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They say, by no means meet your heroes. Daniel Dennett, who handed away final month, was for me an exception to this rule.
Like so many, I used to be first impressed by Dennett on studying one in every of his many bestsellers: Consciousness Defined. It was 1991 and I used to be a recent undergraduate with a robust however undirected curiosity in consciousness. I had no concept the best way to go about finding out it, or how to consider it. I used to be finding out physics at Cambridge and had simply plowed my means 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, every little thing. 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 might typically really feel like wanting straight on the solar.
Years handed. I believed I’d meet him when he examined the doctoral thesis of a buddy of mine who was finding out with me on the College of Sussex, but it surely turned out they met over Skype. I might hear tales about him from one in every of my mentors on the College of Sussex and one in every of Dennett’s nice mates, the thinker Maggie Boden. These had 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 relatively 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 just lately 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 resort bar earlier than one in every of our conferences to say howdy for the primary time, however I needn’t have nervous. Dennett was as approachable and avuncular in individual 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 e 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 means that made you’re feeling improved, relatively 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 offer a TED speak, and I used to be terrified. There have been tons of of influential individuals watching in individual, and 1000’s extra on-line. The following 16 minutes could possibly be transformational or a complete flop. However of all of the individuals there whose opinions would possibly matter, the one individual I actually didn’t need to disappoint was Dan Dennett.
Afterward, amid the high-fiving and catharsis, I observed a brief tweet from Dennett.
“Virtually good however not fairly.” This mix of generosity and delicate criticism was typical. And he was proper. In my speak I’d made the error of utilizing the phrase “interior film” to explain the multisensory immersive nature of aware expertise. However an interior film implies an interior 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 12 months. 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 prepared to contemplate writing a blurb for the quilt. 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 threat upsetting lots of his colleagues and mates he’d already mentioned no to. However to my amazement he supplied one thing way more worthwhile. He mentioned he would set the draft because the studying for his subsequent course at Tufts College, after which we might have two or three lengthy Zoom periods 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 periods 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 interior observer, homunculus, or theater within the mind the place every little thing “comes collectively.” However studying from him might typically 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 burden of his arguments.
Dennett was usually described as a philosophical “illusionist,” a place typically caricatured as saying that consciousness doesn’t exist. (A criticism of his 1991 e-book was that it ought to’ve been known as Consciousness Defined Away.) However illusionism doesn’t, in truth, 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 “laborious drawback” of consciousness. On one other studying, which I’m extra sympathetic to, it says that consciousness exists, but it surely won’t be what we predict it’s—in the identical means that the colour pink exists, however will not be what we would suppose it’s—there isn’t a redness on the market on the planet neither is there a pink “figment” within the thoughts, to borrow one other of Dennett’s pleasant phrases.
I all the time 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 would possibly actually be pondering. One dimension of the sense of loss I now really feel is that these discussions will turn into historic, a matter of interpretation and exegesis, relatively than the dwelling, very important course of they so just lately had been.
In his later years, Dennett was keen on riffing on Chalmers’ laborious drawback with what he known as the “laborious query”: As soon as some (psychological) content material reaches consciousness, “then what occurs?” This was his means of sending up the numerous theories that suggest that aware expertise would possibly by some means 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 analysis, the struggles of consciousness science lay within the systematic failure to correctly ask, and reply, this query.
Daniel Clement Dennett was a delicate large 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 has taught and impressed. He was, I’ll assume, a materialist to the tip. And in dying, maybe Dan put his materialist beliefs to the final word take a look at. After which what occurs? 
Lead picture: Master1305 / Shutterstock
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