They say, by no means meet your heroes. Daniel Dennett, who was distinctive in so some ways, and who died final month, was for me an exception to this rule.
Like so many, I used to be first impressed by Dennett on studying certainly one of his many bestsellers: Consciousness Defined. It was 1991 and I used to be a recent undergraduate with a strong however undirected curiosity in consciousness. I had no thought the best way to go about learning it, or how to consider it. I used to be learning physics at Cambridge and had simply plowed my manner by Roger Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Thoughts, which had left me confused and despondent. Dennett’s e book, with its presumptuous however oh-so-appealing title, was each a tease and a salve. I devoured it.
I didn’t agree with, or observe, all the pieces. However I realized a lot from his clear, witty writing, and from his well-known “instinct pump” thought experiments. I used to be left with the sturdy impression that consciousness, if not defined, was explainable, and I now had a north star to steer by.
Studying from him may generally really feel like wanting straight on the solar.
Years handed. I assumed I would meet him when he examined the doctoral thesis of a good friend of mine who was learning with me on the College of Sussex, however it turned out they met over Skype. I might hear tales about him from certainly one of my mentors on the College of Sussex and certainly one of Dennett’s nice mates, the thinker Maggie Boden. These have been tales of philosophical bust-ups, of crusing adventures, and of a voracious and seemingly unbounded mental urge for food. The impression was of somebody larger-than-life, who delighted in partaking with the world fairly than preaching from an ivory tower. I learn each e book he wrote, and plenty of of his papers. However the man himself remained distant.
I lastly met Dennett in 2016. I’d not too long ago joined a gaggle of researchers on the Mind, Thoughts, and Consciousness Program of the Canadian Institute for Superior Analysis, the place Dennett had served as a long-time advisor. I keep in mind feeling nervous when approaching him within the lodge bar earlier than certainly one of our conferences to say hi there for the primary time, however I needn’t have frightened. Dennett was as approachable and avuncular in particular person as he was esteemed and revered in academia. Which is very. I don’t keep in mind what we talked about then, however within the conversations and electronic mail exchanges that adopted over time he unfailingly exuded kindness, mental generosity, and perspicuity. He would inform you precisely what he thought, and he had the flexibility to take action in a manner that made you’re feeling improved, fairly than dumb for making some silly mistake.
Two examples stand out. The primary is from seven years in the past. I used to be in Vancouver, about to present a TED discuss, and I used to be terrified. There have been tons of of influential individuals watching in particular person, and hundreds extra on-line. The subsequent 16 minutes might be transformational or a complete flop. However of all of the individuals there whose opinions may matter, the one particular person I actually didn’t wish to disappoint was Dan Dennett.
Afterward, amid the high-fiving and catharsis, I seen a brief tweet from Dennett.
“Virtually excellent however not fairly.” This mixture of generosity and delicate criticism was typical. And he was proper. In my discuss I’d made the error of utilizing the phrase “inside film” to explain the multisensory immersive nature of acutely aware expertise. However an inside film implies an inside movie-watcher, a Cartesian homunculus of precisely the kind that Dennett—and I—wished to expunge. This wasn’t a technicality. It was a give-away that I hadn’t actually internalized the perception.
The second instance was from a pandemic yr. I used to be finalizing the primary draft of my e book Being You and, with some hesitation, I’d requested Dan if he’d be keen to contemplate writing a blurb for the duvet. He declined, disarmingly—explaining that he’d determined a while again to not do any extra blurbs, and if he modified his thoughts for me he’d danger upsetting a lot of his colleagues and mates he’d already mentioned no to. However to my amazement he supplied one thing rather more useful. He mentioned he would set the draft because the studying for his subsequent course at Tufts College, after which we may have two or three lengthy Zoom classes going by every chapter intimately with him and his class of gifted college students. It nonetheless astounds me that he took the time to do that, however he did, and the discussions we had in these classes improved the e book no finish.
I by no means stopped studying from Dennett. I discovered myself coming spherical to his mind-set on many issues: the centrality of evolution for understanding the thoughts, how to consider free will (although in 2021 we discovered ourselves on reverse sides of a debate on the subject), and naturally the absence of—or any want for—an inside observer, homunculus, or theater within the mind the place all the pieces “comes collectively.” However studying from him may generally really feel like wanting straight on the solar. I needed to look away, to method issues sidelong, sparking the concern that I’d by no means totally grasp the load of his arguments.
Dennett was usually described as a philosophical “illusionist,” a place generally caricatured as saying that consciousness doesn’t exist. (A criticism of his 1991 e book was that it ought to’ve been referred to as Consciousness Defined Away.) However illusionism doesn’t, actually, say this. On one studying, it says we’re mistaken to suppose that the connection between consciousness and bodily, organic processes within the mind is a giant thriller—the thriller that fellow thinker David Chalmers calls the “exhausting drawback” of consciousness. On one other studying, which I’m extra sympathetic to, it says that consciousness exists, however it may not be what we expect it’s—in the identical manner that the colour pink exists, however is just not what we would suppose it’s—there isn’t any redness on the market on the earth neither is there a pink “figment” within the thoughts, to borrow one other of Dennett’s pleasant phrases.
I at all times regarded ahead to discussing these concepts with Dennett, and to chatting about them with my colleagues and mates, all of us making an attempt to determine what Dennett may actually be considering. One dimension of the sense of loss I now really feel is that these discussions will grow to be historic, a matter of interpretation and exegesis, fairly than the residing, important course of they so not too long ago have been.
In his later years, Dennett was keen on riffing on Chalmers’ exhausting drawback with what he referred to as the “exhausting query”: As soon as some (psychological) content material reaches consciousness, “then what occurs?” This was his manner of sending up the various theories that suggest that acutely aware expertise may one way or the other come up out of, or emerge from, this-or-that facet of mind exercise. Neurons hearth in synchrony? Or with a sure type of complexity? After which what occurs? In his prognosis, the struggles of consciousness science lay within the systematic failure to correctly ask, and reply, this query.
Daniel Clement Dennett was a delicate big of the mental world. I, together with many others, will miss him deeply. He leaves an unmatched legacy in his books and papers, in how he introduced philosophy and science collectively, and within the legions of scholars and researchers he taught and impressed. He was, I’ll assume, a materialist to the tip. And in dying, maybe Dan put his materialist beliefs to the last word check. After which what occurs? 
Lead picture: Master1305 / Shutterstock
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