Multiple Interactions in the Philosophy of Daniel Dennett, Empirical Sciences and Contemporary Culture

Abstract

This paper will discuss the importance of the work of the contemporary analytic philosopher Daniel Dennett in the empirical sciences from a historical perspective and its impact on psychology in particular. The paper will also delve into his affinities with contemporary cultural changes. Dennett as a philosopher takes natural sciences seriously and, in addition, inspires empirical research himself. Dennett’s most important contributions to the cognitive sciences came from his renewal of the idea of intentionality in the human mind. This proposal has played a central role in the research on primates which was conducted in part to understand the evolutionary origins of our Theory of Mind (ToM). The intentional stance idea was a further, crucial step in the formation of contemporary infancy research studying the emergence of goal-based action interpretation schemata in human babies. Finally, Dennett’s proposal about the hierarchy of physical, design and intentional stances, as well as his selection tower metaphor can be used as tools for organizing the conceptual structure of the history of psychology. This paper specifically shows this relevance regarding the debates about animal teleology, and the relations between behaviorism and cognitivism.