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From Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained"; Little, Brown and Company 1991; ISBN: 0316180661; p. 433.
Yesselman 22:28, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I removed the following text:
The problem is that nobody's actually claimed this, except for a Wikipedia original researcher named Loxley. Loxley has shown himself to be hostile to Dennett and fairly clueless about Dennett's views, so his opinion is insufficient basis for the inclusion of this text, even if it weren't entirely OR.
Now, if we can find some citations of anyone the least bit relevant and important who thinks Dennett supports Direct Realism, then by all means restore the removed text. Alienus 15:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Not long ago, I emailed Dennett to ask him for guidance on this article. In particular I asked:
His reply, in full, was:
So, I guess we can make of this what we will. I feel like Dennett can sometime be an "ink blot" which people can project their own views onto. grumble.. Dennett's such a character. He's so frustrating. LOL. -- Alecmconroy 07:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
First, I want to thank Anthony Mohen for contributing substantively to the article. I just did a cleanup on these additions, and mostly corrected language, but I ran into a section that I'm not sure what to do with. I'm not sure what it's trying to say, so I'm not sure how to fix it so that it says what it's trying to say. For now, I've moved the section here so we can figure this out:
Could you explain? Alienus 17:38, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I rewrote that section, in a way which I hope is better expressed. If you want to just quote Dennett directly on this point, he lays this same idea out on p. 355 of Brainchildren, but it doesn't strike me as necessary for such a simple statement (although I certainly seem to have botched my attempts to describe it so far). If Alienus or anyone else wants to double check the new text for language/etc., that'd be great.
Anthony Mohen 13:00, 13 February 2006 (EST)
When formatting the following quote from the article:
I noticed it is sourced to "Dennett, 1993", but there is no reference to a 1993 work by Dennett listed in the article. Does anyone know where this quote came from? - Seth Mahoney 22:18, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok, who dug up that awesome picture of him from the 80s?
~
Anthony Mohen 18:56, 22 April 2006 (EST)
I removed the following text from the article:
I visited the site, and while it was interesting and did occasionally mention Dennett, I saw no hint that he edits it. Al 06:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
This section has got to go.
Anyone have a problem with that? This section is useless. I've met Dennett, and in a room full of professors, his appearance is typical not notable. -- Eric Silva 01:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Sincerely i think the whole article should be given a major transformation. It seems like a small introduction, like those you´d find in a book´s back or as a brochure for a lecture. Petrus hispanus 23:39, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I think I agree with this. If it is simply a brief introduction to the person then it needs to say so early on with links to more definitive pages elsewhere. If it intends to be encyclopedic, then the philosophical aspects needs improving - his evolutionary philosophy generally, Intentional Stance, Free Will and Consciousness specifically, before getting into the recent religious debates. AND the points and rebuttals (eg the Free Will point and the response from Kane) are so selective, as to be highly misleading.
For example - I made this observation on the Free Will section: The Dennett "admission" cited by Kane underplays Dennett's full position here. No one is saying chance is the "primary" source of decisions, not Dennett, not even remotely. The "if" is a straw-man. The agent is indeed taking control of the decision considerations after the considerations have come to mind. There is a statistical chance element in which considerations do come to mind as relevant - for which one can still take responsibility afterwards - but that statistical element is not some purely random chance in the first place. It is the sum total of the agent's previous considerations and actions remembered consciously and subconsciously until brought to mind for the current decision. Which considerations come to mind is a product of what they are and how they are organized & linked after all previous decisions and actions, but before this one. This is the agent's resource of moral understanding and behavioural intent, part of which is that very understanding that we are not perfect in organizing, remembering, understanding and applying it. Where is the problem for libertarians ? (The observation was correctly removed from the main page - it was intended for this discussion page, as it said explicitly. You can cite me ;-) )
I see Dennett himself has an overall disclaimer on the page about his philosophy in general being misrepresented by the choice of language of his opponents. This is not the page for open-ended debate about the philosophical subjects themselves - just Dennett and his position, surely ? Two choices - either clean-up the summary of Dennett's position (and any counter positions) to actually reflect his position, or remove them entirely from this page.
He had a heart attack a couple months back. See this —The preceding unsigned comment was added by FranksValli ( talk • contribs) 01:27, 9 February 2007 (UTC).
Dennett's written work on atheism is a minuscule fraction of his philosophical work. We might as well have the lead sentence on Bertrand Russell's article state that he is an "agnostic advocate" because he wrote Why I am not a Christian. Aside from this, there is no source stating that he is an atheist advocate. Making the inference from a work or body of works is original research. There needs to be something better than this, and until there is, this article is in violation of WP:BLP. Simões ( talk/ contribs) 00:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I have changed it to say that he is a supporter of the brights movement. -- Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 02:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
User:Otto-pilot is correct. Dennett's birthplace is Boston, not Beirut. It took some digging, but I did find the correction that he refers to. The link is here http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/Guardiancorrections.htm and it states "In our profile of Daniel Dennett (pages 20 to 23, Review, April 17), we said he was born in Beirut. In fact, he was born in Boston. His father died in 1947, not 1948. He married in 1962, not 1963. The seminar at which Stephen Jay Gould was rigorously questioned by Dennett's students was Dennett's seminar at Tufts, not Gould's at Harvard. Dennett wrote Darwin's Dangerous Idea before, not after, Gould called him a "Darwinian fundamentalist". Only one chapter in the book, not four, is devoted to taking issue with Gould. The list of Dennett's books omitted Elbow Room, 1984, and The Intentional Stance, 1987. The marble sculpture, recollected by a friend, that Dennett was working on in 1963 was not a mother and child. It was a man reading a book." Edhubbard 17:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Breaking the Spell is mostly an endeavor to present a naturalistic history of religion. Dennett doesn't argue for atheism as such in any part of the book, and to the extent that he writes on the overall negative impact of religion, he doesn't surgically target the theistic aspect of it. Is he an atheist? Of course, but it has little to do with his professional work. The closest Big Idea that comes to it is his metaphysical naturalism—which does entail atheism—but isn't the focus of his naturalistic writings.
And as for this brights movement bit, he wrote a single newspaper column on it. He's a proponent, but it makes little sense to include that in the lead. We might as well call him a guest columnist and avid tennis fan, to boot. As a comparison, observe that Richard Dawkins is a brights movement proponent, but the editors of that article didn't find it worth mentioning until the end of the third paragraph. It's simply not a main component of either scholar's identity. Simões ( talk/ contribs) 22:48, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
It is on wikiquote. Now what is so distinguished about it, that it should appear, without any context, on an encyc. article? Do you know of a biography in wikipedia with a similar section? trespassers william 20:52, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Until recently my photo from flickr [2] was used on the article. I was glad for it, and didn't see a comment on the history page why it has been removed. Shouldn't it be back? David.orban 22:58, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
There is a very interesting nuance to Dennett's position in his debate in Prospect. A couple of editors remove this - perhaps it doesn't fit with their tidy worldviews? - but since it is a direct quote saying "summary not accurate" when it is not meant to be a summary of his entire outlook but an interesting refinement of it is really not good enough! NBeale 07:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I knew I was right to remove the text, but I still thought NBeale was making good-faith edits. Now it's obvious that he has a track record of inserting pro-religious bias in a bunch of articles. Next time he pulls this, I'll be even quicker to revert. ThAtSo 00:39, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
NBeale, try to avoid your POV when you edit.-- Svetovid 11:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
You haven't addressed any of the issues, so your non-consensus insertion is going to be removed again. ThAtSo 23:04, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
A template for Dennett like Richard Dawkins one would be good to tie the Dennett articles together (his original concepts like greedy reductionism, his books etc. A pity we don't have articles on all his books, but we could just leave the ones without article out or make red links. Another possibility is a category (they are not mutually exclusive, of course). How about Category:Daniel Dennett? I notice that Richard Dawkins has Category:Books by Richard Dawkins instead with no Category:Richard Dawkins - is this preferable? Richard001 08:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay, so it looks like the main category will be deleted, but a new one called Category:Books by Daniel Dennett has been created. I think a template containing all the relevant links would still work well; i.e. greedy reductionism, heterophenomenology, intentional stance, intuition pump and the Multiple Drafts Model. I might take a swing at it myself some time if nobody objects, though I'm not a templater by trade. Richard001 05:34, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
When did Dennett coin the term 'free floating rationale'? Was it Darwin's Dangerous Idea, or an earlier work? Richard001 ( talk) 07:24, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
A user named Ddennett has recently edited this article in a way that made me suspicious the subject and the user might be the same person. I have sent an e-mail to Dr. Dennett's Tufts E-mail adress seeking confirmation on whether or not they indeed are. D-rew ( talk) 19:51, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I received a confirmation from Dr. Dennett, so I'm going to add the appropriate tags and such. I think I'm supposed to send the e-mail confirmation to an admin to disprove sockpuppet or something like that...anybody know the details of that? D-rew ( talk) 23:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I am removing Russell as an influence and adding Darwin. The latter decision is, I hope, uncontenious. The former is tempered by the fact that, though Dennett can of course be said to have been influenced by Russell as have all philosophers within the analytic tradition and has almost certainly read his work, I don't see any particular reason to think that Russell has been influential upon Dan to such a degree as to include him in a list with Ryle, Quine, Wittgenstein and Darwin. A flick through the indexes of Ross, Brock & Thompson and Elton confirm that it is possible to write at length on Dennett without so much as a mention of Russell, Russell's mentions in Consciousness Explained are all anecdotal while he doesn't appear in Content and Consciousness at all. Brentano would be more worthy of a place on the list and a mention of Hofstadter whether in influenced or influenced by is sorely lacking. (This isn't some kind of anti-Russell trip; I just don't see any reason to consider him more of an influence than, say, Frege or Locke. If someone could point me to evidence to the contrary I'd be embarassed but grateful). DuncanCrowe ( talk) —Preceding comment was added at 12:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC) Edit: Apologies, I meant to say 'Brentano'.
Would be a nice addition to our media collection. I have been trying to find someone on YouTube who will release one, with little luck so far. I'll get something eventually though. I'll also have to look through his other books to see if I can't create a Commons cat similar to the one I did for Darwins Dangerous Idea. Richard001 ( talk) 11:36, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Abrhm, you should include his misrepresentation of Chomsky. Just a suggestion: your call. CABlankenship ( talk) 05:05, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
criticisms?-- Heyitspeter ( talk) 11:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Does Oxford University confer PhD degrees? My roommate from the University of Toronto got his DPhil there. Torontonian1 ( talk) 13:11, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
I noted a change from his description as an atheist to a secularist and changed it back since he is much more prominent in the public consciousness as an atheist but on reviewing the talk page it suggests he has written more that evidences secularist convictions so I've changed the sentence to add both but it seems a bit redundant to me. 67.79.10.114 ( talk) 22:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Being unfamiliar with the topic, I found the article not very enlightening. There's too little explanation of Dennett's theories, too much pigeonholing (atheist, compatibilist, teleofunctionalist, verificationist, adaptionist, secularist, darwinist etc. etc.), and overall too much a focus on the person of Dennett and the debate around his views as opposed to his philosophy per se. The part on "Free Will" I find confusing. -- Luuukas ( talk) 12:30, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Under the Career in academia heading, there is a subsection for free will. Yet there is no subsection for consciousness. Considering that four out of Dennett's eight books are on consciousness, it makes sense that there should be a section devoted to the topic. The Other philosophical views subsection could easily be renamed to "consciousness." I suggest that change be made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.187.191 ( talk) 15:21, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree. The current section on Free Will is not very good, either. It references his 1978 work which is ancient - since then he has written an entire book on Free Will, "Freedom Evolves" - circa 2003? Which I have not read but have heard the podcast from. -- Sethop ( talk) 17:32, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
How high are Dennett's ideas held in contemporary academic philosophy? I heard that a lot of what he argues is far from the mainstream. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.0.223.235 ( talk) 16:02, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
It seems that the Joycean machine needs mentioning somewhere. It is one of the central concepts of Dennett's main focus, the name of his model for consciousness (or at least the mind). Apparently Dennett coined this based on James Joyce's stream of consciousness style of literature (see Consc. Expl. p.274). It is the virtual machine (p.228), it is the sequential/serial/ von Neumann machine-esque thing implemented over the parallel brain. It is what allows there to anatomically be (as Dennett frequently credited to William James) no keystone/"center of gravity" cell nor inner hormunculus and cartesian theatre. It seems to be the thing that (harbours the memes which) loops back on itself to produce the self concept, by a process D.H. in I Am a Strange Loop considered analogous to how Godel's theorem's proof works, and to be an important component layer of the multiple drafts model. Any ideas whether it should exist as a separate article, or a subsection of dennett's article, or of the multiple drafts article? Cesiumfrog ( talk) 04:08, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
much thanks ! 79.180.170.239 ( talk) 01:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
According to Flanagan, Dennett said at a conference of naturalists in Stockbridge(?): "Well there really isn't free will, but we shouldn't tell everyone that". He has said on other occasions that telling people that free will is an illusion was dangerous. Not sure if a comment of Flanagan in a youtube video is an acceptable source. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiXPGkRz7nI Ssscienccce ( talk) 07:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
In the previous version of the DD page, everything (including his philosophical views) were put as a subsection of 'Early life and education'. I've corrected this by inserting 'Philosophical views' as a section-heading after the education info. Compare the 'Contents' boxes of the two versions to see the effect. ( Peter Ells ( talk) 14:47, 8 January 2014 (UTC))
I've added a pointer to Intentional stance in the 'See also' section ( Peter Ells ( talk) 15:10, 8 January 2014 (UTC))
I've re-arranged the material in the section Philosophical views.
I've created a new subsection (2.4) An account of religion and morality and have gathered relevant material there (even if it also has an evolutionary aspect).
After moving some material from the old grab-bag section (2.2) Other philosophical views to the evolution section, I renamed section (2.2) Philosophy of mind.
This should be fairly uncontroversial as no material was added or deleted. (I had to make minimal changes to one or two words in order to make the text flow sensibly.)
( Peter Ells ( talk) 20:35, 8 January 2014 (UTC))
I've added a paragraph on DD's Multiple drafts model within the Philosophy of mind subsection. I believe that because of the topic's importance, it is necessary to include it; but his model is hard to sum up in a few words, so others my want to rephrase or rewrite. ( Peter Ells ( talk) 20:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC))
There is some nice commentary on and quotation from Dennett in this Brain Pickings article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yaris678 ( talk • contribs) 17:40, 24 April 2014
Atheism is not a religion, therefore why do we present it as such? I don't think it's necessary to include this particular denotation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.138.219 ( talk) 20:47, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
There is an RfC on the question of using "Religion: None" vs. "Religion: None (atheist)" in the infobox on this and other similar pages.
The RfC is at Template talk:Infobox person#RfC: Religion infobox entries for individuals that have no religion.
Please help us determine consensus on this issue. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 05:11, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
on Twitter Dennett account SAYS he is a scientist
I visit the home pages of scientists and mathematicians and poets and philosophers.
His page does not resemble the first. Which peer-reviewed science research result is credited to Dennett ?
99.245.191.116 ( talk) 12:17, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
@ Xenophrenic: WHy have you added the above cat? Dennett's philosphical work is not in the philosophy of science. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 10:04, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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Can someone please tell me what the enyclopedic relevance of the profession of the father of Miriam Weizenbaum is in an article about Daniel Dennett (and not about Miriam Weizenbaum)?
Captain Basil ( talk) 14:36, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
>When Dennett was six years old he suffered a significant injury from being dropped on his head by his mother. This resulted in a severe traumatic subdural hematoma causing significantly lower functionality in the right brain hemisphere.[17]
>17. Dennett, Daniel (2002). Content and Consciousness - International Library of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis Ltd. ISBN 9780415104319.
I can find no reference to this purported incident in this book, or anywhere else for that matter. Looks fake to me. Can anyone confirm? — Preceding unsigned comment added by YoHooComics ( talk • contribs) 10:51, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
I do not wish to overstating this, but - given that his father was a Government Agent - is it not possible that he might have worked for a Govt department? For have not the CIA used 'intellectuals', and others in the public eye, to push some of their more questionable/dodgy agendas? 95.147.153.10 ( talk) 20:52, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
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From Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained"; Little, Brown and Company 1991; ISBN: 0316180661; p. 433.
Yesselman 22:28, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I removed the following text:
The problem is that nobody's actually claimed this, except for a Wikipedia original researcher named Loxley. Loxley has shown himself to be hostile to Dennett and fairly clueless about Dennett's views, so his opinion is insufficient basis for the inclusion of this text, even if it weren't entirely OR.
Now, if we can find some citations of anyone the least bit relevant and important who thinks Dennett supports Direct Realism, then by all means restore the removed text. Alienus 15:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Not long ago, I emailed Dennett to ask him for guidance on this article. In particular I asked:
His reply, in full, was:
So, I guess we can make of this what we will. I feel like Dennett can sometime be an "ink blot" which people can project their own views onto. grumble.. Dennett's such a character. He's so frustrating. LOL. -- Alecmconroy 07:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
First, I want to thank Anthony Mohen for contributing substantively to the article. I just did a cleanup on these additions, and mostly corrected language, but I ran into a section that I'm not sure what to do with. I'm not sure what it's trying to say, so I'm not sure how to fix it so that it says what it's trying to say. For now, I've moved the section here so we can figure this out:
Could you explain? Alienus 17:38, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I rewrote that section, in a way which I hope is better expressed. If you want to just quote Dennett directly on this point, he lays this same idea out on p. 355 of Brainchildren, but it doesn't strike me as necessary for such a simple statement (although I certainly seem to have botched my attempts to describe it so far). If Alienus or anyone else wants to double check the new text for language/etc., that'd be great.
Anthony Mohen 13:00, 13 February 2006 (EST)
When formatting the following quote from the article:
I noticed it is sourced to "Dennett, 1993", but there is no reference to a 1993 work by Dennett listed in the article. Does anyone know where this quote came from? - Seth Mahoney 22:18, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok, who dug up that awesome picture of him from the 80s?
~
Anthony Mohen 18:56, 22 April 2006 (EST)
I removed the following text from the article:
I visited the site, and while it was interesting and did occasionally mention Dennett, I saw no hint that he edits it. Al 06:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
This section has got to go.
Anyone have a problem with that? This section is useless. I've met Dennett, and in a room full of professors, his appearance is typical not notable. -- Eric Silva 01:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Sincerely i think the whole article should be given a major transformation. It seems like a small introduction, like those you´d find in a book´s back or as a brochure for a lecture. Petrus hispanus 23:39, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I think I agree with this. If it is simply a brief introduction to the person then it needs to say so early on with links to more definitive pages elsewhere. If it intends to be encyclopedic, then the philosophical aspects needs improving - his evolutionary philosophy generally, Intentional Stance, Free Will and Consciousness specifically, before getting into the recent religious debates. AND the points and rebuttals (eg the Free Will point and the response from Kane) are so selective, as to be highly misleading.
For example - I made this observation on the Free Will section: The Dennett "admission" cited by Kane underplays Dennett's full position here. No one is saying chance is the "primary" source of decisions, not Dennett, not even remotely. The "if" is a straw-man. The agent is indeed taking control of the decision considerations after the considerations have come to mind. There is a statistical chance element in which considerations do come to mind as relevant - for which one can still take responsibility afterwards - but that statistical element is not some purely random chance in the first place. It is the sum total of the agent's previous considerations and actions remembered consciously and subconsciously until brought to mind for the current decision. Which considerations come to mind is a product of what they are and how they are organized & linked after all previous decisions and actions, but before this one. This is the agent's resource of moral understanding and behavioural intent, part of which is that very understanding that we are not perfect in organizing, remembering, understanding and applying it. Where is the problem for libertarians ? (The observation was correctly removed from the main page - it was intended for this discussion page, as it said explicitly. You can cite me ;-) )
I see Dennett himself has an overall disclaimer on the page about his philosophy in general being misrepresented by the choice of language of his opponents. This is not the page for open-ended debate about the philosophical subjects themselves - just Dennett and his position, surely ? Two choices - either clean-up the summary of Dennett's position (and any counter positions) to actually reflect his position, or remove them entirely from this page.
He had a heart attack a couple months back. See this —The preceding unsigned comment was added by FranksValli ( talk • contribs) 01:27, 9 February 2007 (UTC).
Dennett's written work on atheism is a minuscule fraction of his philosophical work. We might as well have the lead sentence on Bertrand Russell's article state that he is an "agnostic advocate" because he wrote Why I am not a Christian. Aside from this, there is no source stating that he is an atheist advocate. Making the inference from a work or body of works is original research. There needs to be something better than this, and until there is, this article is in violation of WP:BLP. Simões ( talk/ contribs) 00:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I have changed it to say that he is a supporter of the brights movement. -- Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 02:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
User:Otto-pilot is correct. Dennett's birthplace is Boston, not Beirut. It took some digging, but I did find the correction that he refers to. The link is here http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/Guardiancorrections.htm and it states "In our profile of Daniel Dennett (pages 20 to 23, Review, April 17), we said he was born in Beirut. In fact, he was born in Boston. His father died in 1947, not 1948. He married in 1962, not 1963. The seminar at which Stephen Jay Gould was rigorously questioned by Dennett's students was Dennett's seminar at Tufts, not Gould's at Harvard. Dennett wrote Darwin's Dangerous Idea before, not after, Gould called him a "Darwinian fundamentalist". Only one chapter in the book, not four, is devoted to taking issue with Gould. The list of Dennett's books omitted Elbow Room, 1984, and The Intentional Stance, 1987. The marble sculpture, recollected by a friend, that Dennett was working on in 1963 was not a mother and child. It was a man reading a book." Edhubbard 17:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Breaking the Spell is mostly an endeavor to present a naturalistic history of religion. Dennett doesn't argue for atheism as such in any part of the book, and to the extent that he writes on the overall negative impact of religion, he doesn't surgically target the theistic aspect of it. Is he an atheist? Of course, but it has little to do with his professional work. The closest Big Idea that comes to it is his metaphysical naturalism—which does entail atheism—but isn't the focus of his naturalistic writings.
And as for this brights movement bit, he wrote a single newspaper column on it. He's a proponent, but it makes little sense to include that in the lead. We might as well call him a guest columnist and avid tennis fan, to boot. As a comparison, observe that Richard Dawkins is a brights movement proponent, but the editors of that article didn't find it worth mentioning until the end of the third paragraph. It's simply not a main component of either scholar's identity. Simões ( talk/ contribs) 22:48, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
It is on wikiquote. Now what is so distinguished about it, that it should appear, without any context, on an encyc. article? Do you know of a biography in wikipedia with a similar section? trespassers william 20:52, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Until recently my photo from flickr [2] was used on the article. I was glad for it, and didn't see a comment on the history page why it has been removed. Shouldn't it be back? David.orban 22:58, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
There is a very interesting nuance to Dennett's position in his debate in Prospect. A couple of editors remove this - perhaps it doesn't fit with their tidy worldviews? - but since it is a direct quote saying "summary not accurate" when it is not meant to be a summary of his entire outlook but an interesting refinement of it is really not good enough! NBeale 07:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I knew I was right to remove the text, but I still thought NBeale was making good-faith edits. Now it's obvious that he has a track record of inserting pro-religious bias in a bunch of articles. Next time he pulls this, I'll be even quicker to revert. ThAtSo 00:39, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
NBeale, try to avoid your POV when you edit.-- Svetovid 11:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
You haven't addressed any of the issues, so your non-consensus insertion is going to be removed again. ThAtSo 23:04, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
A template for Dennett like Richard Dawkins one would be good to tie the Dennett articles together (his original concepts like greedy reductionism, his books etc. A pity we don't have articles on all his books, but we could just leave the ones without article out or make red links. Another possibility is a category (they are not mutually exclusive, of course). How about Category:Daniel Dennett? I notice that Richard Dawkins has Category:Books by Richard Dawkins instead with no Category:Richard Dawkins - is this preferable? Richard001 08:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay, so it looks like the main category will be deleted, but a new one called Category:Books by Daniel Dennett has been created. I think a template containing all the relevant links would still work well; i.e. greedy reductionism, heterophenomenology, intentional stance, intuition pump and the Multiple Drafts Model. I might take a swing at it myself some time if nobody objects, though I'm not a templater by trade. Richard001 05:34, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
When did Dennett coin the term 'free floating rationale'? Was it Darwin's Dangerous Idea, or an earlier work? Richard001 ( talk) 07:24, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
A user named Ddennett has recently edited this article in a way that made me suspicious the subject and the user might be the same person. I have sent an e-mail to Dr. Dennett's Tufts E-mail adress seeking confirmation on whether or not they indeed are. D-rew ( talk) 19:51, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I received a confirmation from Dr. Dennett, so I'm going to add the appropriate tags and such. I think I'm supposed to send the e-mail confirmation to an admin to disprove sockpuppet or something like that...anybody know the details of that? D-rew ( talk) 23:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I am removing Russell as an influence and adding Darwin. The latter decision is, I hope, uncontenious. The former is tempered by the fact that, though Dennett can of course be said to have been influenced by Russell as have all philosophers within the analytic tradition and has almost certainly read his work, I don't see any particular reason to think that Russell has been influential upon Dan to such a degree as to include him in a list with Ryle, Quine, Wittgenstein and Darwin. A flick through the indexes of Ross, Brock & Thompson and Elton confirm that it is possible to write at length on Dennett without so much as a mention of Russell, Russell's mentions in Consciousness Explained are all anecdotal while he doesn't appear in Content and Consciousness at all. Brentano would be more worthy of a place on the list and a mention of Hofstadter whether in influenced or influenced by is sorely lacking. (This isn't some kind of anti-Russell trip; I just don't see any reason to consider him more of an influence than, say, Frege or Locke. If someone could point me to evidence to the contrary I'd be embarassed but grateful). DuncanCrowe ( talk) —Preceding comment was added at 12:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC) Edit: Apologies, I meant to say 'Brentano'.
Would be a nice addition to our media collection. I have been trying to find someone on YouTube who will release one, with little luck so far. I'll get something eventually though. I'll also have to look through his other books to see if I can't create a Commons cat similar to the one I did for Darwins Dangerous Idea. Richard001 ( talk) 11:36, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Abrhm, you should include his misrepresentation of Chomsky. Just a suggestion: your call. CABlankenship ( talk) 05:05, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
criticisms?-- Heyitspeter ( talk) 11:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Does Oxford University confer PhD degrees? My roommate from the University of Toronto got his DPhil there. Torontonian1 ( talk) 13:11, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
I noted a change from his description as an atheist to a secularist and changed it back since he is much more prominent in the public consciousness as an atheist but on reviewing the talk page it suggests he has written more that evidences secularist convictions so I've changed the sentence to add both but it seems a bit redundant to me. 67.79.10.114 ( talk) 22:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Being unfamiliar with the topic, I found the article not very enlightening. There's too little explanation of Dennett's theories, too much pigeonholing (atheist, compatibilist, teleofunctionalist, verificationist, adaptionist, secularist, darwinist etc. etc.), and overall too much a focus on the person of Dennett and the debate around his views as opposed to his philosophy per se. The part on "Free Will" I find confusing. -- Luuukas ( talk) 12:30, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
Under the Career in academia heading, there is a subsection for free will. Yet there is no subsection for consciousness. Considering that four out of Dennett's eight books are on consciousness, it makes sense that there should be a section devoted to the topic. The Other philosophical views subsection could easily be renamed to "consciousness." I suggest that change be made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.187.191 ( talk) 15:21, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree. The current section on Free Will is not very good, either. It references his 1978 work which is ancient - since then he has written an entire book on Free Will, "Freedom Evolves" - circa 2003? Which I have not read but have heard the podcast from. -- Sethop ( talk) 17:32, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
How high are Dennett's ideas held in contemporary academic philosophy? I heard that a lot of what he argues is far from the mainstream. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.0.223.235 ( talk) 16:02, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
It seems that the Joycean machine needs mentioning somewhere. It is one of the central concepts of Dennett's main focus, the name of his model for consciousness (or at least the mind). Apparently Dennett coined this based on James Joyce's stream of consciousness style of literature (see Consc. Expl. p.274). It is the virtual machine (p.228), it is the sequential/serial/ von Neumann machine-esque thing implemented over the parallel brain. It is what allows there to anatomically be (as Dennett frequently credited to William James) no keystone/"center of gravity" cell nor inner hormunculus and cartesian theatre. It seems to be the thing that (harbours the memes which) loops back on itself to produce the self concept, by a process D.H. in I Am a Strange Loop considered analogous to how Godel's theorem's proof works, and to be an important component layer of the multiple drafts model. Any ideas whether it should exist as a separate article, or a subsection of dennett's article, or of the multiple drafts article? Cesiumfrog ( talk) 04:08, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
much thanks ! 79.180.170.239 ( talk) 01:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
According to Flanagan, Dennett said at a conference of naturalists in Stockbridge(?): "Well there really isn't free will, but we shouldn't tell everyone that". He has said on other occasions that telling people that free will is an illusion was dangerous. Not sure if a comment of Flanagan in a youtube video is an acceptable source. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiXPGkRz7nI Ssscienccce ( talk) 07:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
In the previous version of the DD page, everything (including his philosophical views) were put as a subsection of 'Early life and education'. I've corrected this by inserting 'Philosophical views' as a section-heading after the education info. Compare the 'Contents' boxes of the two versions to see the effect. ( Peter Ells ( talk) 14:47, 8 January 2014 (UTC))
I've added a pointer to Intentional stance in the 'See also' section ( Peter Ells ( talk) 15:10, 8 January 2014 (UTC))
I've re-arranged the material in the section Philosophical views.
I've created a new subsection (2.4) An account of religion and morality and have gathered relevant material there (even if it also has an evolutionary aspect).
After moving some material from the old grab-bag section (2.2) Other philosophical views to the evolution section, I renamed section (2.2) Philosophy of mind.
This should be fairly uncontroversial as no material was added or deleted. (I had to make minimal changes to one or two words in order to make the text flow sensibly.)
( Peter Ells ( talk) 20:35, 8 January 2014 (UTC))
I've added a paragraph on DD's Multiple drafts model within the Philosophy of mind subsection. I believe that because of the topic's importance, it is necessary to include it; but his model is hard to sum up in a few words, so others my want to rephrase or rewrite. ( Peter Ells ( talk) 20:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC))
There is some nice commentary on and quotation from Dennett in this Brain Pickings article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yaris678 ( talk • contribs) 17:40, 24 April 2014
Atheism is not a religion, therefore why do we present it as such? I don't think it's necessary to include this particular denotation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.138.219 ( talk) 20:47, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
There is an RfC on the question of using "Religion: None" vs. "Religion: None (atheist)" in the infobox on this and other similar pages.
The RfC is at Template talk:Infobox person#RfC: Religion infobox entries for individuals that have no religion.
Please help us determine consensus on this issue. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 05:11, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
on Twitter Dennett account SAYS he is a scientist
I visit the home pages of scientists and mathematicians and poets and philosophers.
His page does not resemble the first. Which peer-reviewed science research result is credited to Dennett ?
99.245.191.116 ( talk) 12:17, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
@ Xenophrenic: WHy have you added the above cat? Dennett's philosphical work is not in the philosophy of science. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 10:04, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
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Can someone please tell me what the enyclopedic relevance of the profession of the father of Miriam Weizenbaum is in an article about Daniel Dennett (and not about Miriam Weizenbaum)?
Captain Basil ( talk) 14:36, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
>When Dennett was six years old he suffered a significant injury from being dropped on his head by his mother. This resulted in a severe traumatic subdural hematoma causing significantly lower functionality in the right brain hemisphere.[17]
>17. Dennett, Daniel (2002). Content and Consciousness - International Library of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis Ltd. ISBN 9780415104319.
I can find no reference to this purported incident in this book, or anywhere else for that matter. Looks fake to me. Can anyone confirm? — Preceding unsigned comment added by YoHooComics ( talk • contribs) 10:51, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
I do not wish to overstating this, but - given that his father was a Government Agent - is it not possible that he might have worked for a Govt department? For have not the CIA used 'intellectuals', and others in the public eye, to push some of their more questionable/dodgy agendas? 95.147.153.10 ( talk) 20:52, 18 May 2024 (UTC)