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Daniel Dennett

By DJauch1981

  • Birth

    Birth
    Daniel C. Dennett III was born in Boston, Massachusetts on March 28th, 1942.

  • Father Killed

    Father Killed
    Dennett's Father, Daniel Jr., was a covert counter-intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services posing as a cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. He was killed in a plane crash during World War II. This event impacted young Dennett tremendously and is said to have given his atheism its starting point.

  • Doctorate in Philosophy

    Doctorate in Philosophy
    Dennett earned his Doctorate in Philosophy in May of 1965 from the University of Oxford and began teaching at UC Irvine shortly after.

  • Famous Author

    Famous Author
    While Dennett has written a plethora of books, his most well known was titled Consciousness Explained and was released in 1991. The New York Times designated the book as one of the ten best of the year. One reviewer went so far as to call it "nothing short of brilliant."

  • Four Horsemen of New Atheism

    Four Horsemen of New Atheism
    Dennett is a staunch atheist and, together with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens, is frequently referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism." This term was coined during a famous debate in 2010 between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza called "The God Debate."
    Four Horesmen Debate

  • Artificial Intelligence

    Artificial Intelligence
    In his most recent book, From Bacteria to Back and Back: The Evolution of Minds, Dennett makes his position on the advancement of AI clear. He fears that humans will come to rely on AI too much to complete tasks that are meant to shape the human mindset which will ultimately lead to a "duller" human population. His comments have been met with both praise and pushback.