Friday, April 19, 2024

Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)

Prominent philosopher of mind, apostle of Darwinism, and New Atheist writer Daniel Dennett has died.  I have been very critical of Dennett over the years, but he had two great strengths.  First, he wrote with crystal clarity, no matter how difficult the subject matter.  Second, as even we critics of materialism can happily concede, he could be very insightful on the distinctive nature of psychological modes of description and explanation (even if he went wrong when addressing how these relate metaphysically to physical modes of description and explanation).  It is also only fair to acknowledge that of the four original New Atheist tomes (the others penned by Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens) his Breaking the Spell, despite its faults, was the one that was actually intellectually interesting.  RIP

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48 comments:

  1. SacredKnowingApril 19, 2024 at 6:00 PM

    Oh boy.

    He was an extremely good philosopher, everywhere except in his area of specialty (philosophy of mind). Probably would have better spent his time studying Jungian types.

    There's a connection between Darwinism and Communism (both are Jungian feelers type theories, although Darwin himself was an extroverted thinker, in fact, the example Jung chose for extroverted thinking).

    Socionics theory reverses the meaning of extroverted and introverted thinking for reasons nobody knows. Maybe gender bender theory.

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  2. DiogoApril 19, 2024 at 6:09 PM

    Professor Feser, could you please make a future post about Hegel and what do you make of him as a philosopher ?

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    1. vdortaApril 20, 2024 at 12:18 PM

      I support this post. This was my biggest problem in philosophy when young.

      Delete
  3. TalmidApril 19, 2024 at 6:40 PM

    Man, that is awful. It is aways not only very sad but strange to lose someone like that. Quite a shock.

    That he rest in peace.

    And, Dr. Feser have you commented on Mr. Dennet book before? You mentioning that he writed the more interesting book of the four horsemen got me curious.

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    1. vdortaApril 20, 2024 at 12:19 PM

      Many times. Search it right here.

      Delete
    2. Vini TApril 23, 2024 at 5:19 AM

      Hey, Talmid.

      One very clear moment- and my favorite- is when Ed addresses new atheism in his classic book TLS.

      Even though it may sound unfair to quote the book - because there are a lot of other good examples - it gives a broad example of Dennett's attitude against his adversaries in philosophy, for example.

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    3. TalmidApril 23, 2024 at 7:35 PM

      Hey, Vini! I also found Dr. Feser comment on Dennett book: https://web.archive.org/web/20071014120942/rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2007/06/not_so_bright.html

      It truly gives not the best image of the man atitude against theists.

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    4. Vini TApril 24, 2024 at 5:36 AM

      In that review, Ed says:

      "That someone with Dennett’s influence among philosophers should feel he can get away with such contemptible intellectual frivolousness says more about the current state of the profession than it does about the traditional arguments of natural theology."

      Oh, boy. If we could only knew how that would affect all the other intellectual areas in the future... I'm glad Ed noticed that way back - and incisively contested it.

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  4. AnonymousApril 19, 2024 at 7:40 PM

    Let us pray for his soul.

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    1. AnonymousApril 22, 2024 at 9:49 AM

      Just out of curiosity, what is the point of praying for his (or any other deceased person's) soul?

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    2. DNWApril 22, 2024 at 4:37 PM

      " Just out of curiosity, what is the point of praying for his (or any other deceased person's) soul?"


      Since I am already here replying to other comments addressed to me, and pending a more correct answer, I'll post one to yours, which was not addressed to ne.

      Others will no doubt chime in with catechised responses.

      But speaking broadly and somewhat casually, Catholics believe in God, the immortality of the soul, and the "Four Last Things": Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.

      They have also developed a doctrine on the basis of both scripture and private revelation [both of old, and as in the case of Fatima more recently] that asserts that souls as yet unfitted for the glory of the Beatific Vision but not deserving of damnation [essentially an exclusion] , dwell for some period in a place of purgation where they are purified (one might say psychologically by way of analogy) and become capable of actually experiencing it.

      I guess there is also an element of justice and compensation or balancing out the tally involved so to speak.

      Inasmuch as disembodied souls have nothing further i.e., no ability, to actually physically offer up anything positive in the way of redress, they can produce no effects, others still in time are thought able to do some of that particular aspect in their name and shorten that aspect of their purification.

      At least that is the way it appears to me based on my readings.

      Obviously this will make no sense to atheists, to once saved always saved "carnal Christian" Protestants, or to those incapable conceiving of an absolutely self consistently holy God who can neither deceive nor be deceived and in whose presence absolutely nothing deceptive or ulterior, or manipulative can stand.

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    3. AnonymousApril 23, 2024 at 10:28 AM

      DNW,

      So, if I understand you, praying for Dennett's soul would be a sort of conditional act: if he is in Purgatory, then let his exit be speedy (or something like that).

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    4. AnonymousApril 23, 2024 at 11:02 AM

      DNW at 4.37PM

      Do you believe in the real existance of any of the concepts and scenarios mentioned in your response DBW?

      Delete
    5. DNWApril 23, 2024 at 10:54 PM

      "AnonymousApril 23, 2024 at 10:28 AM
      DNW,

      So, if I understand you, praying for Dennett's soul would be a sort of conditional act: if he is in Purgatory, then let his exit be speedy (or something like that)."

      So, if I understand the idea of purgatory, then yes, something like that.

      The moral universe thus represented is in the broadest and most general non Catholic terms what moral psychologists have referred to as a karmic one. Meaning only that there are causes in the form of individual agent acts, and they have effects that entail consequences that if morally damaging must in justice be balanced out if not confessed and shriven.

      The door has been opened, but one must also be clean to pass through. And that point is where Catholics and Protestants differ on the effect of the Cross.

      At least that it how the situation reads to me.

      But I am sure some priest or practicing Catholic will come along soon and give you the complete lowdown if you are really interested.

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  5. DNWApril 19, 2024 at 8:16 PM

    You are very charitable.

    And you seem better able than most to separate and appreciate - or credit - the character of the product from the character of the producer.

    Must be, in part at least, that Christian thing you've got going there.

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    1. AnonymousApril 20, 2024 at 9:59 AM

      The professor is very charitable, indeed. As you know, he eloquently eulogised the atheist philosopher Quentin Smith. It's the " Christian thing," and probably his professional respect for a fellow philosopher.

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    2. DNWApril 20, 2024 at 12:03 PM


      Yeah, so sometimes we ought to not merely take tactical notice of and personally admit the competencies of the (figuratively) anathematized, but, under certain condign conditions, to publicly remark upon it and to give the devil his due, so to speak.

      And too, given the link and the "Closer to the Truth" video embedded there, I think it was especially forbearing of Feser to make no analogical mention of Jabba the Hutt with regard to our subject.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=90BTBqRPbqk


      One of the Dennett videos I have found most interesting given the topicality of atheist Dawkin's recent announcement of an instrumental preference for a Christian society molded by the Christian concept of God, is Dennet's similarly instrumental defence of the illusionary concept of free will, which if defined in any conventional sense he seems to deny.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vBrSdlOhIx4&pp=ygUORGFuaWVsIGRlbm5ldHQ%3D

      Now, he is quite right about the cruciality of the concept of free will to law as we have known it (previous to now anyway) and to take it further, of intentionality, and purpose as well.

      Renowned positivist legal philosopher Herbert Hart went on record saying as much two generations ago in his book, "The Concept of Law". So I don't know how much credit Dennet expected for his observation; but it was entertaining to see it made all the same and to see his pleasure and self-satisfacion in having made it.

      As for his fate? I'm pretty sure that like most philosophers he wanted nothing to do with heaven anyway, even if there were an afterlife. As he noted, he was not known for his humility. After all, what could God offer of interest to Daniel Dennett that a simple mirror could not?

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    3. Walter Van den AckerApril 21, 2024 at 4:12 AM

      If heaven really is a good place, then I am sure Dennett does want something to do with it.
      If, however, heaven is no bettet than any alternative, it doesn't matter anyway.

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    4. The DeuceApril 21, 2024 at 9:40 AM

      I confess that in Ed's shoes, I would have been hard-pressed to avoid at least a mild joke about whether Daniel Dennett ever really existed in the first place.

      Delete
    5. DNWApril 21, 2024 at 12:27 PM

      Walter Van den Acker April 21, 2024 at 4:12 AM
      If heaven really is a good place, then I am sure Dennett does want something to do with it.
      If, however, heaven is no bettet than any alternative, it doesn't matter anyway. "

      Well, you may be sure about him, but I am not. Nor can I think up any convincing reasons based on the general assumptions of the Christian faith concerning an afterlife and the concept of heaven, why it would be likely he would.

      Now, what seems most striking to me when atheists in general consider the concept of heaven or the Beatific Vision, is the vulgar poverty of their imaginations, even considering the fact that we are stipulating that we are treating the matter hypothetically. Materialists, no matter how clever, how broad their purported interests, or sophisticated their tastes, smell of the barnyard, and have that beast of the field vibe Aristotle remarked upon. They think 'heaven" as Christians conceive of it, would be tedious. "Is there sex in heaven?" they seem quick to ask.

      Even the limited imagination of a self proclaimed working class slob humbly reporting his supposed near death experience, carries a descriptive force and emotional impact which makes the afterlife conceptions of the naturalist philosopher appear juvenile or even idiotic by way of comparison. This is because they, despite their professions of objectivity and altruism, actually see reality through the filter of their own egotism. Emphasis on "ism"

      Is it any wonder then that many of the type being free to choose, would hope for extinction rather than an afterlife which confronted them with the limits of their own egos, and the metaphysical poverty of their mundane psychological investments? And that if, therefore, an afterlife did exist along the Christian lines, they would first choose extinction, or if having no other option, a fall into hell.

      A. J. AYER:
      " My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. They have not weakened my conviction that there is no god. I trust that my remaining an atheist will allay the anxieties of my fellow supporters of the British Humanist Association, the Rationalist Press Association and the South Place Ethical Society"

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    6. AnonymousApril 21, 2024 at 9:06 PM

      Sir Alfred Jules Ayer
      from his biographer
      https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/24/reviews/001224.24spurlit.html?_r=1&oref=login

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    7. Walter Van den AckerApril 22, 2024 at 8:21 AM

      DNW

      Is this rant of yours meant as some sort of reply to my post?
      If it is, I suggest you reread my post because you've missed the mark
      by at least a few (nautic) miles.

      Delete
    8. ficino4mlApril 22, 2024 at 1:34 PM

      @DNW: re this of yours "I'm pretty sure that like most philosophers he wanted nothing to do with heaven anyway, even if there were an afterlife."

      Are you getting your information about the views of most philosophers from survey results or from some other source? I am assuming from what you say that you suppose most philosophers are not Christian or Muslim.

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    9. DNWApril 22, 2024 at 3:02 PM

      " ficino4ml
      April 22, 2024 at 1:34 PM
      @DNW: re this of yours "I'm pretty sure that like most philosophers he wanted nothing to do with heaven anyway, even if there were an afterlife."

      Are you getting your information about the views of most philosophers from survey results or from some other source? I am assuming from what you say that you suppose most philosophers are not Christian or Muslim."

      Yes, that is what I am assuming so far as professional academic philosophers go.

      There might be modern day Muslim "philosophers", but other than a couple of sketchy possibilities on YouTube, who comment on sociopolitical matters, I am familiar with none.

      Of the possibly hundred plus influential modern philosophers I read in school, none that I recall were believing or comitted Christians apart from a couple - three French phenomenologists.

      If you want stats, all you need do is a google search and you will have more data than you could possibly need.

      https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/logical-take/201402/why-62-philosophers-are-atheists-part-i#:~:text=%E2%80%9CIs%20atheism%20irrational%3F%E2%80%9D%20the,%25%20in%20the%20general%20population).

      So if you want to talk about Marcel, or Jaspers, or Maritan, or Dallas Willard. OK. You can toss in Anscombe and her husband too for good measure. CS. Lewis does not count nor does Gilson as philosophers per se, nor do the various other Christian apologists, as they start off from a Christian or believer's perspective and are not philosophers per se. Collingwood, or Oakeshott or the Idealists of the pre WW1 era? Not germane to the point.

      Yeah, there are modern Catholic moral and legal "philosophers", but few are technical analysts in the way Feser is or has been; or the way some of his new confreres in the field of metaphysics are.

      The relevant class are the philosophers of the Anglo-American analytic tradition. And though there are those who take a pose of studied nescience, the big names have overwhelmingly been non or anti Christian faith.

      Until, that is, the practical results of their position rise up socially to bite them on the ass.

      Anyway, the cited history of 20th century analytic philosophy and the 62% in the Psych Today article are close enough for govenment, or combox, work.

      Hope it helps.

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    10. DNWApril 22, 2024 at 3:56 PM

      Walter Van den Acker
      April 22, 2024 at 8:21 AM
      " DNW

      Is this rant of yours meant as some sort of reply to my post?
      If it is, I suggest you reread my post because you've missed the mark
      by at least a few (nautic) miles."

      Golly. Perhaps you ought to reread your own comment; and then concentrate on expressing yourself more clearly if you are so upset. And I say this with no rancor at all, assuming that English is not in fact your native language.

      Yet inasmuch as I quoted your comment which had appeared in the reply thread, it should be obvious that I was in fact utilizing your remark regarding what you imagine Dennett would want, as the launching point for an expansion upon my previously made comment.

      Now, precisely what you suppose you meant, if you did not mean that he would NOT prefer to figuratively "reign in hell than serve in heaven", is best known to you. Maybe all you meant was that if there was something pleasant to be wanted, you are sure that he would want it regardless of his previous stances. Assuming of course, that he could want anything, or want to want anything: like, say, fresh air or ice water.

      And for all I know about you or your views, you may be just as as unperturbed as I am at the prospect of preening atheists popping like maggots on a hot griddle. Not that he necessarily is, or would be; sneering and prideful enemy of Christ's Church though he superficially appeared to be.

      Now, if it were up to me, I'd probably be tempted to give him somewhat of a break, though I obviously know nothing of the metaphysical ramifications, if indeed there are any, of his aggressive atheist hobby.

      In any event, though my comment was longish, it seems temperate and civil enough. As does this one, upon review.

      Maybe you should be the one doing the rereading.

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    11. AnonymousApril 22, 2024 at 10:27 PM

      Most philosophers are atheists or agnostics, but those who specialize in the philosophy of religion are mostly theists.

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    12. TonyApril 23, 2024 at 7:19 AM

      DNW's comment about philosophers

      As for his fate? I'm pretty sure that like most philosophers he wanted nothing to do with heaven anyway, even if there were an afterlife.

      made me wonder about the similar perspectives of a very different group: poets. I wondered because, while there is no special reason why any large group of X in general should be atheist or theist in different proportions than the general population, it seems to me that atheist philosophers themselves wouldn't necessarily classify poetry as a pursuit that inherently meant one was more like to have a bias about there being a God or an afterlife. And to go along with that, if there is no such thing as an immortal soul (or a God, or an afterlife), it is hard to see why being a poet would constitute a bias toward theism.

      Yet, in recalling the ancient views of poets as being "god-touched", inspired by the Muses, and often striving to put to word interior experiences not easily rendered in word, it seems to me likely that poets as a class are - at least probably - more open to there being a world not of the senses and excellences more excellent than those of prosaic, practical bodily life. And if so, it is plausible that poets are not equally likely to be atheists as the general population. In doing a quick search for any numbers, all I found was this:

      Despite atheism existing for thousands of years, there is no large body of quality atheist poetry. For example, Wikipedia, which was founded by an atheist and agnostic, has no article on atheist poetry, yet it does have articles on Christian poetry and biblical poetry.

      suggesting my initial guess is probably correct.

      Any ideas?

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    13. DNWApril 23, 2024 at 9:44 AM

      "Despite atheism existing for thousands of years, there is no large body of quality atheist poetry. For example, Wikipedia, which was founded by an atheist and agnostic, has no article on atheist poetry, yet it does have articles on Christian poetry and biblical poetry.

      suggesting my initial guess is probably correct.

      Any ideas?      "

      Huh. I don't know. I have never thought about poets myself in other than a largely negative way. Excluding examples of epic poetry, of course.

      There might be Classical era poets who delivered their philosophies in verse, Lucretius for example; but I acknowledge that that is not ( nor is epic or narrative poetry) quite the same thing as lyric poetry.

      I earlier mentioned Maritain, Marcel, and Jaspers as examples of philosophers , albeit Continental, who were Christian.

      Yet I don't actually recall if even Marcel and Maritain were conventional Catholics.

      It was bad enough slogging through their writings. Delving into their orthodoxy would have been more than I could have taken.

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    14. DNWApril 23, 2024 at 10:11 AM

      @ Tony,

      I dont know why, but your comment provoked a memory of wandering the stacks and coming across the work of F.P. Ramsey.

      Maybe it was the contrast between the opaqueness of the existentialists I mentioned, and his style that caused me to recollect it.

      At any rate, at the time, I was shocked that anyone could write so lucidly, despite the reputation of the later ordinary language school for attempting it.

      Initially I had no idea that he died at 26 many decades before, or that he had been well-known in his own era.

      I thought it was some overlooked discovery I had made.

      Strange looking fellow, though. Never suspected that.

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    15. Walter Van den AckerApril 23, 2024 at 10:28 AM

      DNW

      Whatever Dennett believed during his lifetime would be falsified of after death he was confronted with the Beatific Vision. If it's truly that magnificent, Dennett and everybody else will accept it.
      As for 'civil enough', calling a prominent philosopher's beliefs 'an agressive atheist hobby' may be civil enough for Donald Trump and you, but I call it condescending and rude.
      I don't agree with most of Ed Feser's ideas, but I would never say he has an aggressive theist hobby.
      It doesn't upset me, but it is no basis for any serious discussion.


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    16. DNWApril 23, 2024 at 10:53 AM

      @ Tony ... again

      A modifying comment on my last observation regarding Frank Ramsey.

      For some reason, I initially expected all English philosophers to present like those English politicians one saw in WWII documentaries; to look like Anthony Eden, or Louis Mountbatten, or the actor David Niven at the least.

      If they wrote like those fellows sounded, why, then one assumes ...

      Now, I already knew what Socrates the snub nosed pederast looked like, and David Hume and Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill ... but for some reason ...

      I suppose the same can be said with regard to Americans. You think of founding intellectuals such as Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton, and then you see an image of Hilary Putnam channeling Larry Fine of the Three Stooges.

      Regression to the mean is one thing, but given the strict implications of naturalism itself - we recall here Freud's estimation of religion as the self consolation of life's losers - we are left to wonder to what extent the personal may manifest as the political, er, philosophical, more generally.

      We idealistically hope the answer is: "Not too much"

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    17. AnonymousApril 23, 2024 at 4:07 PM

      "Any ideas?"

      I found this Edgar Allen Poe quote, "All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry". Which certainly flirts with atheism, even if it doesn't positively affirm a disbelief in God.

      Sylvia Plath, similarly has some quotes from her journals that don't sit well with any formal religious creed.

      I'm not terribly well versed in poetry in general, so these were the names that popped into my head when I tried to recall the most bleak and depressing poets I could think of.

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    18. AnonymousApril 23, 2024 at 8:49 PM


      Well said, Walter, except that I do agree with Ed Feser most of the time.



      Delete
    19. DNWApril 23, 2024 at 11:20 PM

      "DNW

      Whatever Dennett believed during his lifetime would be falsified of after death he was confronted with the Beatific Vision. If it's truly that magnificent, Dennett and everybody else will accept it.

      Well, that's not the way it works. You have to have the proper disposition and behave yourself first, before being invited in. You don't get to swagger up on an inspection tour and then sample the accommodations before deigning to park your bags.

      Only one God is allowed in the joint at a time: the one who made it. All the rest are guests.

      "As for 'civil enough', calling a prominent philosopher's beliefs 'an agressive atheist hobby' may be civil enough for Donald Trump and you, but I call it condescending and rude."

      You needn't worry. Civility means nothing to him now. He's dead.

      Which implies that he likely is either completely no more, or that if there is some residuum of him persisting, he cannot hear what is being said anyway - given the great distances involved, and the local roar of the flames.

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    20. Walter Van den AckerApril 24, 2024 at 8:33 AM

      DNW

      I am glad you know how it works, but you said God didn't have anything interesting to offer to Dennett.
      Anyway, I am sure Dennett doesn't care about your civility, but, as I said, it's not a basis for a serious discussion, So, I al out of here.

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    21. AnonymousApril 24, 2024 at 11:26 AM


      "You needn't worry. Civility means nothing to him now. He's dead."
      But you can still be civil when referring to him, as Ed Feser was and has been when commenting on other deceased atheist philosophers.

      "given the great distances involved, and the local roar of the flame."
      However perspicacious you fancy yourself to be, surely the state of his soul is beyond your knowledge.

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    22. ficino4mlApril 24, 2024 at 5:26 PM

      @ DNW, thank you for the link to the Psychology Today article. It is very interesting. Not so much as to make me want to subscribe to PT, but still... lol

      The article raises the question, is God's existence brute fact? I had posted a while ago on here about the dispute, whether a brute fact is a fact that has NO explanation or is a fact that has no EXTERNAL explanation, leaving it open that it may afford its own explanation or some such spiel about it. I don't recall my posts about this gaining much traction. Anyway, I think it an important question for moral philosophy as well as for philosophy of religion and/or metaphysics.

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    23. DNWApril 26, 2024 at 7:28 AM

      Ficino4ml , on April 24, 2024 at 5:26 PM, said
      "@ DNW, thank you for the link to the Psychology Today article. It is very interesting. Not so much as to make me want to subscribe to PT, but still... lol

      You are welcome.

      General comment:

      There seems to be a rather stark difference in this space, as in the broader world of philosophical discourse, between those who are interested in philosophical method for the sake of the questions, and those who are interested in making use of its form for advancing a social or sociopolitical agenda. Though, motives might be of course, mixed.

      Nonetheless, when we see some persons squealing about the maintenence of social niceties with regard to programmatically rude and arrogant types who have built a public career on trashing those standards, and whose own announced anthropology is so deconstructionist and radically reductive as to render them an alien moral species - if the concept of species can even be meaningfully preserved - then, one wonders if the pious are in touch with reality at all.

      At the very least, they resemble old ladies at the funeral of an arsonist, who insist the obsequies be punctilliously observed and his crimes not be mentioned. The old ladies, presumably at least, believe in the soul of that "poor sinner", and assume the reality of the human species, and that moral obligations can be derived therefrom.

      However, other perspectives on these logically unwarranted pieties are reasonable, and which are even more unfavorable with regard to this phenomenon.

      The first of these that comes to mind is the famous rules for radicals #4. 'Your rules for thee, but not for me". Now, as a tactic, it only works so long as the target remains naive, or believes that the cost of maintaining the game with a cheat is worth the benefit.

      In the case of Dennett, what's the benefit?

      We see a more serious parallel process as anarchist murderers are accorded due process of law instead of simply being assigned the wolf's head. Or in worse cases where the entire legal system in certain areas has been inhabited by those who are violating every legal norm in order to gain ideologically or personally.

      "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime", says the cynical murderer who has wormed his way into a position of some social prominance and authority. What level of respect in legal circles, does his obituary deserve?

      And then even worse, we get to the level of sheer incoherence. This occurs where people like the Churchlands, or to some extent Dennett himself have conceptually, definitionally migrated right out of not only the folk psychology of humanity, but any coherent anthropology at all which could concievably generate some notion of mutuality.

      That is why the SOB wanted to maintain the illusion of free will and thus legal responsibility and the threat of punishment: So the zombies will not come for him. Is that any less cowardly and contemptible than the Christianity or Aristotelian illusions they critique and mock?

      So, "Ok", says the observer not disposed to be sympathetic ... "I will grant you that you are in "fact" and as you proclaim, a soulless, mindless, loosely conjoined collection of urges in a skin sack; wholly conditioned, determined, and lacking in free will. Now, thou annoying 'thing', granting that you are what you say you are, what the fxxk do you want from me? And why should I care in the least?"

      Well, ferally alert beings that they are, they suspect the logical consequences of their own theories.

      Somebody once asked me on this site what I expect the pseudo teleology spouting self-serving hypocrites to do, threatened as they are by their own ideology. I replied that I expected them to do just as they have done.

      But they know they are not very persuasive.

      ... and that's why they have invented the evolutionary religion of "empathy" to go along with it.

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    24. AnonymousApril 26, 2024 at 12:07 PM

      Hmm. To clarify.
      The phrase " ... one wonders if the pious" , would be less capable of being misunderstood if "these" [aforementioned persons] was read instead of "the". Not the pious in general, but the old ladies in particular.

      And then, " ...tenance", and "ei"

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    25. AnonymousApril 26, 2024 at 5:02 PM

      Daniel Dennett:
      B.A. Harvard. D.Phil Oxford
      Austin Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University
      Published over 20 books
      Married since 1962, two children, 6 grandchildren
      An avid sailor
      R.I.P.
      His legacy will live on in philosophy while others will just fade away into the obscurity of the blogosphere.

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    26. AnonymousApril 27, 2024 at 2:08 PM

      @Ficino4ml

      Whether or not you want to call a necessary being a brute fact is semantic and doesn't actually affect the argument. The author of the Psychology Today article is coming into the discussion in the middle and mischaracterizing the motivation for theists for defining God the way we do. The force of arguments like Aquinas First Way or Leibniz' contingency argument is that (if they work) they show that there must be something that explains these features of the world, and that something must be weird. Our assertion that God does not require an external explanation is not (unless we are running the ontological argument) not merely because we have defined things that way but because the thing that we concluded from our cosmological argument(s) is one which has that property.

      If you want to call that kind of thing a brute fact, you're free to do so, but it changes nothing for the original argument itself. Though, within the context of the Psychology Today article, I'm inclined to think the author actually has a point in that Plantinga made his original case for the irrationality of atheism too strongly. If all the arguments for the existence of God failed (I don't think they do, but for sake of argument, that's what Plantinga started with), we probably should actually be atheist, and any further discussion on that point seems to actually be trying argue that there are arguments for the existence of God that do work (or at least, don't obviously fail).

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    27. AnonymousApril 27, 2024 at 4:56 PM

      "Our assertion that God does not require an external explanation is not (unless we are running the ontological argument) not merely because we have defined things that way"

      There is an extra "not" in there, on a rereading, in case this confused anyone.

      Delete
    28. DNWApril 28, 2024 at 12:29 PM

      If it makes any difference: The 4/26, 12:07 PM correction of the DNW 4/26 , 7:38 AM post, was my own.

      I recall that the initial attempt to post an errata note failed as I rotated the tablet in process, and the comment window disappeared. Apparently I did not reenter the DNW ident., on the second attempt.

      Delete
  6. The Great Thurible of DarknessApril 19, 2024 at 9:23 PM

    So passeth one of the great philosophical beards of modern times.

    Did you ever meet Dennett by chance, Prof. Feser? I know you've written about him a lot over the years.

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  7. AnonymousApril 20, 2024 at 6:31 PM

    Interesting article about Dennett.
    https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/04/philosopher-daniel-dennett-dead-at-82/

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  8. AnonymousApril 21, 2024 at 3:14 PM

    I'll always remember Prof. Dennett for his humor. In his book Consciousness Explained, he writes something like this: The sea squirt wanders the ocean floor to find a home. It attaches itself to a suitable rock and eats its brain because it no longer needs it. It's rather like getting tenure.

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  9. ANONApril 23, 2024 at 5:21 AM

    One of the most important lessons I’ve learned constantly, repeatedly, even unrelentingly:

    The greatest minds of humanity yet had blind spots. They do not cease to be brilliant on that account. We need not fear to honor and respect them for whatever of truth they witness. So I think it eminently charitable and appropriate for Christians to remember Daniel Dennett in precisely the way you have, Dr. Feser.

    Undoubtedly, Tertullian had real concerns of Christians in his time when he famously asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” We must, of course, know something of Jerusalem before we can see Athens in anything of clarity. Even so, Origen and Augustine spoke rather eloquently on what it meant to plunder that “gold” of the Egyptians.

    But I would suggest that even they do not go far enough. Rather, it is “Thomism” in the truest sense that does. Thomas speaks to that gold moreso, even if not in the manner of a question and article. The fact is that what was plundered isn’t merely “stolen”. Not merely “expedient”. It is, in the final analysis, repaid to Athens and Egypt many times over. And so, repaid even to such a mind as Daniel Dennett.

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