Editing Daniel Dennett (section)

===Mind===
[[File:Daniel dennett Oct2008.JPG|thumb|Dennett in 2008]]
Dennett was a proponent of [[materialism]] in the [[philosophy of mind]]. He argued that mental states, including consciousness, are entirely the result of physical processes in the brain. In his book ''[[Consciousness Explained]]'' (1991), Dennett presented his arguments for a materialist understanding of consciousness, rejecting [[Cartesian dualism]] in favor of a physicalist perspective.<ref name="Dennett1991">{{cite book|last=Dennett|first=Daniel C.|title=Consciousness Explained|publisher=Little, Brown and Co.|year=1991|isbn=978-0316180665|location=Boston}}</ref>

Dennett remarked in several places (such as "Self-portrait", in ''Brainchildren'') that his overall philosophical project remained largely the same from his time at Oxford onwards. He was primarily concerned with providing a philosophy of mind that is grounded in [[empirical]] research. In his original [[Thesis|dissertation]], ''Content and Consciousness'', he broke up the problem of explaining the mind into the need for a theory of content and for a theory of consciousness. His approach to this project also stayed true to this distinction. Just as ''Content and Consciousness'' has a bipartite structure, he similarly divided ''Brainstorms'' into two sections. He would later collect several essays on content in ''The [[Intentional stance|Intentional Stance]]'' and synthesize his views on consciousness into a unified theory in ''Consciousness Explained''. These volumes respectively form the most extensive development of his views.<ref>{{citation|last=Guttenplan|first=Samuel|title=A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind|page=[https://archive.org/details/companiontophilo0000unse/page/642 642]|year=1994|url=https://archive.org/details/companiontophilo0000unse/page/642|location=Oxford|publisher=Blackwell|isbn=0-631-19996-9|author-link=Samuel Guttenplan}}.</ref>

In chapter 5 of ''Consciousness Explained,'' Dennett described his [[multiple drafts model]] of consciousness. He stated that, "all varieties of perception—indeed all varieties of thought or mental activity—are accomplished in the brain by parallel, multitrack processes of interpretation and elaboration of sensory inputs. Information entering the nervous system is under continuous 'editorial revision.'" (p.&nbsp;111). Later he asserts, "These yield, over the course of time, something ''rather like'' a narrative stream or sequence, which can be thought of as subject to continual editing by many processes distributed around the brain, ..." (p.&nbsp;135, emphasis in the original).

In this work, Dennett's interest in the ability of evolution to explain some of the content-producing features of consciousness is already apparent, and this later became an integral part of his program. He stated his view is materialist and scientific, and he presents an argument against [[qualia]]; he argued that the concept of qualia is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of [[physicalism]].

This view is rejected by neuroscientists [[Gerald Edelman]], [[Antonio Damasio]], [[Vilayanur Ramachandran]], [[Giulio Tononi]], and [[Rodolfo Llinás]], all of whom state that qualia exist and that the desire to eliminate them is based on an erroneous interpretation on the part of some philosophers regarding what constitutes science.<ref>Damasio, A. (1999). ''The feeling of what happens''. Harcourt Brace.</ref><ref>Edelman, G., Gally, J. & Baars, B. (2011). "Biology of consciousness". ''Frontiers In Psychology, 2'', 4, 1–6.</ref><ref>Edelman, G. (1992). ''Bright air, brilliant fire''. BasicBooks.</ref><ref>Edelman, G. (2003). "Naturalizing consciousness: A theoretical framework". ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100'', 9, 5520–24.</ref><ref>Llinás, R. (2003). ''I of the Vortex.'' MIT Press, pp. 202–07.</ref><ref>Oizumi, M., Albantakis, L., & Tononi, G. (2014). From the phenomenology to the mechanisms of consciousness: Integrated information theory 3.0. ''PLOS Computational Biology, 10'', e1003588.</ref><ref>Overgaard, M., Mogensen, J. & Kirkeby-Hinrup, A. (Eds.) (2021). ''Beyond neural correlates of consciousness.'' Routledge Taylor & Francis.</ref><ref>Ramachandran, V. & Hirstein, W. (1997). Three laws of qualia. What neurology tells us about the biological functions of consciousness, qualia and the self. ''Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4'' (5–6), pp. 429–58.</ref><ref>Tononi, G., Boly, M., Massimini, M., & Koch, C. (2016). "Integrated information theory: From consciousness to its physical substrate". ''Nature Reviews Neuroscience'', 17, 450–61.</ref>

Dennett's strategy mirrored his teacher Ryle's approach of redefining first-person phenomena in third-person terms, and denying the coherence of the concepts which this approach struggles with.

Dennett self-identified with a few terms:
{{blockquote|[Others] note that my "avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters" often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless—a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors.<ref>Daniel Dennett, ''The Message is: There is no Medium''</ref>}}

In ''Consciousness Explained'', he affirmed "I am a sort of '[[functionalism (philosophy of mind)|teleofunctionalist]]', of course, perhaps the original teleofunctionalist". He went on to say, "I am ready to come out of the closet as some sort of [[Verificationism|verificationist]]." (pp.&nbsp;460–61).

Dennett was credited<ref>Doherty, M. J. (2009). Theory of Mind: How Children Understand Others’ Thoughts and Feelings. Psychology Press.</ref> with inspiring [[false belief]] tasks used in developmental psychology. He noted that when four-year-olds watch the [[Punch and Judy]] puppet show, they laugh because they know that they know more about what's going on than one of the characters does:<ref>Dennett, D. C. (1978). Beliefs about Beliefs (commentary on Premack, et al.). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1, pp. 568-70.</ref>

{{Quote|quote=Very young children watching a Punch and Judy show squeal in anticipatory delight as Punch prepares to throw the box over the cliff. Why? Because they know Punch thinks Judy is still in the box. They know better; they saw Judy escape while Punch's back was turned. We take the children's excitement as overwhelmingly good evidence that they understand the situation--they understand that Punch is acting on a mistaken belief (although they are not sophisticated enough to put it that way).}}