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faculty curriculum student awards and projects after macalester colloquium series
Daniel Dennett Colloquium
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Location Questions? Call the Philosophy Dept. x6141
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Abstract: Many people in the humanities think that the human mind is somehow off-limits to evolutionary theory, but this is a deep mistake. Not only can we understand our minds much better if we understand our brains to be products of evolution, but we can understand the details of our best thinking--both our scientific reasoning and our artistic explorations--as involving a variety of what might be called quasi-Darwinian processes of trial and error that occur in our minds. Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Freedom Evolves (Viking Penguin, 2003) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Simon &Schuster, 1995), is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed the D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. His first book, Content and Consciousness, appeared in 1969, followed by Brainstorms (1978), Elbow Room (1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), Kinds of Minds (1996), and Brainchildren: A Collection of Essays 1984-1996 (MIT Press and Penguin, 1998). He co-edited The Mind's I with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981. He is the author of over three hundred scholarly articles on various aspects on the mind, published in journals ranging from Artificial Intelligence and Behavioral and Brain Sciences to Poetics Today and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
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