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Daniel Dennett is Born
Daniel Dennett is a famous writer and philosopher of cognitive science. He was born in Boston on March 28th, 1942 and is still alive today. He is most widely known for his Multiple Drafts theory of consciousness, which he described in his book, Consciousness Explained. He is a naturalist and an atheist, which is evident by his work which finds evolutionary explanations for the experience of mental cognition. -
Dennett's Early Life
Dennett said that when he was at a summer camp at age 11, one of the counselors told him that he had the makings of a philosopher. He said he didn't know what a philosopher was at the time, but clearly the counselor was on to something. Dennett is known for being an atheist but when he was young he actually attended church with his grandmother, although he claimed that he did not believe the stories, and wondered how others did. He attended Philips Exeter Academy and graduated in 1959. -
Dennett's Education
Daniel Dennett graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy in 1963. He then went on to receive a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Oxford in 1965, where he majored in philosophy. His dissertation was about how the functions of learning and intentionality in the brain can be explained by evolutionary processes. -
Dennett Publishes Consciousness Explained
Daniel Dennett published his philosophical masterpiece, Consciousness Explained, in 1991. In it he details his multiple drafts theory of consciousness. His theory differs from the older idea of Cartesian materialism, which holds that there is a central place in the mind where the experience of consciousness happens. Dennett argues that parallel information processes are instead occurring simultaneously, with many different "drafts" being written all at once in the mind. -
Citations
Dennett, D C. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1991. Print. Dennett, Daniel Clement. Sweet Dreams Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness . MIT Press, 2005. Spencer, Nick (2013), In-depth Interview with Daniel Dennett, Retrieved September 5, 2021 from https://highprofiles.info/interview/daniel-dennett/