I read his Consciousness Explained and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea in grad school and when I came back to reading about the mind, I started by rereading CE and then went on to his latest, From Bacteria to Bach and Back
He is, without doubt the biggest influence on my thought. I find his reductive, materialist, humanist approach to consciousness and his presentation of memes as thought viruses extremely compelling. FBBB even brings in a credible view on AI as potentially going far beyond the human mind
“Yes we have a soul but it’s made of lots of tiny robots” was the headline of an article about him in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, and Dennett endorsed it with amusement. He loved making furniture, building fences, mending roofs, tinkering with cars and boats; and, among the many things he constructed were sets of nested Russian dolls to illustrate his philosophy. The outside doll was “Descartes”; inside that was “the Middle Ghost” (a reference to Ryle’s) – but inside that was a “Robot”. “We are not authorities about our own consciousness,” he said. The robot is masked by the ghost.
— Read on www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/21/daniel-dennett-obituary
See also: https://dailynous.com/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-death-1942-2024/
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