Daniel Dennett: «It’s hard for religious philosophers to get respect from who are themself non-religious philosophers»

(Versión en castellano)

We meet Daniel Dennett (Boston, 1942) in the hall of the hotel in Barcelona where he is staying for tomorrow’s conference at CCCB, where he will speak about freedom and moral agents. This philosopher of science, renowned for his huge educational work, stands out because of his study of consciousness, intentionality, Darwinism and religion. Because of his thoughts about this last topic, he has been called, along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, one of “The Four Horsemen of New Atheism”.

We talk calmly as Dennett sips his beer and thinks over his well-thought-out answers on science, religion, determinism, morale. We still have some time to dust off his rows with Steve Gould and even to chat about the latest movies on artificial intelligence. His evaluative silences prove that Dennett can bring out a deep reflection from any topic we mention.

Let’s start talking about freedom. Did Daniel Dennett freely decide to study Philosophy or he wasn’t a free agent in this choice?

I was a free agent. We don’t want our decisions to be at random. We want to have good reasons, and I had good reasons. Nobody coerced me, I wasn’t drunk at the time, I wasn’t under any terrible illusions, I wasn’t being obsessive… I just thought: “I think this is what I could be good at”. And that’s what free will is, it has nothing to do with determinism.

So, the influence of starting conditions is not in debate. To study Philosophy is your choice, but it also depends on your starting conditions.

Yes, we can’t get away from it, but it is not as bad as it sounds. One of the mistakes people make is that they think that just because we are caused by all the conditions we can’t control our destinations. In my first book on free will I had the example of the Viking spacecraft heading to Mars. When it got to a certain distance there was no possible way to control it from Houston, so they made it autonomous. Now it’s a self-controlling thing. They couldn’t control it, it had to control itself. We want to be self-controlled entities. And some people do it worse than others. And that’s what the real distinction is: those people who can control themselves and those who can’t. It has nothing to do with determinism.

In the autobiography that you wrote in Philosophy now you said that some of your friends were sons of eminent professors at Harvard or MIT, living in their shadows and striving to be worthy of their father’s attention. How did the absence of your father influence in your expectations and choices in those years?