While it would be unfair, and
difficult, to say that someone was the least systematic of philosophers,
it is rather easier to say that Daniel Dennett is not the most systematic we
have.  Dennett’s style, in his articles and books together, is conversational,
often roundabout, sometimes elliptical, proceeding as often by way of evocative
thought-experiment as by means of more conventional argumentation.  After
reading Dennett, one often feels persuaded of something, even if it is
not always clear what that something is.  While his work has been of undeniable
importance to the course of conversation in contemporary philosophy of mind,
stirring debate and providing new lines of inquiry, it is not always clear, on
first glance, what the "Dennett philosophy" can be said to be.  Of
course, it is not necessary, nor even always desirable, that a thinker have one
over-arching line of thought€”a lifetime of profitable research may well be
comprised of work on any number of disparate and generally disconnected
questions.  And yet a reader of Dennett’s philosophy, particularly the
neophyte, may often find herself wishing for a glimpse of the bigger picture,
especially since Dennett always seems to suggest that there is in fact a more
general view to be had, a whole that may well be greater than its parts.

Matthew Elton’s survey of Dennett’s
work provides just such a unifying overview. Working through almost the full
range of Dennett’s publications, Elton shows that if there is not strictly
speaking a system behind it all, there is in fact a certain unity, a set
of common concerns and insights that link one piece to another.  Particularly
insightful is Elton’s analysis of how Dennett regards Darwinian evolutionary
arguments as not only important to our understanding of the usual biological
concepts, but to an account of how we identify, understand, and generally deal
with other thinking beings.  As Elton has it, Dennett seeks always to unify a
naturalistic world-view€”on which human beings, like all other things, are
rooted primarily in the physical reality explained by science€”with a more
complicated account of such things as mind and will that respects their
seemingly singular nature.  As Elton puts it, Dennett argues that:

there is more to saying what is in the world than
describing the particles that fill up space and time.  There are patterns
amongst those particles that€¦ are not in any way supernatural, but nor can they
be described in the canonical language of science, the language of regular,
law-governed causal structures [5].

While Dennett wants to respect the special nature of certain
of these patterns, he wants always to keep faith with the insights of a broadly
scientific naturalism.  As Elton’s title has it Dennett’s general goal in his
work on the mind, natural selection, and free will is to reconcile the sense
that there is something special about human beings, or human experience, with
the idea that at base the world is without supernatural phenomena of any sort.
Dennett proposes "a more modest self-conception, preserving but tempering specialness,
[and that] yields concepts that can apply to wholly natural entities"[7].

While it is beyond the scope of
this review to go over all of Elton’s points concerning Dennett, it is possible
to hit the highlights.  As explicated here, Dennett’s thought on the mind is
rooted in the behaviorism and common-sense analysis of Gilbert Ryle.  In its
essence, the idea is that discussions of things like "beliefs" or "desires"
or "intelligent agents" is in point of fact discussion about certain
specific patterns of behavior evinced by entities and systems encountered in
the world. Such a view of the mental life stands in contrast to various positions
that Elton calls "Cartesian."  Ranging from the supernatural dualism
of Descartes himself to the argument that all talk of mental life can
eventually be eliminated in favor of talk simply about purely physical
brain-states, each of these views holds that we must distinguish between the
behaviors of apparently intelligent agents and "something inside"
that determines whether or not that entity is in fact thinking at all. 
Famously, Dennett rejects any such distinction, arguing that anything that
behaved in sufficiently complicated ways would simply be intelligent,
and no further evidence about the internal workings of such an agent should
ever, or could ever, persuade us otherwise.  An explanation of this view
occupies two of Elton’s central chapters, the first concerning Dennett’s idea
of the various "stances" we can take to the explanation of various
entities, each of which is distinct in its uses and possibilities from the
others, and the second treating the related idea that there are "real
patterns" in the behavior of entities, patterns only discernible from the
standpoint of the so-called "intentional stance."  Elton’s treatment
of this latter idea is most interesting, as it does good service to "Real
Patterns," one of Dennett’s most difficult€”because most evocative€”papers.
Elton is right to highlight the importance of this work to the overall
understanding Dennett’s thought, and his treatment of the connection between
Dennett’s account of our ability to identify and respond to such patterns and
his interpretation of Darwinian natural selection is very illuminating.

Less successful, to my mind, is the
analysis of Dennett’s view of consciousness, particularly as evinced in his
major work, Consciousness Explained. It has been said by some critics
that the title of that book ought really to be "Consciousness Explained Away,"
and it is certainly the case that the ideas there have been amongst the most
controversial in Dennett’s thought. In large part, the debate stems from the
fact that Dennett argues that all facts about conscious experience€”what it is
we see and hear when we see and hear anything€”is explicable simply in terms of
either the elementary unselfconscious awareness that controls our day-to-day
motions, or in terms of our propensities to report upon certain of our
experiences in a self-aware manner.  For Dennett, it seems, my considered
experience of a red apple is irreducible, in that it cannot be explained in
terms of some set of physical states of my body and environment; at the same
time, however, the experience is both explicable and wholly non-mysterious,
since my seeing the apple is no more than that I behave in a host of ways,
including especially the tendency to claim that I see an apple.  Critics of
such a view have often tended to focus upon the loss, under such an account, of
the apparently qualitative aspect of such an experience, the fact that I do not
take myself merely to report that I have seen an apple, but really to have seen
an apple, to have had a genuine image before me (or perhaps a genuine apple
before me). Elton, while treating of some of the objections and controversies
surrounding the account of consciousness, seems to skirt some of this
controversy more than tackle it head-on.  In particular, while he acknowledges
that there have been disputes about the possibility of a separation between the
behaviors generally associated with sense-experience, and actual
sense-experience itself, and treats of some of Dennett’s dealings with these,
the approach is rather to let Dennett’s counter-assertions stand pat, even
suggesting that there may be nothing beyond simple difference of opinion to
decide the issue.  At the very least, I would have like to see more explicit
acknowledgment of the controversial nature of Dennett’s view here (something
Dennett himself readily admits).  Too, there is the telling omission€”which to
his credit Elton acknowledges€”of the related, and significant, essay on "Quining
Qualia."  Perhaps Elton finds the topic too messy.  (Certainly, much of
the current philosophical literature on conscious experience is often
unpleasant.)  However, I think a deeper analysis of this issue would have added
to the book.

Overall, Elton focuses more on explication than
critical treatment of Dennett’s work.  This is fine, and should prove highly
useful to someone wanting to sort out how it all fits together.  While I found
no places where I disagreed with Elton’s account, I did sometimes find myself
wishing for a more pointed analysis of some of the trickier elements of the
philosophy.  On the one hand, Elton does point out where Dennett has changed
his mind, or even conflicted with himself. On the other hand, he does not
generally go in much for pressing Dennett too hard, and sometimes lets him off
a little too easy when it comes to the tendency, noted in my introductory
remarks, to proceed less by careful argument than by compelling, if elusive,
story-telling.  Someone with already-developed views of Dennett will probably
want more treatment of fine points concerning, for instance, how exactly we are
to distinguish his ideas from those of the functionalists and representationalists
who are put forward here as his opponents, and doubtless there will be critics
of Dennett who would wish that their own views received more detailed treatment. 
For the reader seeking an overall picture of the work, or for someone who has
read one or two of Dennett’s books, and would like to know where to turn next,
Elton’s book is highly recommended.

© 2004 Martin Allen

Martin Allen is an ABD student in
philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, and a doctoral candidate in
computer science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  His research
interests include artificial intelligence, mathematical logic, and theoretical
computer science.

Categories: Philosophical