Daniel Dennett

From Conservapedia

Daniel Dennett is a philosophy professor at Tufts University who actively promotes the naturalistic world view through such books as Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

Conscious Philosophy

Dennett is widely regarded as one of the premier philosophers in the world in the area of consciousness and his book Consciousness Explained is regarded by some as among the most important text in naturalist philosophy of the mind. In it, he proposes his initial multiple drafts model of consciousness, where he proposes that there is no single source of consciousness (no conscious qualia, as proposed by many of his contemporaries).

He has been heavily criticized by some of his peers for denying the existence of qualia and sticking with his naturalist models of consciousness (he later expanded the multiple drafts model to the fame in the brain model in his 2005 book Sweet Dreams) as he insists that there is no evidence, and that neurological science will, in time, progress to make the idea of qualia, or the source of seemingly inexplicable functions in the mind, obsolete.

Dennett has also been a proponent of Evolutionary Psychology as well as Richard Dawkins' idea of the meme. This lead to some notable clashes with paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.