Eliminativists argue that modern belief in the existence of mental phenomena is analogous to the ancient belief in obsolete theories such as the geocentric model of the universe.

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. Some eliminativists argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level.^[1] Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.^[2]

Less radical than eliminativism is Revisionary materialism, which will often argue that the mental state in question will prove to be somewhat reducible to physical phenomena - with some changes to the common sense concept. The reductive materialist contrasts the eliminativist more strongly, arguing that a mental state is well defined, and that further research will result in a more detailed, but not different understanding.^[3]

Eliminativism about a class of entities is the view that that class of entities does not exist.^[4] For example, all forms of materialism are eliminativist about the soul; modern chemists are eliminativist about phlogiston; and modern physicists are eliminativist about the existence of luminiferous aether. Eliminative materialism is the relatively new (1960s-70s) idea that certain classes of mental entities that commonsense takes for granted, such as beliefs, desires, and the subjective sensation of pain, do not exist.^[5][6] The most common versions are eliminativism about propositional attitudes, as expressed by Paul and Patricia Churchland,^[7] and eliminativism about qualia (subjective experience), as expressed by Daniel Dennett and Georges Rey.^[2] These philosophers often appeal to an introspection illusion.

Since eliminative materialism claims that future research will fail to find a neuronal basis for various mental phenomena, it must necessarily wait for science to progress further. One might question the position on these grounds, but other philosophers like Churchland argue that eliminativism is often necessary in order to open the minds of thinkers to new evidence and better explanations.^[3]

Overview[link]

Various arguments have been put forth both for and against eliminative materialism over the last forty years. Most of the arguments in favor of the view are based on the assumption that people's commonsense view of the mind is actually an implicit theory. It is to be compared and contrasted with other scientific theories in its explanatory success, accuracy, and ability to allow people to make correct predictions about the future. Eliminativists argue that, based on these and other criteria, commonsense "folk" psychology has failed and will eventually need to be replaced with explanations derived from the neurosciences. These philosophers therefore tend to emphasize the importance of neuroscientific research as well as developments in artificial intelligence to sustain their thesis.

Philosophers who argue against eliminativism may take several approaches. Simulation theorists, like Robert Gordon^[8] and Alvin Goldman^[9] argue that folk psychology is not a theory, but rather depends on internal simulation of others, and therefore is not subject to falsification in the same way that theories are. Jerry Fodor, among others,^[10] argues that folk psychology is, in fact, a successful (even indispensable) theory. Another view is that eliminativism assumes the existence of the beliefs and other entities it seeks to "eliminate" and is thus self-refuting.^[11]

Schematic overview: Eliminativists suggest that some sciences can be reduced (blue), and that theories that are in principle irreducible will eventually be eliminated (orange).

Eliminativism maintains that the common-sense understanding of the mind is mistaken, and that the neurosciences will one day reveal that the mental states that are talked about in everyday discourse, using words such as "intend", "believe", "desire", and "love", do not refer to anything real. Because of the inadequacy of natural languages, people mistakenly think that they have such beliefs and desires.^[1] Some eliminativists, such as Frank Jackson, claim that consciousness does not exist except as an epiphenomenon of brain function; others, such as Georges Rey, claim that the concept will eventually be eliminated as neuroscience progresses.^[2][12] Consciousness and folk psychology are separate issues and it is possible to take an eliminative stance on one but not the other.^[4] The roots of eliminativism go back to the writings of Wilfred Sellars, W.V. Quine, Paul Feyerabend, and Richard Rorty.^[5][6][13] The term "eliminative materialism" was first introduced by James Cornman in 1968 while describing a version of physicalism endorsed by Rorty. The later Ludwig Wittgenstein was also an important inspiration for eliminativism, particularly with his attack on "private objects" as "grammatical fictions".^[4]

Early eliminativists such as Rorty and Feyerabend often confused two different notions of the sort of elimination that the term "eliminative materialism" entailed. On the one hand, they claimed, the cognitive sciences that will ultimately give people a correct account of the workings of the mind will not employ terms that refer to common-sense mental states like beliefs and desires; these states will not be part of the ontology of a mature cognitive science.^[5][6] But critics immediately countered that this view was indistinguishable from the identity theory of mind.^[1][14] Quine himself wondered what exactly was so eliminative about eliminative materialism after all:

On the other hand, the same philosophers also claimed that common-sense mental states simply do not exist. But critics pointed out that eliminativists could not have it both ways: either mental states exist and will ultimately be explained in terms of lower-level neurophysiological processes or they do not.^[1][14] Modern eliminativists have much more clearly expressed the view that mental phenomena simply do not exist and will eventually be eliminated from people's thinking about the brain in the same way that demons have been eliminated from people's thinking about mental illness and psychopathology.^[4]

While it was a minority view in the 1960s, eliminative materialism gained prominence and acceptance during the 1980s.^[16] Proponents of this view, such as B.F. Skinner, often made parallels to previous pseudoscientific theories (such as that of the four humours, the phlogiston theory of combustion, and the vital force theory of life) that have all been successfully eliminated in attempting to establish their thesis about the nature of the mental. In these cases, science has not produced more detailed versions or reductions of these theories, but rejected them altogether as obsolete. Radical behaviorists, such as Skinner, argued that folk psychology is already obsolete and should be replaced by descriptions of histories of reinforcement and punishment.^[17] Such views were eventually abandoned. Patricia and Paul Churchland argued that folk psychology will be gradually replaced as neuroscience matures.^[16]

Eliminativism is not only motivated by philosophical considerations, but is also a prediction about what form future scientific theories will take. Eliminativist philosophers therefore tend to be concerned with the data coming from the relevant brain and cognitive sciences.^[18] In addition, because eliminativism is essentially predictive in nature, different theorists can, and often do, make different predictions about which aspects of folk psychology will be eliminated from folk psychological vocabulary. None of these philosophers are eliminativists "tout court".^[19][20][21]

Today, the eliminativist view is most closely associated with the philosophers Paul and Patricia Churchland, who deny the existence of propositional attitudes (a subclass of intentional states), and with Daniel Dennett, who is generally considered to be an eliminativist about qualia and phenomenal aspects of consciousness. One way to summarize the difference between the Churchlands's views and Dennett's view is that the Churchlands are eliminativists when it comes to propositional attitudes, but reductionists concerning qualia, while Dennett is an anti-reductionist with respect to propositional attitudes, and an eliminativist concerning qualia.^{[21][22][23][4]}

Arguments for eliminativism[link]

Problems with folk theories[link]

Eliminativists such as Paul and Patricia Churchland argue that folk psychology is a fully developed but non-formalized theory of human behavior. It is used to explain and make predictions about human mental states and behavior. This view is often referred to as the theory of mind or just simply theory-theory, for it is a theory which theorizes the existence of an unacknowledged theory. As a theory in the scientific sense, eliminativists maintain, folk psychology needs to be evaluated on the basis of its predictive power and explanatory success as a research program for the investigation of the mind/brain.^[24][25]

Such eliminativists have developed different arguments to show that folk psychology is a seriously mistaken theory and needs to be abolished. They argue that folk psychology excludes from its purview or has traditionally been mistaken about many important mental phenomena that can, and are, being examined and explained by modern neurosciences. Some examples are dreaming, consciousness, mental disorders, learning processes, and memory abilities. Furthermore, they argue, folk psychology's development in the last 2,500 years has not been significant and it is therefore a stagnating theory. The ancient Greeks already had a folk psychology comparable to modern views. But in contrast to this lack of development, the neurosciences are a rapidly progressing science complex that, in their view, can explain many cognitive processes that folk psychology cannot.^[18][26]

Folk psychology retains characteristics of now obsolete theories or legends from the past. Ancient societies tried to explain the physical mysteries of nature by ascribing mental conditions to them in such statements as "the sea is angry". Gradually, these everyday folk psychological explanations were replaced by more efficient scientific descriptions. Today, eliminativists argue, there is no reason not to accept an effective scientific account of people's cognitive abilities. If such an explanation existed, then there would be no need for folk-psychological explanations of behavior, and the latter would be eliminated the same way as the mythological explanations the ancients used.^[27]

Another line of argument is the meta-induction based on what eliminativists view as the disastrous historical record of folk theories in general. Ancient pre-scientific "theories" of folk biology, folk physics, and folk cosmology have all proven to be radically wrong. Eliminativists argue the same in the case of folk psychology. There seems no logical basis, to the eliminativist, for making an exception just because folk psychology has lasted longer and is more intuitive or instinctively plausible than the other folk theories.^[26] Indeed, the eliminativists warn, considerations of intuitive plausibility may be precisely the result of the deeply entrenched nature in society of folk psychology itself. It may be that people's beliefs and other such states are as theory-laden as external perceptions and hence intuitions will tend to be biased in favor of them.^[19]

Specific problems with folk psychology[link]

Much of folk psychology involves the attribution of intentional states (or more specifically as a subclass, propositional attitudes). Eliminativists point out that these states are generally ascribed syntactic and semantic properties. An example of this is the language of thought hypothesis, which attributes a discrete, combinatorial syntax and other linguistic properties to these mental phenomena. Eliminativists argue that such discrete and combinatorial characteristics have no place in the neurosciences, which speak of action potentials, spiking frequencies, and other effects which are continuous and distributed in nature. Hence, the syntactic structures which are assumed by folk psychology can have no place in such a structure as the brain.^[18] Against this there have been two responses. On the one hand, there are philosophers who deny that mental states are linguistic in nature and see this as a straw man argument.^[28][29] The other view is represented by those who subscribe to "a language of thought". They assert that the mental states can be multiply realized and that functional characterizations are just higher-level characterizations of what's happening at the physical level.^[30][31]

It has also been urged against folk psychology that the intentionality of mental states like belief imply that they have semantic qualities. Specifically, their meaning is determined by the things that they are about in the external world. This makes it difficult to explain how they can play the causal roles that they are supposed to in cognitive processes.^[32]

In recent years, this latter argument has been fortified by the theory of connectionism. Many connectionist models of the brain have been developed in which the processes of language learning and other forms of representation are highly distributed and parallel. This would tend to indicate that there is no need for such discrete and semantically-endowed entities as beliefs and desires.^[33]

Arguments against eliminativism[link]

Intuitive reservations[link]

The thesis of eliminativism seems to be so obviously wrong to many critics, under the claim that people know immediately and indubitably that they have minds, that argumentation seems unnecessary. This sort of intuition pumping is illustrated by asking what happens when one asks oneself honestly if one has mental states.^[34] Eliminativists object to such a rebuttal of their position by claiming that intuitions often are mistaken. Analogies from the history of science are frequently invoked to buttress this observation: it may appear obvious that the sun travels around the earth, for example, but for all its apparent obviousness this conception was proved wrong nevertheless. Similarly, it may appear obvious that apart from neural events there are also mental conditions. Nevertheless, this could equally turn out to be false.^[19]

But even if one accepts the susceptibility to error of people's intuitions, the objection can be reformulated: if the existence of mental conditions seems perfectly obvious and is central in people's conception of the world, then enormously strong arguments are needed in order to successfully deny the existence of mental conditions. Furthermore these arguments, to be consistent, need to be formulated in a way which does not pre-suppose the existence of entities like "mental states", "logical arguments", and "ideas", otherwise they are self-contradictory.^[35] Those who accept this objection say that the arguments in favor of eliminativism are far too weak to establish such a radical claim; therefore there is no reason to believe in eliminativism.^[34]

Quine's strategy for replying to such "introspective" arguments was to suggest that one could account for the activities of introspection and science in appropriately sanitized terms, such as the replacement of "belief" by "dispositions to utter certain sentences in certain circumstances".^[15] Sentences, on this view, are just sequences of certain sounds, and theories just sets of sentences.

Self-refutation[link]

Some philosophers, such as Paul Boghossian, have attempted to show that eliminativism is in some sense self-refuting, since the theory itself presupposes the existence of mental phenomena. If eliminativism is true, then the eliminativist must permit an intentional property like truth, supposing that in order to assert something one must believe it. Hence, for eliminativism to be asserted as a thesis, the eliminativist must believe that it is true; if that is the case, then there are beliefs and the eliminativist claim is false.^[11][36]

Georges Rey and Michael Devitt reply to this objection by invoking deflationary semantic theories that avoid analysing predicates like "x is true" as expressing a real property. They are construed, instead, as logical devices so that asserting that a sentence is true is just a quoted way of asserting the sentence itself. To say, "'God exists' is true" is just to say, "God exists". This way, Rey and Devitt argue, insofar as dispositional replacements of "claims" and deflationary accounts of "true" are coherent, eliminativism is not self-refuting.^[37]

Qualia[link]

Another problem for the eliminativist is the consideration that human beings undergo subjective experiences and, hence, their conscious mental states have qualia. Since qualia are generally regarded as characteristics of mental states, their existence does not seem to be compatible with eliminativism.^[38] Eliminativists, such as Daniel Dennett and Georges Rey, respond by rejecting qualia.^[39][40] This is seen to be problematic to opponents of eliminativists, since many claim that the existence of qualia seems perfectly obvious. Many philosophers consider the "elimination" of qualia implausible, if not incomprehensible. They assert that, for instance, the existence of pain is simply beyond denial.^[38]

The classic refutation of this objection comes from Daniel Dennett. Admitting that the existence of qualia seems obvious, Dennett nevertheless states that "qualia" is a theoretical term from an outdated metaphysics stemming from Cartesian intuitions. He argues that a precise analysis shows that the term is in the long run empty and full of contradictions. The eliminativist's claim with respect to qualia is that there is no unbiased evidence for such experiences when regarded as something more than propositional attitudes.^[21] Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Dennett and Rey have defended eliminativism about qualia, even when other portions of the mental are accepted.

Efficacy of folk psychology[link]

Some philosophers simply argue that folk-psychology is a quite successful theory.^[10][41][42] Simulation theorists doubt that people's understanding of the mental can be explained in terms of a theory at all. Rather they argue that people's understanding of others is based on internal simulations of how they would act and respond in similar situations.^[8][9] Jerry Fodor is one of the objectors that believes in folk psychology's success as a theory, because it makes for an effective way of communication in everyday life that can be implemented with few words. Such an effectiveness could never be achieved with a complex neuroscientific terminology. Furthermore, the eliminativist's claim that folk psychology cannot explain phenomena such as mental disorders or many memory processes has become often the objector's premise, namely that it is not at all the task of folk-psychology to account for these phenomena.^[10]

Unjustified imperialism[link]

Philosophers such as Mary Midgley strongly criticize all forms of reductionism—of which eliminative materialism is an extreme form—as unjustified imperialism that tries to annex one subject into another with poor evidence. She suggests that the reduction of chemistry to physics is problematic and the reduction of biology to chemistry is impossible. She points to sentences like "John was allowed home from prison at last on Sunday" suggesting that this would be impossible to reduce to physical terms since the details of the physical movement are irrelevant to the meaning which depends on complex non-physical concepts.^[43] Her stance is that "human beings are complex wholes, about which we know really very little" and that attempts to reduce this are naive, unjustified and doomed to failure. She also claims that Behaviourism proved to be a philosophical and scientific dead-end.^[43]

See also[link]

• Epiphenomenalism
• Functionalism
• Mind-body problem
• Monism
• Nihilism
• Phenomenology
• Physicalism
• Property dualism
• Reductionism
• Scientism
• Substance dualism

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Baker, L. (1987). Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02050-7.
• Broad, C. D. (1925). The Mind and its Place in Nature. London, Routledge & Kegan. ISBN 0-415-22552-3 (2001 Reprint Ed.).
• Churchland, P.M. (1979). Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind. New York, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-33827-1.
• Churchland, P.M. (1988). Matter and Consciousness, revised Ed. Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-53074-0.
• Churchland, P.S. (1986) Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press ISBN 0-262-53085-6.
• Churchland, P.M. (1992). A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-03151-5.
• Churchland, P.M. (1999). Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes. In Lycan, W.G., (Ed.), Mind and Cognition: An Anthology, 2nd Edition. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.
• Fodor, J. (1987). Psychosemantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-56052-6 (1989 reprint Ed.).
• Rorty, Richard. "Mind-body Identity, Privacy and Categories" in The Review of Metaphysics XIX:24-54. Reprinted Rosenthal, D.M. (ed.) 1971.
• Stich, S. (1996). Deconstructing the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512666-1.

External links[link]

• Bibliography on Eliminative Materialism at Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: An Annotated Bibliography
• Eliminative Materialism at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Patricia Smith Churchland

Born	(1943-07-16)July 16, 1943 Oliver, British Columbia, Canada
Era	21st-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic Philosophy
Main interests	Neurophilosophy Philosophy of mind Philosophy of science Medical and environmental ethics
Notable ideas	Neurophilosophy, Eliminative Materialism
Influenced by Willard Van Orman Quine, Francis Crick, Paul Churchland

Patricia Smith Churchland (born July 16, 1943) is a Canadian-American philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She has been a Professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) since 1984. Since 1999 she has been UC President's Professor of Philosophy at UCSD, and has held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989.^[1] Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Oxford, she taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984 and is the wife of philosopher Paul Churchland.^[2]

Biography[link]

Early life and education[link]

Churchland was born Patricia Smith in Oliver, British Columbia,^{[citation needed]} and raised on a farm there in the South Okanagan valley.^[3][4] Both of her parents lacked a high-school education, her father and mother left school after grades 6 and 8 respectively. Her mother was a nurse and her father worked in newspaper publishing in addition to running the family farm. In spite of their limited education, Churchland has described her parents as interested in the sciences, and the worldview they instilled in her as a secular one. She has also described her parents as eager for her to attend college, and though many farmers in their community thought this "hilarious and a grotesque waste of money", they saw to it that she did so.^[4] She took her undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, graduating with honors in 1965.^[2] She received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to study at the University of Pittsburgh, where she took an M.A. in 1966.^[2][5] Thereafter she studied at Oxford University as a British Council and Canada Council Fellow, obtaining a B. Phil in 1969.^[2]

Academic career[link]

Churchland's first academic appointment was at the University of Manitoba, where she was an assistant professor from 1969–1977, an associate professor from 1977–1982, and promoted to a full professorship in 1983.^[2] It was here that she began to make a formal study of neuroscience with the help and encouragement of Larry Jordan, a professor with a lab in the Department of Physiology there.^[3][4][6] From 1982-1983 she was a Visiting Member in Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.^[7] In 1984, she was invited to take up a professorship in the department of philosophy at UCSD, and relocated there with her husband Paul, where both have remained since.^[8] Since 1989, she has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute adjacent to UCSD's campus, where she became acquainted with the institute's founder and namesake Jonas Salk.^[1][3] Describing Salk, Churchland has said that he "liked the idea of neurophilosophy, and he gave me a tremendous amount of encouragement at a time when many other people thought that we were, frankly, out to lunch."^[4] Another important supporter Churchland found at the Salk Institute was Francis Crick.^[3][4] At the Salk Institute, Churchland has worked with Terrence Sejnowski's lab as a research collaborator.^[9] Her collaboration with Sejnowski culminated in a book, The Computational Brain (MIT Press, 1993), co-authored with Sejnowski. Churchland was named the UC President's Professor of Philosophy in 1999, and served as Chair of the Philosophy Department at UCSD from 2000-2007.^[2]

She attended and was a speaker at the secularist Beyond Belief symposia in 2006, 2007, and 2008.^{[10] [11] [12]}

Personal life[link]

Churchland first met her husband, the philosopher Paul Churchland, while they were both enrolled in a class on Plato at the University of Pittsburgh,^[4] and they were married after she completed her B.phil at Oxford University.^[3] Their children are Mark M. Churchland (born 1972) and Anne K. Churchland (born 1974), both of whom are neuroscientists.^[13][14]

Philosophy[link]

This section relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (February 2012)

Churchland has focused on the interface between neuroscience and philosophy. According to her, philosophers are increasingly realizing that to understand the mind one must understand the brain. She is associated with a school of thought called eliminative materialism, which argues that commonsense, immediately intuitive, or "folk psychological" concepts such as thought, free will, and consciousness will likely need to be revised in a physically reductionistic way as neuroscientists discover more about the nature of brain function.^[15]

Awards and honors[link]

• MacArthur Fellowship, 1991^[2][16]
• Humanist Laureate, International Academy of Humanism, 1993^[17]
• Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Virginia, 1996^[2]
• Honorary Doctor of Law, University of Alberta, 2007^[3]
• Distinguished Cognitive Scientist, UC, Merced Cognitive and Information Sciences program, 2011^[18]

Works[link]

As sole author[link]

• Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. (1986) Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
• Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy. (2002) Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
• Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality. (2011) Princeton University Press.

As co-author or editor[link]

• The Computational Brain. (1992) Patricia S. Churchland and T. J. Sejnowski. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
• Neurophilosophy and Alzheimer's Disease. (1992) Edited by Y. Christen and Patricia S. Churchland. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
• The Mind-Brain Continuum (1996). Edited by R.R. Llinás and Patricia S. Churchland: The MIT Press.
• On the Contrary: Critical Essays 1987-1997. (1998). Paul M. Churchland and Patricia S. Churchland. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Works about[link]

In addition to her own work, Patricia Churchland and her husband Paul have been the subjects of several philosophical review works, including:

• The Churchlands and Their Critics. (1996) Robert N. McCauley. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell
• On the Churchlands. (2004) William Hirstein. Florence, Kentucky: Thomson Wadsworth

See also[link]

• American philosophy
• Eliminative materialism
• Neurophilosophy
• List of American philosophers
• Materialism
• Monism
• Philosophy of mind
• Reductionism
• Scientism

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b} "Salk Institute: Adjunct Faculty". Salk Institute. http://www.salk.edu/faculty/adjunct_faculty.html. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Churchland, Patricia. "Curriculum Vitae". http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/pschurchland/index_hires.html. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "University of Alberta - Fall Convocation 2007" (web page). University of Alberta. 22 November 2007. http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/Senate/nav04.cfm?nav04=70714&nav03=36464&nav02=33316&nav01=12498. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "From the Engine of Reason to the Seat of the Soul: A Brain-Wise Conversation" (video). The Science Studio. The Science Network. 26 June 2006. http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/the-science-studio/from-the-engine-of-reason-to-the-seat-of-the-soul-a-brain-wise-conversation. Retrieved 30 August 2011. 
5. ^ "Fellows Of Note - Major Awards". Princeton, NJ: The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. http://www.woodrow.org/about_fellows/awards.php. Retrieved 30 August 2011. 
6. ^ "Faculty of Medicine - Physiology" (web page). University of Manitoba - Department of Physiology. http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/medicine/physiology/contacts/jordan.html. Retrieved 30 August 2011. 
7. ^ "Social Science Only". A Community of Scholars. Princeton, NJ: Institute for Advanced Study. http://www.ias.edu/people/cos/affiliation/socsci37b1.html?page=2&%24Version=1&%24Path=%2F. Retrieved 30 August 2011. "Churchland, Patricia Smith [V] SocSci 1982-83" 
8. ^ Churchland, Paul M. (19 January 2007). "Curriculum Vitae". UCSD Philosophy Department. http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/pchurchland/cv.pdf. Retrieved 30 August 2011. 
9. ^ "CNL - People" (web page). Computational Neurobiology Laboratory. The Salk Institute. http://cnl.salk.edu/People/. Retrieved 30 August 2011. 
10. ^ "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival" (web page and video). The Science Network. 5–7 November 2006. http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-science-religion-reason-and-survival. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 
11. ^ "Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0" (web page and video). The Science Network. 31 October - 2 November 2007. http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0. 
12. ^ "Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark" (web page and video). The Science Network. 3–6 October 2008. http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-candles-in-the-dark. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 
13. ^ "Anne Churchland - Assistant Professor" (web page). Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. http://www.cshl.edu/gradschool/research-faculty/churchland-anne. Retrieved 15 August 2011. 
14. ^ "Neural Prosthetic Systems Laboratory - Shenoy Lab" (web page). Stanford University. 5 August 2011. http://www.stanford.edu/~shenoy/GroupResearchGroup.htm. Retrieved 15 August 2011. 
15. ^ Warburton, Nigel; Edmonds, David (2010). "Pat Churchland on Eliminative Materialism" (audio). Philosophy Bites. http://hw.libsyn.com/p/1/f/5/1f58c34b13616c2b/ChurchlandMixSesNewW.mp3?sid=73786dd61e12b018705fe91d6a9298d0&l_sid=18828&l_eid=&l_mid=1808679. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 
16. ^ "MacArthur Fellows List, "C"" (web page). The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.1139461/k.9375/Fellows_List__C.htm. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 
17. ^ "International Academy of Humanism - Humanist Laureates" (web page). Council For Secular Humanism. http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?page=index&section=iah. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 
18. ^ "Distinguished Cognitive Scientist Award" (web page). University of California, Merced. 4 May 2011. http://cogsci.ucmerced.edu/2.asp?uc=1&lvl2=13&contentid=10. Retrieved 14 August 2011. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Patricia Churchland

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Patricia Churchland

• From the Engine of Reason to the Seat of the Soul The Science Network interview with Patricia and Paul Churchland
• Patricia S. Churchland's Homepage
• Patricia Churchland entry from the Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind
• Podcast discussion on The Partially Examined Life [1]
• Radio interview on "Philosophy Talk"
• Article in the New Yorker (12 February 2007)
• InConversation Radio Interview with Robyn Williams (1 March 2007)
• A Shot Clip:Churchland, Patricia
• UC Merced Distinguished Cognitive Scientist Award

Paul Churchland (born Oct. 21, 1942, Vancouver, B.C., Canada) is a philosopher noted for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind.^[1] He is currently a Professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he holds the Valtz Chair of Philosophy.^[2] Churchland holds a joint appointment with the Cognitive Science Faculty and the Institute for Neural Computation.^[3] He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1969 under the direction of Wilfrid Sellars.^[4] Churchland is the husband of philosopher Patricia Churchland. He is also the father of two children, Mark and Anne Churchland, both of whom are neuroscientists.^[5][6][7]

Professional career[link]

Churchland began his professional career as an instructor at the University of Pittsburgh in 1969;^[8] he also lectured at the University of Toronto from 1967-69.^[9] In 1969, Churchland took a position at the University of Manitoba, where he would teach for fifteen years: as an assistant professor (69 - 74) and associate professor (74 - 79), and then as a full professor from 1979 - 1984.^[10] Professor Churchland joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1982, staying as a member until 1983.^[11] He joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego in 1983, serving as Department Chair from 1986 - 1990.^[12]

Churchland has supervised a number of PhD students, including Matthew Brown (now at UT Dallas), P.D. Magnus (now at the University at Albany), Philip Brey (now at the University of Twente).

Philosophical views[link]

Along with his wife, Churchland is a major proponent of eliminative materialism, which claims that everyday mental concepts such as beliefs, feelings, and desires are part of a "folk psychology" of theoretical constructs without coherent definition, destined to simply be obviated by a thoroughly scientific understanding of human nature.

Just as modern science has discarded such notions as legends or witchcraft, Churchland argues that a future, fully matured neuroscience is likely to have no need for "beliefs" or "feelings" (see propositional attitudes). Such concepts will not merely be reduced to more finely grained explanation and retained as useful proximate levels of description, but will be strictly eliminated as wholly lacking in correspondence to precise objective phenomena, such as activation patterns across neural networks. He points out that the history of science has seen many posits once considered real entities, such as phlogiston, caloric, the luminiferous ether, and vital forces, thus eliminated. In "The Engine of Reason" Churchland hypothesizes that consciousness might be explained in terms of a recurrent neural network with its hub in the intralaminar nucleus of the thalamus and feedback connections to all parts of the cortex. He says his proposal is probably mistaken in the neurological details, but on the right track in its use of recurrent neural networks to account for consciousness. This is notably a reductionist rather than eliminativist account of consciousness.

Works[link]

Books[link]

Professor Churchland has authored eight books in philosophy, which have been translated into ten different languages.

• Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
• Matter and Consciousness, MIT Press, 1984.
• Images of Science: Scientific Realism versus Constructive Empiricism, University of Chicago Press, 1985.
• A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science, MIT Press, 1989.
• The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain, MIT Press, 1995.
• The Churchlands and Their Critics, Oxford, 1996.
• On the Contrary, MIT Press, 1998 (with Patricia Smith Churchland)
• Neurophilosophy at Work, Cambridge University Press, 2007
• Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals, MIT Press, (01/27/) 2012.

Of his books, Matter and Consciousness has been the most frequently and extensively reprinted.^[13] Both Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind and A Neurocomputational Perspective have also been reprinted.^[14]

Essays[link]

Professor Churchland has written a number of published articles that have had a substantial impact in philosophy. His essays have been translated into six different languages.

• Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes, Journal of Philosophy, Volume 78, February 1981.
• Functionalism, Qualia, and Intentionality, Philosophical Topics, Volume 12, 1981.
• Reduction, Qualia and Direct Introspection of Brain States, Journal of Philosophy, Volume 82, 1985.
• Some Reductive Strategies in Cognitive Neurobiology, Mind, Volume 95, 1986.
• Folk Psychology and the Explanation of Human Behavior, Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society, Supplementary Volume LXII, 1988.
• Could a Machine Think?, Scientific American, January, 1990.
• On the Nature of Theories: A Neurocomputational Perspective, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume XIV, 1990.
• Intertheoretic Reduction: A Neuroscientist's Field Guide, Seminars in Neuroscience, Volume 2, 1991.
• The Neural Representation of Social Reality, Mind and Morals, 1995.

Each of these selected articles has been reprinted at least four times. Churchland's most famous essay is his 1981 Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes. Published in a leading journal, this essay has been reprinted over twenty times and translated into five languages.

See also[link]

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

External links[link]

• Paul Churchland's homepage
• From the Engine of Reason to the Seat of the Soul The Science Network interview with Patricia and Paul Churchland

References[link]

Daniel Clement Dennett

Born	(1942-03-28) March 28, 1942 (age 70) Boston, Massachusetts
Era	20th / 21st-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Philosophy of mind Philosophy of biology Philosophy of science Cognitive science
Notable ideas	Heterophenomenology Intentional stance Intuition pump Multiple Drafts Model Greedy reductionism Deepity
Influenced by David Hume  · Charles Darwin Ludwig Wittgenstein  · Gilbert Ryle W. V. Quine  · Alan Turing  · Wilfrid Sellars Noam Chomsky  · Richard Dawkins
Influenced Richard Dawkins  · Douglas Hofstadter  · Geoffrey Miller

Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942)^[1][2] is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.^[3] He is currently the Co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and a University Professor at Tufts University. Dennett is a firm atheist and secularist, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board,^[4] as well as an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement. Dennett is referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism," along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens.^[5]

Early life and education[link]

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Dennett spent part of his childhood in Lebanon, where, during World War II, his father was a covert counter-intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services posing as a cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Beirut.^[6] When he was five, his mother took him back to Massachusetts after his father died in an unexplained plane crash.^[7] His sister is the investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett.^[6]

He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and spent one year at Wesleyan University before receiving his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W. V. Quine. In 1965, he received his Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy from the University of Oxford, where he studied under Gilbert Ryle and was a member of Hertford College.

Academic career[link]

Daniel Dennett in 2008

As of January 2012, Dennett is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, University Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies (with Ray Jackendoff) at Tufts University.^[8]

Dennett describes himself as "an autodidact — or, more properly, the beneficiary of hundreds of hours of informal tutorials on all the fields that interest me, from some of the world's leading scientists."^[9]

He is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science.^[10] He is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism.^[11] He was named 2004 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association.^[12]

In February 2010 he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.^[13]

In 2012 he was awarded the Erasmus Prize, an annual award for a person who has made an exceptional contribution to European culture, society or social science, "for his ability to translate the cultural significance of science and technology to a broad audience."^[14]

Free will[link]

While he is a confirmed compatibilist on free will, in "On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want" — Chapter 15 of his 1978 book Brainstorms,^[15] Dennett articulated the case for a two-stage model of decision making in contrast to libertarian views.

The model of decision making I am proposing has the following feature: when we are faced with an important decision, a consideration-generator whose output is to some degree undetermined produces a series of considerations, some of which may of course be immediately rejected as irrelevant by the agent (consciously or unconsciously). Those considerations that are selected by the agent as having a more than negligible bearing on the decision then figure in a reasoning process, and if the agent is in the main reasonable, those considerations ultimately serve as predictors and explicators of the agent's final decision.^[16]

While other philosophers have developed two-stage models, including William James, Henri Poincaré, Arthur Holly Compton, and Henry Margenau, Dennett defends this model for the following reasons:

1. First...The intelligent selection, rejection, and weighing of the considerations that do occur to the subject is a matter of intelligence making the difference.
2. Second, I think it installs indeterminism in the right place for the libertarian, if there is a right place at all.
3. Third...from the point of view of biological engineering, it is just more efficient and in the end more rational that decision making should occur in this way.
4. A fourth observation in favor of the model is that it permits moral education to make a difference, without making all of the difference.
5. Fifth — and I think this is perhaps the most important thing to be said in favor of this model — it provides some account of our important intuition that we are the authors of our moral decisions.
6. Finally, the model I propose points to the multiplicity of decisions that encircle our moral decisions and suggests that in many cases our ultimate decision as to which way to act is less important phenomenologically as a contributor to our sense of free will than the prior decisions affecting our deliberation process itself: the decision, for instance, not to consider any further, to terminate deliberation; or the decision to ignore certain lines of inquiry.

These prior and subsidiary decisions contribute, I think, to our sense of ourselves as responsible free agents, roughly in the following way: I am faced with an important decision to make, and after a certain amount of deliberation, I say to myself: "That's enough. I've considered this matter enough and now I'm going to act," in the full knowledge that I could have considered further, in the full knowledge that the eventualities may prove that I decided in error, but with the acceptance of responsibility in any case.^[17]

Leading libertarian philosophers such as Robert Kane have rejected Dennett's model, specifically that random chance is directly involved in a decision, on the basis that they believe this eliminates the agent's motives and reasons, character and values, and feelings and desires. They claim that, if chance is the primary cause of decisions, then agents cannot be liable for resultant actions. Kane says:

[As Dennett admits,] a causal indeterminist view of this deliberative kind does not give us everything libertarians have wanted from free will. For [the agent] does not have complete control over what chance images and other thoughts enter his mind or influence his deliberation. They simply come as they please. [The agent] does have some control after the chance considerations have occurred.

But then there is no more chance involved. What happens from then on, how he reacts, is determined by desires and beliefs he already has. So it appears that he does not have control in the libertarian sense of what happens after the chance considerations occur as well. Libertarians require more than this for full responsibility and free will.^[18]

Other philosophical views[link]

Dennett has remarked in several places (such as "Self-portrait", in Brainchildren) that his overall philosophical project has remained largely the same since his time at Oxford. He is primarily concerned with providing a philosophy of mind that is grounded in empirical research. In his original dissertation, Content and Consciousness, he broke up the problem of explaining the mind into the need for a theory of content and for a theory of consciousness. His approach to this project has also stayed true to this distinction. Just as Content and Consciousness has a bipartite structure, he similarly divided Brainstorms into two sections. He would later collect several essays on content in The Intentional stance and synthesize his views on consciousness into a unified theory in Consciousness Explained. These volumes respectively form the most extensive development of his views.^[19]

In Consciousness Explained, Dennett's interest in the ability of evolution to explain some of the content-producing features of consciousness is already apparent, and this has since become an integral part of his program. He defends a theory known by some as Neural Darwinism. He also presents an argument against qualia; he argues that the concept is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of physicalism. His strategy mirrors his teacher Ryle's approach of redefining first person phenomena in third person terms, and denying the coherence of the concepts which this approach struggles with. Much of Dennett's work since the 1990s has been concerned with fleshing out his previous ideas by addressing the same topics from an evolutionary standpoint, from what distinguishes human minds from animal minds (Kinds of Minds), to how free will is compatible with a naturalist view of the world (Freedom Evolves). In his 2006 book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Dennett attempts to subject religious belief to the same treatment, explaining possible evolutionary reasons for the phenomenon of religious adherence.

Dennett self-identifies with a few terms:

[Others] note that my 'avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters' often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless — a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors.

— Daniel Dennett, The Message is: There is no Medium

Yet, in Consciousness Explained, he admits "I am a sort of 'teleofunctionalist', of course, perhaps the original teleofunctionalist'". He goes on to say, "I am ready to come out of the closet as some sort of verificationist". In Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon he admits to being "a bright", and defends the term.

In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett writes that evolution can account for the origin of morality. He rejects the idea of the naturalistic fallacy as the idea that ethics is in some free-floating realm, writing that the fallacy is to rush from facts to values.

Role in evolutionary debate[link]

Dennett sees evolution by natural selection as an algorithmic process (though he spells out that algorithms as simple as long division often incorporate a significant degree of randomness).^[20] This idea is in conflict with the evolutionary philosophy of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who preferred to stress the "pluralism" of evolution (i.e. its dependence on many crucial factors, of which natural selection is only one).

Dennett's views on evolution are identified as being strongly adaptationist, in line with his theory of the intentional stance, and the evolutionary views of biologist Richard Dawkins. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett showed himself even more willing than Dawkins to defend adaptationism in print, devoting an entire chapter to a criticism of the ideas of Gould. This stems from Gould's long-running public debate with E. O. Wilson and other evolutionary biologists over human sociobiology and its descendant evolutionary psychology, which Gould and Richard Lewontin opposed, but which Dennett advocated, together with Dawkins and Steven Pinker.^[21] Strong disagreements have been launched against Dennett from Gould and his supporters, who allege that Dennett overstated his claims and misrepresented Gould's to reinforce what Gould describes as Dennett's "Darwinian fundamentalism".^[22]

Dennett's theories have had a significant influence on the work of evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller. He has also written about and advocated the notion of memetics as a philosophically useful tool, most recently in his "Brains, Computers, and Minds," a three part presentation through Harvard's MBB 2009 Distinguished Lecture Series.

He has recently been doing research into clerics who are secretly atheists and how they rationalize their works. He found what he called a "Don't ask, don't tell" conspiracy because believers did not want to hear of loss of faith. That made unbelieving preachers feel isolated but they did not want to lose their jobs and sometimes their church-supplied lodgings and generally consoled themselves that they were doing good in their pastoral roles by providing comfort and required ritual.^[23] The research, with Linda LaScola, was further extended to include other denominations and non-Christian clerics.^[24]

Personal life[link]

Dennett in Tahiti in 1984

Dennett lives with his wife in North Andover, Massachusetts, and has a daughter, a son, and three grandchildren.^[25] He is also an avid sailor.

In October 2006, Dennett was hospitalized due to an aortic dissection. After a nine-hour surgery, he was given a new aorta. In an essay posted on the Edge website, Dennett gives his firsthand account of his health problems, his consequent feelings of gratitude towards the scientists, cardiologist, surgeons, EMT's, phlebotomists, orderlies, housekeepers, physician assistants, X-ray technicians, meal-bringers, launderers, physical therapists, perfusionist, neurologist, and nurses whose hard work made his recovery possible, and his complete lack of a "deathbed conversion".

To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India—and the United States, of course—and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other's work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner. Allan—you have posthumously saved yet another life, but who's counting? The world is better for the work you did. Thank goodness. Then there is the whole system of medicine, both the science and the technology, without which the best-intentioned efforts of individuals would be roughly useless. So I am grateful to the editorial boards and referees, past and present, of Science, Nature, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and all the other institutions of science and medicine that keep churning out improvements, detecting and correcting flaws.

— Daniel C. Dennett, Thank Goodness!

By his account, upon having been told by friends and relatives that they had prayed for him, he resisted the urge to ask them, "Did you also sacrifice a goat?"^[26][27]

Selected books[link]

• Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (MIT Press 1981) (ISBN 0-262-54037-1)
• Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (MIT Press 1984) — on free will and determinism (ISBN 0-262-04077-8)
• The Mind's I (Bantam, Reissue edition 1985, with Douglas Hofstadter) (ISBN 0-553-34584-2)
• Content and Consciousness (Routledge & Kegan Paul Books Ltd; 2nd ed. January 1986) (ISBN 0-7102-0846-4)
• The Intentional Stance (6th printing), Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996, ISBN 0-262-54053-3  (First published 1987)
• Consciousness Explained (Back Bay Books 1992) (ISBN 0-316-18066-1)
• Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (Simon & Schuster; reprint edition 1996) (ISBN 0-684-82471-X)
• Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (Basic Books 1997) (ISBN 0-465-07351-4)
• Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds (Representation and Mind) (MIT Press 1998) (ISBN 0-262-04166-9) — A Collection of Essays 1984–1996
• Freedom Evolves (Viking Press 2003) (ISBN 0-670-03186-0)
• Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (MIT Press 2005) (ISBN 0-262-04225-8)
• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Penguin Group 2006) (ISBN 0-670-03472-X).
• Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language (Columbia University Press 2007) (ISBN 978-0-231-14044-7), co-authored with Maxwell Bennett, Peter Hacker, and John Searle
• Science and Religion (Oxford University Press 2010) (ISBN 0-199-73842-4), co-authored with Alvin Plantinga

See also[link]

Thinking portal

• The Atheism Tapes
• Cartesian materialism
• Conscious Robots
• Evolutionary psychology of religion
• Greedy reductionism
• Geoffrey Miller
• Heterophenomenology
• Intentional stance
• List of Jean Nicod Prize laureates
• Memetics
• Multiple drafts theory of consciousness
• Philosophy of Religion
• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

Further reading[link]

• John Brockman (1995). The Third Culture. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80359-3 (Discusses Dennett and others).
• Daniel C. Dennett (1997), "Chapter 3. True Believers: The Intentional Strategy and Why it Works", in John Haugeland, Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ISBN 0-262-08259-4 (reprint of 1981 publication).^[a]
• Andrew Brook and Don Ross (editors) (2000). Daniel Dennett. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00864-6
• Don Ross, Andrew Brook and David Thompson (editors) (2000) Dennett's Philosophy: A Comprehensive Assessment Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-18200-9
• John Symons (2000) On Dennett. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company. ISBN 0-534-57632-X
• Matthew Elton (2003). Dennett: Reconciling Science and Our Self-Conception. Cambridge, U.K: Polity Press. ISBN 0-7456-2117-1
• P.M.S. Hacker and M.R. Bennett (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford, and Malden, Mass: Blackwell ISBN 1-4051-0855-X (Has an appendix devoted to a strong critique of Dennett's philosophy of mind)

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (October 2011)

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Daniel Dennett

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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Daniel Dennett

• Inside Jokes Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett and Reginald B. Adams, Jr at The MIT Press
• Faculty webpage
• Daniel C. Dennett at Internet Movie Database
• Scientific American Frontiers Profile: Daniel Dennett 2000-12-19
• Searchable bibliography of Dennett's works
• Daniel Dennett on Information Philosopher

Media

• Edge/Third Culture: Daniel C. Dennett
• Daniel Dennett multimedia files
• Profile at TED several videos on dangerous memes, consciousness, others
• Radio interview on Philosophy Talk 2009-12-06
• The Nature of Knowledge Lecture at the University of Edinburgh 2006-03-14
• On Preaching and Teaching The Science Network interview with Daniel Dennett 2007-11-02
• The Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies video interview with Daniel Dennett 2010-03-05 (with transcript)

v t e Daniel Dennett Concepts Cartesian theater Greedy reductionism Heterophenomenology Intentional stance Intuition pump Multiple Drafts Model Selected works Brainstorms (1981) The Mind's I (1981) Elbow Room (1984) Consciousness Explained (1991) Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995) Freedom Evolves (2003) Sweet Dreams (2005) Breaking the Spell (2006)