Philosopher Daniel Dennett has Died At 82
acid andy writes:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/04/philosopher-daniel-dennett-dead-at-82/
World-renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett, who championed controversial takes on consciousness and free will among other mind-bending subjects, died today at the age of 82.
"He was a towering figure in philosophy and in particular in the philosophy of AI," roboticist Rodney Brooks (MIT, emeritus) wrote on X, bemoaning that he'd never replied to Dennett's last email from 30 days ago. "Now we have only memories of him."
Dennett's many books, while dense, nonetheless sold very well and were hugely influential, and he was a distinguished speaker in great demand. His 2003 TED talk, "The Illusion of Consciousness," garnered more than 4 million views. While he gained particular prominence as a leader of the "New Atheist" movement of the early 2000s-colorfully dubbed one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism" alongside Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris-that was never his primary focus, merely a natural extension of his more central philosophical concerns.
"Dan Dennett was the embodiment of a natural philosopher-someone who was brilliant at the careful conceptual analysis that characterizes the best philosophy, while caring deeply about what science has to teach us about the natural world," Johns Hopkins University physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll told Ars. "At the same time, he was the model of a publicly engaged academic, someone who wrote substantive books that anyone could read and who had a real impact on the wider world. People like that are incredibly rare and precious, and his passing is a real loss."
Dennett was a confirmed compatibilist on the fiercely debated subject of free will, meaning that he saw no conflict between philosophical determinism and free will. "Our only notable divergence was on the question of free will, which Dan maintained exists, in some sense of 'free,' whereas I just agreed that 'will' exists, but maintained that there is no freedom in it," Hoftstadter recalled.
I initially came across Dennett's writings in his book The Mind's I which he wrote with Douglas Hofstader including texts from other authors. It was when I first started to dip my toes into the philosopy of mind. He brings up some fascinating ideas from a rational perspective which always provoke a lot of thought and discussion.
Due to my being in the same philosophical camp as Dennett's great rival David Chalmers, I tend to side with those who called Denett's book, Consciousness Explained, Consciousness Avoided (Dennett actually wrote an epilogue in response to this accusation). This is because, as I understand it, Dennett has always strived to explain consciousness using only axioms derived directly from accepted science, which means it all starts and ends with a third person perspective. Dennett always raised some interesting counterarguments to other philosophers that attempted to discuss the really interesting first person phenomena of consciousness, so whether you agree with him or not, he represented a key school of thought in modern philosophy.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.