‘Come to think of it’, Dennett’s life as a final lesson

Daniel C. Dennett, one of the most influential philosophers and cognitive scientists of our time, has dedicated his life to studying the mysteries of our mind. There exists the free will? What is consciousness, how does it arise? What distinguishes the human mind from the animal mind? His answers oriented significantly the philosophical debate of recent decades. His incessant curiosity took him from Beirut, where he spent his childhood, to the classrooms of Harvard, from the jazz clubs of Paris to laboratories around the world.

Dennett, who passed away in Portland on April 19, he was one of the most important thinkers of the last fifty years, capable of ranging in his studies from philosophy to artificial intelligence, from ethics to the dangers of technological information; up to the question of the animal, focused both on the perception of pain and on the evolution of consciousness. And it is precisely this last one that particularly interests Dennett who criticizes the conception of consciousness as Descartes theorized itin which there is a single site in the brain that can be identified as the site of consciousness.

Dennett, however, believes that the processes that occur in the brain they are all mechanisms created by “little machines” which perform a series of information discrimination processes and produce a flow of elements of consciousness, an unstable flow that corresponds to the few moments in which mental processes combine to form a feeling of full and complete consciousness.

In short, very complex concepts. As are those relating to his other philosophical studies. Concepts that return in the form of narrationthrough the meetings he had and his adventures, in his autobiography now published in Italy by Raffaello Cortina Editore, ‘Thinking about it carefully’ (Science and ideas series, pages 494. Price: 33 euros). This book, released in America in 2023, arrives in Italy a few months after his death and explores the great themes of contemporary philosophy – language, evolution, logic, religion, artificial intelligence – revealing intuitions and errors of the author and his interlocutors: Douglas Hofstadter, Willard Van Orman Quine, Thomas Nagel, John Searle e Stephen Jay Gould these are just some of the great thinkers that Dennett crossed his path.

Thinking, Dennett writes, is difficult, and it is risky. Any form of philosophical reasoning inevitably brings with it a fair amount of frustration and insecurities. But it is only by making mistakes that, very rarely, we find a way towards the truth. As an American philosopher and writer, as well as a cognitive scientist, Dennett places himself within the category of the most influential thinkers of contemporary times.

His popularity is intertwined not only with the appeal of his ideas, but also with his own exuberant personality and writing style which painted him in the eyes of his colleagues as a heretic compared to academic canons. The style of his writing is strongly characterized by the tendency to simplify and soften the rigor of typically scientific language.
The figure of Dennett recalls that of the “classical philosopher”, that is, a person with such a particular and profound skepticism that in the eyes of ordinary people it cannot help but arouse a sense of strangeness. One of Dennett’s most important legacies is his method: challenging and shaking up the most indubitable and traditional conceptual assumptions, or what he calls “intuition pumps” (in English literature, the expression generally refers to a mental experiment of any kind ).
In the prologue to his autobiography, written two years ago, he starts from the very delicate open heart surgery he underwent in 2006. Then he says he has had an extraordinarily adventurous and fulfilling life (“so far”, he adds). “Far beyond the rosiest fantasies of youth, and at the time I was a dacoit full of ambition – he writes – it went very well for me – how is it possible? All luck? All a question of “right friendships”? Or can I boast some merit directed for the blissful condition I am in? Have I “deserved” (whatever that means) the benefits I am enjoying? I believe in free will, understood in a non-magical sense, the only one that really matters world deserves praise and rewards, while those who act badly (assuming they are adults ‘compos mentis’ and capable of self-control) deserve the right sanctions: I am convinced of this”.
Dennett spent his life teaching his students with whom, thanks also to his way of doing things and his strong sense of humor, he was always careful to encourage them to cultivate the growth of independent thought rather than looking for disciples who conformed to his ideas. In ‘Thinking about it’ tells his life story starting from his birth in Boston in 1942 and from childhood in Beirut where he lived until the age of five when his father, an American secret agent, died in a mysterious plane crash and his mother decided to return to the USA.

He then recounts his magnificent philosophical adventure, his great encounters, his life spent dealing with the world’s greatest thinkers and “correcting some erroneous ideas” of some colleagues.
“I wouldn’t be writing this book if I wasn’t convinced that I had some lessons for my readers – he then explains – the secrets of my success, the tricks, the approaches that have helped me, the way I relate to problems and people. How many philosophers are more intelligent, more erudite, more ready, more technically prepared than me!