Daniel Dennett

Daniel Clement Dennett ( born March 28, 1942 in Boston) is an American philosopher and is considered one of the leading figures in the philosophy of mind. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

Life

1963 joined Daniel Dennett his studies in Harvard with a BA in philosophy from. Then he moved to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle the philosopher, in which he received his doctorate in philosophy in 1965. From 1965 to 1971 he taught at the University of California, Irvine. This was followed by a visiting professor at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the American University of Beirut. He then went to Tufts University, where he teaches since then.

He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship and a grant from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Dennett, he is a member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dennett lives with his wife Susan Bell Dennett in North Andover, Massachusetts and has two children with her.

Services

The naturalistic view of the people

"Man is a natural being, which emerged in the process of evolution from the animal world. " This is according to Dennett, " Darwin's dangerous idea" ( 1995), which compels us to a naturalistic view of the people. That is, as Dennett that there is nothing in principle give in relation to the nature of man Puzzling, nothing that the natural sciences do not - could explain - in principle. This general position has, according to Dennett means that the theory of evolution in the explanation of human behavior and thinking plays a central role. Since cultural evolution, however, not be explained by gene selection, Dennett has become a well-known representative of the Memkonzepts. Memes are the analogues of genes in the cultural evolution of Dennett.

Dennett describes himself as an atheist, but he was at his rejection of God's only just as certainly as with other unverifiable statements also (such as Russell's Teapot ). Dennett is a member of the Brights, which see themselves as a group of people with a naturalistic worldview. When the concept of the Brights came up in 2003, Dennett also wrote an article The Bright Stuff in the New York Times. The article began with the following words:

An empirical explanation of consciousness

Dennett has been greatly impressed in his study of the philosophy of Descartes. He is now trying to show why Descartes ' assumptions about consciousness are false. Dennett rejects the Cartesian dualism and represents the functionalism. His approach is a declaration of consciousness:

" The conscious human mind is something like a sequential virtual machine - inefficient -. Implemented on parallel hardware that evolution has given us "

The term Cartesian theater he also fought the idea, in the brain there is a central location, to be implemented at the neuronal processes in consciousness content. According to Dennett consciousness is less like television, more like fame, with a less ambiguous term, the English slang term is clout, which in German has no exact equivalent.

Qualia eliminativism

Dennett argues that consciousness itself could completely explain in the future by the neuro-and cognitive sciences. A classic problem is the experience level ( the qualia ) of mental states. If one pricks with a needle in hand, this leads not only to certain activities in the brain and ultimately to a certain behavior - it also does hurt (it has a " quale ", the singular to qualia ). The fact that it hurts, and not at the activity in the brain without causing a sensation of pain arises leave, Dennett come to the conclusion that each of consciousness experience is coupled to a neurological process. Dennett refers to formulations of the qualia problem, as it has been argued about by Thomas Nagel, Joseph Levine and David Chalmers.

Most naturalistic philosophers set try to show why experience from certain brain processes, functional states, or the like is formed. Dennett, however, is of the opinion that it is the qualia problem is a pseudo-problem. Dennett is based on the analysis of an empirical experiment in terms of change blindness, that claims about qualia either from the " Straight phenomenology " accessible or even from the first -person perspective are inaccessible.

Intentionality

But the experiential content is not the only phenomenon that causes the consciousness seem puzzling: People are not only experiencing, but also thinking beings. Philosophers discuss this fact, the term " intentionality ", which is characterized by its directedness: The thought that p is directed to the facts p. That makes it even true or false: The idea that Herodotus was a historian, is obviously true, and that is because the thought is directed to a real situation.

But this raises the question of how people can have intentional states, because brain activity can not be true or false, nor can how electrical impulses in the brain to Herodotus and the fact that he was a historian judge. Most naturalistic philosophers minded now trying to show that this in any way is still possible.

Dennett, however, points out that we can describe systems in different ways. First, there is a physical setting: One can describe a system to its physical properties and thus predict its behavior. The behavior of a system in physical setting to predict but is often not possible for reasons of complexity. At this point, one can resort to a functional setting: In order to understand a clock and predict their behavior, one needs to know only the blueprint, the concrete physical realization can be neglected. But sometimes systems are even too complex to get at them in a functional setting. This is the case for humans or for animals. This is where the intentional setting: The behavior of a system is explained by ascribes his thoughts. So we say about the behavior of chess computers ahead: "He thinks I will sacrifice to the tower. "

Is Dennett's response to the Intentionalitätsproblem: A creature then has intentional states if its behavior can be predicted with an intentional setting. People in this sense are intentional systems - as well as chess computers have this status. Dennett's position is also called instrumentalism, in which the concept of " intentionality " a useful fiction. In his more recent work Dennett has revised this position to some extent. He now calls himself a "weak realists" and says that intentional states are as real as, for example, are patterns. Think of a carpet: The pattern on it is not real in the same sense as the carpet itself Nevertheless, the pattern is not just a useful fiction.

Freedom and self-

The naturalistic program is often viewed with unease, because apparently it attacks the classical notions of freedom and self- understanding to. Even if Dennett is generally not afraid to draw far-reaching conclusions from the naturalistic program, he defended but to a certain extent the concepts of freedom and self.

To answer the question of whether human beings are free, you first have to clarify what is meant by "freedom" under the term. If freedom under the (partial ) independence is understood by the laws of nature, we are not free according to Dennett. If by freedom but the will and action is understood to the best of its knowledge and belief, one could actually ascribe freedom. Dennett favors the second interpretation.

A similar situation is Dennett also in relation to the self. If an immaterial substance or a general functional center in the brain is meant by "self", so there's according to Dennett no self. Nevertheless, people have loud Dennett all in another sense, a self: In the life stories of the people are leitmotifs, repetitions, most striking features were formed. So konstituiere a self that Dennett as the " center of narrative gravity " (or narrative focus; center of narrative gravity ) refers. It could only be by that man speak a language of words or gestures.

Awards

• 2001 Jean Nicod Prize
• 2004 Humanist of the Year Award
• 2007 Richard Dawkins Award
• 2012 Erasmus Prize

Documentary

Dennett also appears in the documentary The Atheism Tapes ( 2004) by Jonathan Miller. The Atheism Tapes includes interviews with six eminent personalities from the field of philosophy and science. Dennett expresses itself in a half-hour interview on the subject of religion and atheism.

Writings

• Content and Consciousness, 1969, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul and New York: Humanities Press.
• Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, 1978, Montgomery, VT: Bradford Books and Hassocks.
• The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, 1981, with Douglas R. Hofstadter, New York: Basic Books German: insight into the ego. Fantasies and reflections on self and soul., Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 5th edition 2001, ISBN 978-3-60893038-2

• German: elbow. The desirable forms of free will, Beltz Athenaeum, 2nd edition 1994

• German: philosophy of human consciousness; transl. Franz M. Wuketits, Hoffmann and Campe 1994, ISBN 978-3-45508446-7

• German: Darwin 's Dangerous. The evolution and the meaning of life, Hoffmann & Campe, 1997, ISBN 978-3-45508545-7

• German: varieties of mind: how we see the world?; a new understanding of consciousness, Goldmann, Munich 2001, ISBN 978-3-44215111-0

• German: Sweet Dreams: The exploration of consciousness and sleep in philosophy, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-51858476-7; Review by Michael Pauen

• German: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon, Island, Frankfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-45871011-0