We lost a really great human today – philosopher Daniel C. Dennett.
Dan was a kind, honest, generous guy. He had a brilliant mind – insightful, critical, with an encyclopedic knowledge of pithy analogies and clinical examples (“intuition pumps” he called them), as well as who came up with them. And despite all of his experience and accomplishments, he always had a kind of childish excitement about new ideas, and new experiments. What he liked best was new insights, wild ideas, honest argument. I first heard the concept of “steel-manning” from him (opposite of “straw man” – putting forth the strongest, best version of an argument you want to critique). He was not interested in cheap wins or rhetorical bullying – he wanted to get to the best version of every story about nature and about ourselves.
I first came into contact with Dan through his books. As a teenager, Brainstorms, Elbow Room, and The Intentional Stance were a fantastic introduction to the most interesting questions, and ways of thinking about them. My dad and I would hit the bookstores every Saturday and there was no way a Dennett book would escape us if a new one came out. We had lots of great times discussing the topics in his books. I eventually was able to ask Dan to sign a few of them for dad, as birthday presents.
I then had Dan for a Philosophy of Mind course as an undergrad in 1990; he was a fun and really effective teacher, stretching our minds in various directions. It was phenomenal to be able to talk to the guy who wrote all those cool books, like The Mind’s I; he always made time for his students. I wrote a final project for his class, pushing an opinion I knew he 100% disagreed with. Professor Dennett was encouraging and fair as can be – he cracked the parts that were weak, conceded the parts he couldn’t shoot down, encouraged me to push on with the ideas and make it better. I still have the notes from that class and his hand-written comments on my final project. “Wanna bet?” and “I’ll eat my hat!” were some notes he wrote on a few of my ideas. He exemplified fair reasoning committed to truth and the weeding out of faulty ideas.
I moved my lab to Tufts in 2009; I could barely believe it, we were colleagues! He was always supportive of the weird stuff I do, at the border of philosophy of mind and developmental biophysics. Despite his busy schedule, he readily made time to talk, and connected me to many wonderful and other relevant minds. I remember him once grabbing me on campus, to go to a philosophy lecture at Boston University that I didn’t know about. We went in his little Nissan (he insisted on driving); I think the talk might have been by Peter Godfrey-Smith.
Dan came by our lab from time to time, to look first-hand at some of the living examples I would tell him about, as we argued about evolution, basal cognition, and how life and mind relate. Here he is looking at some 2-headed worms with a wild-type genome:
My lab people loved to see and hear from him. Although we didn’t record most of his visits, here is some audio of a talk he gave to my folks a few years ago:
I didn’t agree with all of his positions, but we were able to write a paper together about the stuff we did agree on, which was a real joy for me. That’s the kind of thinker he was – he had great intellectual integrity, tolerance for divergent opinions, and benevolence, alongside his commitment to rigor and low patience for any bullshit.
He freely offered “Uncle Dan” advice (as he called it) that couldn’t be beat – always with good intentions, from the heart. He was inspiring as a mentor.
Farewell Dan; you made a great positive impact, and taught me a lot. I will really miss you.
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