denial, alternative See SHEFFER STROKE. Dennett, Daniel C(lement) (b.1942), American philosopher, author of books on topics in the philosophy of mind, free will, and evolutionary biology, and tireless advocate of the importance of philosophy for empirical work on evolution and on the nature of the mind. Dennett is perhaps best known for arguing that a creature (or, more generally, a system), S, possesses states of mind if and only if the ascription of such states to S facilitates explanation and prediction of S’s behavior (The Intentional Stance, 1987). (S might be a human being, a chimpanzee, a desktop computer, or a thermostat.) In ascribing beliefs and desires to S we take up an attitude toward S, the intentional stance. We could just as well (although for different purposes) take up other stances: the design stance (we understand S as a kind of engineered system) or the physical stance (we regard S as a purely physical system). It might seem that, although we often enough ascribe beliefs and desires to desktop computers and thermostats, we do not mean to do so literally – as with people. Dennett’s contention, however, is that there is nothing more (nor less) to having beliefs, desires, and other states of mind than being explicable by reference to such things. This, he holds, is not to demean beliefs, but only to affirm that to have a belief is to be describable in this particular way. If you are so describable, then it is true, literally true, that you have beliefs. Dennett extends this approach to consciousness, which he views not as an inwardly observable performance taking place in a ‘Cartesian Theater,’ but as a story we tell about ourselves, the compilation of ‘multiple drafts’ concocted by neural subsystems (see Conciousness Explained, 1991). Elsewhere (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 1995) Dennett has argued that principles of Darwinian selection apply to diverse domains including cosmology and human culture, and offered a compatibilist account of free will with an emphasis on agents’ control over their actions (Elbow Room, 1984).
See also DARWINISM, FREE WILL PROBLEM, FUNCTIONALISM, INTENTIONALITY, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. J.F.H.