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Mar 28, 1942 — Apr 19, 2024· 82 yrs

UNITED STATES AUTHOR · CONSCIOUSNESS · PHILOSOPHY

Daniel C. Dennett

Also known as: Daniel Clement Dennett, Daniel C. Dennett III

20
BOOKS
3.9
AVG RATING (43)
5
READERS

Daniel Clement Dennett III was an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centered on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Dennett was the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Dennett was a vocal atheist and secularist, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, and a member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, as well as an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement. Dennett was referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism", along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens. In 1962, Dennett married Susan Bell. They lived in North Andover, Massachusetts, and had a daughter, a son, and six grandchildren. He was an avid sailor. Dennett died of interstitial lung disease at Maine Medical Center on April 19, 2024, at the age of 82. [source: Wikipedia]

Boston, United States
Wikipedia

Suppose evil scientists removed your brain from your body while you slept, and set it up in a life-support system in a vat.

— from Consciousness explained, 1991

Most acclaimed

#2

Freedom evolves

2002

5.0 (1)

"Four billion years ago, there was no freedom on our planet, because there was no life. What kinds of freedom have evolved since the origin of life? Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? If you are free, are you responsible for being free, or just lucky?". "In Freedom Evolves, Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained, sets out to answer these questions, showing how we, alone among the animals, have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. In a series of strikingly original arguments drawing on evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy, he demonstrates that if we accept Darwin's reasoning, we can build from the simplest life forms all the way up to the best and deepest human thoughts on questions of morality and meaning, ethics and freedom."--BOOK JACKET.

#1

Elbow room

1939

0.0 (0)

In Elbow Room, Dennett shows how the classical formulation of the problem in philosophy depend on misuses of imagination, and he disentangles the philosophical problems of real interest from the "family of anxieties" they get enmeshed in-imaginary agents, bogeymen, and dire prospects that seem to threaten our freedom.

#3

Intuition pumps and other tools for thinking

5.0 (1)

Daniel Dennett, one of the world's most original and provocative thinkers, takes readers on a profound, illuminating and highly entertaining philosophical journey as he reveals a collection of his favorite thinking tools, or "intuition pumps", that he and others have developed for addressing life's most fundamental questions.

Books

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