Daniel Dennett has passed away

Always enjoyed watching him rattle the cages of other intellectuals, some mentioned in the obit - John Searle, Noam Chomsky, George Steiner, Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose, Jerry Fodor, Richard Lewontin et al. Definitely a pitbull when it came to skyhook thinking. I want to go back and read some of his books, not that a person has to die for that to happen. I had some disagreement with his brain-as-computer view, but I acknowledge he made that argument with impressive clarity and finesse. His Multiple Drafts model of the mind struck me as one of the more nuanced forms of computationalism. He certainly did a fine job demolishing the Cartesian Theater.
 
Well he was definitely a formidable gadfly in the cognitive science community. Maybe that's what we need every now and then--a bold Socratic questioner of some of our prevailing assumptions and pet theories. May he rest in peace..
 
Magical Realist said:
Well he was definitely a formidable gadfly in the cognitive science community. Maybe that's what we need every now and then--a bold Socratic questioner of some of our prevailing assumptions and pet theories. May he rest in peace..
Click to expand...
I have his book, Darwin's dangerous idea. Still not read it.
 
Pinball1970 said:
Opps! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin's_Dangerous_Idea
Click to expand...

Ahh, the source of what young folks these days (and hillbillies, I guess) call a "feud" between Dennett and Stephen Jay Gould. Don't recall the particulars, but I think Dennett accused Gould of some deus ex machina shit, or something of the sort. I dunno, Gould was the biologist, but that's not necessarily to say that he was more correct. Some details here:

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/Gould.html

Daniel Dennett devotes the longest chapter in Darwin's Dangerous Idea to an excoriating caricature of my ideas, all in order to bolster his defense of Darwinian fundamentalism. If an argued case can be discerned at all amid the slurs and sneers, it would have to be described as an effort to claim that I have, thanks to some literary skill, tried to raise a few piddling, insignificant, and basically conventional ideas to "revolutionary" status, challenging what he takes to be the true Darwinian scripture. Dennett claims that I have promulgated three "false alarms" as supposed revolutions against the version of Darwinism that he and his fellow defenders of evolutionary orthodoxy continue to espouse.
Click to expand...

Heh. Then he continues. At length.

To be listened to whilst reading:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top