Philosopher Daniel Dennett dead at 82

World-renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett defended controversial views on consciousness and free will, among other disturbing topics. died today At 82 years old.

(Full disclosure: This loss is personal. Dennett was a friend and colleague of my spouse. Sean Carroll. Sean and I have many fond memories of sharing meals together. exciting conversation Dan and I have discussed a huge range of topics over the years.He was a true original and will be greatly missed.. )

Stunned reactions to Mr Dennett’s unexpected death began to proliferate on social media soon after the news broke. Melanie Mitchell of the Santa Fe Institute said: “This is disappointing news. He has been a great friend and an incredible inspiration to me throughout my career.” Artificial Intelligence: A Guide to Human Thinking, I wrote to X. “I will miss him very much.”

“He was an outstanding figure in philosophy, especially the philosophy of AI,” says roboticist rodney brooks (MIT, Professor Emeritus) I wrote to X, lamented that he never responded to Dennett’s last email from 30 days ago. “All we have now are memories of him.

a 2017 New Yorker Profile Dennett was described as “a cross between Darwin and Santa Claus” with “a fluffy white beard and a round belly”. His jovial exterior has inspired him to fight over consciousness and issues with luminaries such as Stephen J. Gould, John Searle, Noam Chomsky, David Chalmers, Roger Penrose, and Richard Lewontin. , accompanied by an intellectual ferocity–lavishly embellished with its brilliant wit. Evolution, free will, AI, religion, and many other topics.

Despite their bulk, many of Dennett’s books sold very well and were highly influential. famous speakers There is great demand. His 2003 TED talk “illusion of consciousness” has received over 4 million views. He became especially famous as the leader ofnew atheist“One of the movements of the early 2000s – colorfully called”The Four Horsemen of New AtheismAlongside Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, it was never his main focus, just a natural extension of his more central philosophical interests.

David Wallace, a historian and philosopher of science at the University of Pittsburgh, provided Ars Technica with a succinct summary of Dennett’s extraordinary influence:

For me, Dan Dennett personified what it means to do philosophy in an age of science. He once said that there is no such thing as science without philosophy, only science that does not question philosophical premises. Similarly, he saw more deeply than almost anyone that philosophy’s deepest traditional questions, from free will to consciousness to metaphysics, have been irreversibly transformed by modern science, especially by natural selection. .

His approach, as well as his own vast contributions, have influenced generations of philosophers far beyond cognitive science and the philosophy of mind (for example, his ideas have influenced the interpretation of quantum theory ). He is one of the great philosophers of the last century, and one of the few whose work has been transformative outside of academic philosophy.

Sean Carroll, a physicist and philosopher at Johns Hopkins University, said: “Dan Dennett is the embodiment of a natural philosopher, deeply concerned with what science can tell us about the natural world, but with a deep interest in the best philosophy.” He was a person who excelled at the careful conceptual analysis that characterizes the world.” he told Ars. “At the same time, he was a model of a publicly engaged scholar, someone who wrote substantive books that anyone could read and who had a real impact on the wider world. Such people are incredibly rare. His death is a real loss.” ”

Born in Boston in 1942, Dennett’s father was a professor of Islamic history who became a secret agent for the OSS during World War II, posing as a cultural attaché at the American embassy in Beirut. Dennett spent his childhood there until his father died in a plane crash during a mission to Ethiopia. Dennett, his mother, and his two sisters then returned to Boston, where his family thought he would attend Harvard University, like his late father. However, after graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Dennett chose to attend Wesleyan University instead, at least until he met a logician and philosopher at Harvard University. WVO Quine‘s 1963 paper, from a logical point of view.

Dennett eventually transferred to Harvard University to study under Quine and become a philosopher, but at first he intended to prove Quine wrong. By the time he became a graduate student at Oxford University, he was known among his fellow students as “the Kinney man of the village.” In his 2023 memoir, thinking, Dennett traced his interest in applying his field to scientific problems as beginning at this time. He remembered that his own hand fell asleep and experienced the universal feeling that it felt like a foreign object, not part of his own body. He wondered what was going on in his body and brain.

“Other philosophers thought that wasn’t philosophy. I said, well, that’s how it should be.” he told Tufts Now. last year. “So I started learning. I didn’t even know what a neuron was at the time, in the early ’60s, but I learned quickly. I was lucky enough to get into cognitive neuroscience on the ground floor. Some of the early pioneers in the field were my heroes, mentors, and friends.

Dennett’s first academic job was at the University of California, Irvine, and a revised version of his doctoral dissertation became his first book. content and consciousness. He transferred to Tufts University in his 1971 year and spent the rest of his career there. One of Dennett’s early collaborators was best-selling author Douglas Hofstadter. Gödel, Escher, Bach: the eternal golden braidcalled Dennett “a beacon in my life” in an email. [quoted with permission] After hearing of the latter’s death, he told his colleagues:

Dan was thinking deeply about what it means to be human. Very early on, he reached a conclusion about consciousness that was shocking to many (essentially, it is just an emergent effect of the physical interaction of small inanimate components), and since then he has has become the complete opponent of dualism (beyond the physical events that take place in the highly complex substrates of human and animal brains, and perhaps in the substrates of silicon networks, there is an etheric, non-physical phenomenon called “consciousness”). ) Dunn thus completely rejects the concept of “qualia” (pure sensations such as colors and tastes), and his argument for the mystique of qualia is subtle but very It was very convincing.

Dennett confirmed compatible On the hotly debated subject of free will, he saw no contradiction between philosophical ideas and ideas. determinism And free will. “Our only notable difference of opinion was on the question of free will, and while Dunn argued that there was free will in some sense of ‘freedom,’ I did not agree that there was a ‘will.’ He argued that there is no free will, just consent.” freedom In it,” Hoftstadter recalled.

Jenan Ismael, a philosopher at Johns Hopkins University, recalled corresponding with Dennett after his book on free will: How can physics free us? Although she had not yet met Dennett, her work was understandably influential, even though her book was largely critical of Dennett’s stance on the subject. Ta. Ishmael begins the book by discussing Dennett’s fictional short stories.Where are we?” and called it “the greatest work of philosophical fiction ever written.” this short film Based on this story, Dennett himself utters immortal lines such as “They made a shiny new container for my brain.” )

Dennett read her book and emailed some notes to Ismael. She blamed her mistake on the plot of his short story, not that she felt he had misunderstood her own opinion (which he considered “no problem”). It was something to correct. “It turns out I was wrong,” Ismael told Ars. “Even though I read it a long time ago, I just glorified it in my head and didn’t realize how embarrassing it was at all. When I criticized him in the book, he was excited to talk about the idea. He didn’t try to correct me.”

She found him filled with a contagious warmth. “He certainly sucked the air out of the room when he walked in, and even though he was sitting at a round dinner table, he somehow became the center of it and took control of the discussion,” Ismael said. “But he also paid close attention to people, read voraciously, listened to what others had to say, took in what he could, and disseminated what he learned. He was invaluable. I have a unique curiosity and wanted to share everything I learned and liked.”

In his later years, Dennett did not hesitate to sound the alarm about AI. write an article Last year, I wrote about the topic in The Atlantic, specifically about the dangers ahead with the emergence of large-scale language models like ChatGPT. “The most pressing problem is not that they are trying to take our jobs or change warfare, but that they are trying to destroy human trust.” he told Tufts Now.. “They are taking us to a world where we cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood. We do not know who to believe. Trust turns out to be one of the most important characteristics of civilization. And we are in great shape right now.” There is a danger of destroying the bonds of trust that have made civilization possible. ”

In his memoirs, Dennett spoke fondly of his fellow philosophers, saying that he was not one to tout his many accomplishments and tout his modesty, but always exuded a strong sense of self-confidence. don ross “Dan believes that humility is a virtue that should be reserved for special occasions,” he said wryly.

His myriad interests were not limited to academics. Dennett loved art, music, sailing, pottery, trout fishing, and windsurfing, and he ran his own cider press and made his own Calvados in a Prohibition-era still. He can call it a square dance, whittle a wooden cane, and ponder philosophical conundrums while driving a tractor on his 200-acre farm in Blue Hill, north of Boston, which he bought in the 1970s. I liked it. (He sold the farm around 2014.)

“Dan is bon vivantHoftstadter wrote in his eulogy: “In his later years, he became a bit unstable, but he proudly carried a wooden cane around town.” Engraved with words and images. Dan Dennett is menschAnd his thoughts on so many subjects will leave a lasting impact on the world, and his human presence will be felt by those of us who were lucky enough to know him well and count him as a friend. had a deep impact on ”

Ismael recalled that during the pandemic, he sent videos of her “swing dancing and ridiculous outfits” to her YouTube, and his emails were peppered with colorful emojis. He was “a strange guy who didn’t take himself as seriously as you might think,” she says. “I really loved him. I loved his spirit, his generosity, his breadth of thought, his joy in ideas, and his wonderful cheerfulness. Philosophically, he was a man of true greatness. I think it’s impossible for him to die.”