings and Misgivings"
  • "Postmodernism and Truth"
  • "Review of Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error"
  • "Review of Walter Burkert, The Creation of the Sacred"
  • "The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity"
• (ed.) Philosophical Lexicon [Collection of puns on philosophers' names. Samples: "arthurdantist, n. One who straightens the teeth of exotic dogmas. `Little Friedrich used to say the most wonderful things before we took him to the arthurdantist!' --- Frau Nietzsche"; "croce, n. A method of knitting spaghetti; thus, an intricate tangle."; "foucault, n. A howler, an insane mistake. `I'm afraid I've committed an egregious foucault.' "; "marcuse, v. To criticize vehemently from a Marxist perspective. `Je marcuse!' - J. P. Sartre." (Sadly, I can no longer, in 2026, find this online.)]

To read, DCD:
• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
• Freedom Evolves
• From Bacteria to Bach and Back
• The Intentional Stance
• Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
• I've Been Thinking
• "Notes on Prosthetic Imagination," Boston Review 7(3), pp. 3-7 (= June '82)
• Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness

To read, others:
• Jeremy C. Ahouse, "The Tragedy of a priori Selectionism: Dennett and Gould on Adaptationism", Biology and Philosophy 13 (1998): 359--391 [Thanks to Milan C. for the recommendation]
• Andrew Brook and Don Ross (eds.), Daniel Dennett
• Matthew Elton, Daniel Dennett: Reconciling Science and Our Self-Conception [Review by Gillian Barker in Philosophy of Science]
• Tyler Millhouse, Stephen Petersen, and Don Ross (eds.), Dennett's Real Patterns in Science and Nature