Daniel Dennett: Personal Life

Daniel Dennett is an American philosopher currently living in North Andover, Massachusetts. He has written several books on philosophy, including the one I chose to study, Breaking the Spell. Dennett lives in North Andover with his wife Susan, and he has two children, a son, Peter, and a daughter, Andrea, and three grandchildren.

Despite being a self-professed and vocal atheist and secularist, Dennett grew up in a Christian home, going to Sunday school and attending church. In an interview with American Scientist, Dennett tells the reporter that he still has several Bible verses memorized and that he is glad of it, and that he has a sister who teaches religious education[1]. He was born in Boston in 1942, to Daniel Dennett Jr., and has two sisters (This Dennett is Daniel Dennett III, officially, though he prefers not to use the title to “confuse librarians”)[2]. Dennett spent part of his childhood in Lebanon during World War II, where his father was an intelligence agent – a spy – posing as a member of the embassy in Beirut. He and his family returned to the United States in 1947 after his father died in a mysterious plane crash, leaving behind Babar, a pet gazelle.

Dennett grew up in the shadow of his father’s memory. He said, in an article in the Guardian, “It was assumed by all that I would eventually go to Harvard and become a professor.”[3] Eventually, he did attend Harvard, but not until he had done stints at PhilipsExeterAcademy and WesleyanUniversity. While at Wesleyan, he read Willard van Orman Quine’s book From a Logical Point of View, and immediately after wrote a letter to Harvard requesting a transfer so that he could work with Quine.

Dennett is an avid sailor, as well as an accomplished sculptor and jazz pianist. According to a friend by the name of John Graham, Dennett returned from his honeymoon in Greece with a block of marble, which he proceeded to carve into a statue of a man reading a book. Apparently he has such great skill with sculpting that he seriously considered it as a career.[4] He is also the owner of an antique robotic dog, which he acquired at a store in Paris. It was supposedly made in the 1950s in France, and Dennett has offered a reward for information about its purpose and origin.[5]

Currently a professor of philosophy at Tufts University in Boston, Daniel Dennett has led a long and successful academic career. He is currently a co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and a member of the Secular Coalition of America advisory board. He has lectured at Oxford, in Adelaide, Australia, and in Paris. At Tufts, he is a co-founder and co-director of the Curricular Software Studios, and he has helped to set up various exhibits at museums such as the Smithsonian, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the ComputerMuseum in Boston. Dennett has been awarded several fellowships, including: two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and one at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioural Science. In 2004, the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year.

Dennett has written several books on philosophy, especially in evolutionary science. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology
  • Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
  • The Mind's I
  • Content and Consciousness
  • The Intentional Stance (6th printing)
  • Consciousness Explained
  • Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
  • Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness
  • Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds (Representation and Mind
  • Freedom Evolves
  • Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness
  • Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
  • Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language, co-authored with Maxwell Bennett, Peter Hacker, and John Searle

Breaking The Spell

Daniel Dennett’s most recent book, Breaking The Spell, takes a scientific approach to look at the natural evolution of religion. In this section, I will be examining five passages from the book, listed below:

  1. Page 93 “Like all animal brains, human brains have evolved to deal with the specific problems of the environments in which they must operate. The social and linguistic environment that coevolved with human brains gives human beings powers that no other species enjoys, but also created problems that folk religions apparently evolved to handle. The apparent extravagance of religious practices can be accounted for in the austere terms of evolutionary biology.”
  2. Page 151 “The obvious expensiveness of folk religion, a challenge to biology, can be accounted for by hypotheses that are not yet confirmed but testable. Probably the excess population of imaginary agents generated by the HADD yielded candidates to press into service as decision aids, in divination, or as shaman’s accomplices, in health maintenance, for instance. These co-opted or exapted mental constructs were then subjected to extensive design revision under the selective pressure for reproductive prowess.”
  3. Page 152 “As human culture grew and people became more reflective, folk religion became transformed into organized religion; the free-floating rationales of the earlier designs were supplemented and sometimes replaced by carefully crafted reasons as religions became domesticated”
  4. Page 198 “The human proclivity for groupishness is less calculated and prudential than in appears in some economic models, but also more complicated that the evolved herding instinct of some animals. What complicates the picture is human language and culture, and the perspective of memes permits us to comprehend how the phenomena of human allegiance are influenced by a mixture of free-floating and well-tethered rationales. We can make progress by acknowledging that submission to a religion need not be cast as a deliberate economic decision, while also recognizing the analytic and predictive power of the perspective that views religions as designed systems competing in a dynamic marketplace for adherents with different needs and tastes.”
  5. Page 246 “The belief that belief in God is so important that it must not be subjected to the risks of disconfirmation or serious criticism has led the devout to “save” their beliefs by making them incomprehensible even to themselves. The result is that even the professors don’t really know what they are professing. This makes the goal of either proving or disproving God’s existence a quixotic quest – but also for that reason not very important.”

Excerpt I

“Like all animal brains, human brains have evolved to deal with the specific problems of the environments in which they must operate. The social and linguistic environment that coevolved with human brains gives human beings powers that no other species enjoys, but also created problems that folk religions apparently evolved to handle. The apparent extravagance of religious practices can be accounted for in the austere terms of evolutionary biology.”

Dennett’s main idea here is fairly clear. He thinks that our capacity for higher-level language, reason, and engineering has brought with it an equally large faculty for assigning agents, feelings, and ideas to other people and things. This is evident when people we know and care about die. We continue to think thinks such as “I wonder if she’d like…” or “Does he know I’m…” even though the person is deceased. This creates a strong attachment to the person’s body, though the practical side to us knows that corpses are potential sources of disease and should be disposed of. One of Dennett’s theories is that folk religions provided a way to safely remove a corpse while preserving the memory of the person’s spirit, or as Dennett puts it, by creating a “virtual person”. The extravagance of the funeral ceremonies serve to validate this. Dennett believes that these folk religions evolved in as natural and unconsciously as language did, as a natural next-step or coping mechanism for a species that was evolving to be a worldwide powerhouse.

Having not studied evolutionary biology, I can only analyze this excerpt with logic, rather than comparing it to scientific truths. The idea that religion coevolved with other social roles makes sense to me; if other similar actions evolved through responses to cultural stimulation, why couldn’t folk religions do the same? I think this is an important idea of Dennett’s, because it sets up his entire premise: that religion evolved as a natural phenomenon and should, like any other natural phenomenon, be subjected to scientific study. While I may disagree on his other ideas on religion, I so think an impartial study of religion would be interesting, to say the least.

Dennett’s argument follows in the mode of inductive logic. He looks at documented and accepted true cases of cultural evolution and extrapolates this data to include religions. His theory of folk religions as coping mechanisms makes sense when you look at how people react to news of a death and their need for “closure”; rituals involving the dead are designed, intentionally or not, to provide spiritual healing, in a way. They are a way of alleviating the emotional pain and uncertainty that a person experiences in the wake of a death.

Excerpt II

Page 151 “The obvious expensiveness of folk religion, a challenge to biology, can be accounted for by hypotheses that are not yet confirmed but testable. Probably the excess population of imaginary agents generated by the HADD yielded candidates to press into service as decision aids, in divination, or as shaman’s accomplices, in health maintenance, for instance. These co-opted or exapted mental constructs were then subjected to extensive design revision under the selective pressure for reproductive prowess.”

HADD, or hyperactive agent detection device, is a characteristic of humans to assign human qualities to non-human objects, or to assign ideas and thoughts to other people. Dennett theorizes that in overcompensation, our HADD centres create more human-like “people”, or agents, than we need. Some of these are adapted to help serve in folk religion rituals, such as in helping shamans with healing. With the proposed evolutionary tendency to animism, that is, giving non-living objects the characteristics of living things, such a theory makes sense. The offspring of animism are still noticeable in today’s society; think of someone encouraging their car to start or yelling at a computer.

Dennett says that the inclusion of folk religions is an “expensive” one for biology, and the fact that it has survived so long means that it must have some great gain to offset this biological cost. Whether this gain is merely to provide people with spiritual comfort or to provide meaning for these extra agents, there must be some tangible evidence of a benefit.

Personally, for this excerpt I find the idea of “hypotheses that are not yet confirmed but testable” to be the most interesting part. Being science-oriented, I find the idea of testing hypotheses interesting, especially because of the idea being presented for testing. Dennett is saying that belief in God or gods is inherently similar to hypnosis, and that people who are devoutly religious exhibit many of the same behaviours as those under hypnotic spells. While I may have personal conflicts with this idea, the theory is nevertheless interesting. It is easily testable, as Dennett says, though the experiment has not been tested, or, if it has, the results have not yet been published.

Another of Dennett’s untested hypotheses is this idea proposed by a Nicholas Humphrey, coined the “economic resource management” hypothesis, which examines why people are susceptible to hypnosis and religion. He likens it to the body’s other natural cure resources. The body has many such systems, including vomiting and fever to remove toxins and infection, respectively. Both are helpful in moderation, but can also lead to hurting the body rather than helping it. As a result, the body rarely pulls out a full-scale immune response, doing so only when it knows there is hope for a speedy recovery. Hypnosis, and maybe religion, act as a catalyst in this decision and “pull out all the stops”, so to speak, to provoke a stronger response.

The strengths and weaknesses in this argument both come from the fact that none of Dennett’s ideas have been confirmed by science. It follows logically that a susceptibility to animism and hypnosis could be an easy fore-runner of organized religion, but Dennett lacks empirical evidence to back up his theory. Some people will believe in and accept his theories on the basis of his logic and skills as a salesperson, ehile others will demand scientific proof even where none is currently available (similar, ironically, to the God debate).

Excerpt III

Page 152 “As human culture grew and people became more reflective, folk religion became transformed into organized religion; the free-floating rationales of the earlier designs were supplemented and sometimes replaced by carefully crafted reasons as religions became domesticated”

This quote is, again, fairly self-explanatory. It shows what Dennett understands to be the progression from natural folk-religions to the “domesticated” religions we have today. As people became more civilized and more organized, their religions had to evolve with them; only by now much of the supplementation was being done artificially, by humans.

As people became more reflective of their personal situations and more philosophical, they changed their religions to become more “artful” and “sophisticated”. Shamans and priests, when pressed, admit that there are certain elements of deception involved in what they do. Still, people persist in believing in religions. As a result of religion’s domestication, secrecy, deception, and “belief in belief”, that is, the idea that belief cannot be challenged, came into the picture.
As with any human institution, there will be some level of secrecy in religion (this is an interesting point for a human nature discussion), but this domestication may not be a bad thing, as Dennett seems to be insinuating. The domestication of plants and animals, in the form of farming, was a welcome addition to the lives of our ancestors and marked a huge turning point in our development as a species. By some reports (though not all), organized religion arose at around the same time. Since the harnessing of what comes naturally, agriculture, is seen as such a good thing, why shouldn’t the same goodness apply in the similar situation of religion?

Having not experienced “natural” folk religions and being a part of an organized one, my opinion here is biased. I think that, while organized religion has its flaws, it is overall a good institution, and there is no reason and no point in lamenting the change.

Excerpt IV

Page 198 “The human proclivity for groupishness is less calculated and prudential than it appears in some economic models, but also more complicated that the evolved herding instinct of some animals. What complicates the picture is human language and culture, and the perspective of memes permits us to comprehend how the phenomena of human allegiance are influenced by a mixture of free-floating and well-tethered rationales. We can make progress by acknowledging that submission to a religion need not be cast as a deliberate economic decision, while also recognizing the analytic and predictive power of the perspective that views religions as designed systems competing in a dynamic marketplace for adherents with different needs and tastes.”

Dennett’s main focus in this section is that the “grouping” nature of humanity is more complex than a herding instinct, but not as intentional as some may think. The factor that complicated this situation – as with many others – is the human capacity for complex language. Our language enables us to comprehend a wide variety of ideas and feelings, which is one of the things that set us apart from other animals. Nevertheless, what Dennett is trying to say here is that religions are a balance of instinctual grouping behaviours and calculated economic decisions. People desire to be a part of a group, but they have to shop around a bit, so to speak, before they want to commit to anything.

This is a strong and relevant point. It can be easily noticeable in high schools that people will join or form groups almost without fail. These tendencies reflect the strong propensity of our species to being a part of a belief system; even if it isn’t a religion, most people will identify to being atheists or agnostics or anarchists or Conservatives or some other organization. People have an inherent need to belong.

While saying that there is a strong evolutionary group instinct, Dennett says that this isn’t the only reason for people to join religions. Religions are carefully crafted to attract people to join or to remain a member. For example, Christian religions haven’t required dietary restrictions or circumcisions since the Council of Jerusalem, because these are rather unattractive to potential converts or “Christian pagans”. In its early days, Christianity was adapted to suit the needs of the people, not the other way around[6]. This reflects the need to garner followers. Religions today still try to attract devotees, though drastic changes to creed and practise are rare.