An Interview with Daniel Dennett

Source: morhamedufmg / Pixabay

Daniel C. Dennett is an emeritus professor at Tufts University and one of the most influential philosophers and cognitive scientists of his generation.

He's written several highly influential and acclaimed monographs, such as Consciousness Explained, Freedom Evolves, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Breaking the Spell. He is also renowned for being one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris.

I spoke to Dennett about his recent memoir, I've Been Thinking, his views on consciousness, free will, religion, the importance of evolution, and philosophy itself. I hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as I have.

Walter Veit: Welcome, Dan. It's a pleasure to have you as the first guest on my podcast (see references for full video).

Daniel C. Dennett: Good to be here.

WV: Let's dive right in. You wrote a terrific book titled I've Been Thinking, a memoir recounting much of your life, your intellectual journey, views on consciousness, free will, evolution, God, and philosophy. You also provide people with advice on how they can become better thinkers. So, let's start with an easy question right here. When and why did you decide to write your memoir?

DD: Well, I guess I've been telling stories all my life. And seemingly often to good effect.

It's often been observed that you asked me a question. I may respond with the story, and I thought, well, I've got quite a lot of good stories. And also, I think I wanted to show young would-be philosopher some of the pitfalls and some of the opportunities that philosophy offers if you do it well, if you do it my way, which I recommend, and if you don't do it some of the old fashioned ways.

I can't remember exactly when I got it in my head to do it. I guess after From Bacteria to Back came out, I thought, well, maybe it's time to make a list of of what I'd put in such a book. And I got some encouragement from some friends and family members and other philosophers, so I went ahead.

WV: Oh, very nice. One paragraph I liked is where you talked about how hard it was actually for you to get published initially in philosophy journals, which might be surprising to some? In 1965, you received your DPhil from Oxford. You said many of your peers thought that your writing didn't even qualify as philosophy and now you're one of the most influential philosophers of your generation. So it would be interesting to hear from you what you think philosophy is, as well as perhaps what you think its goal should be?

DD: I think whenever you don't know whether you're asking the right questions, you're doing philosophy. In any field that if you've got a perfectly good question, you know how to answer, and you're doing physics or chemistry or biology or history, that's not philosophy. But if you suddenly wonder, am I wasting my time on this? Are there better questions to be asking? Then you're doing philosophy.

The thing about philosophy is there are no rules. Lots of philosophers want to introduce rules, and some of them are pretty good and pretty obvious: Don't contradict yourself, and make sure that you represent the alternative views fairly and accurately. Don't waste your time shooting at the trivial mistakes around the borders. Go for the big idea.

So, I think philosophy is not an exact science. It's not mathematics; it's not science. Well, it's night science. It's what you do in the bar after the lab is closed down, what you talk about, and the hypotheses and conjectures and hunches that you explore when the tape recorder is turned off. When I was spending a lot of time at the AI Lab at MIT on the top floor of Tech Square in Cambridge Pass, there was a room called the playroom, and it had bag chairs and some games to play. But that's where the serious thinking was.

And I thought, yeah, right, there should be a playroom in every field. And that's where the philosophy happens. It's a little bit like Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. People should be allowed to make outrageous mistakes without worrying about being teased and hounded, blamed, scolded, and branded. Check it out. It works. That's what philosophy is.