Dennett treasure trove

So, I was looking over the webpage of the Tufts university Center for Cognitive Studies and at first glance they haven't got an awful lot of Daniel Dennett's writings up there. But, thanks to the wonders of Google, I've been able to unearth dozens of papers, columns and lectures that are hosted there but for some reason not linked to by the main page - scratch all that, as Matt helpfully points out, they're all here including this gem responding to various criticisms of Consciousness Explained:

Philosophical books and articles routinely fail to achieve their manifest goal of persuading their intended audiences of their main points. Does this make philosophy any worse off than other writing endeavors? Most published novels are failures of one sort or another, and the press has reported a recent study (whose methodology I wonder about) that concludes that the median number of readers of any paper published in a psychology journal is zero. But it seems to me that philosophy displays a particularly feckless record, with such a huge gap between authorial pretense and effect achieved that it is perhaps more comic than pathetic. In one weak moment I found myself thinking that perhaps some of our French colleagues have the right idea: deliberate obscurantism and the striking of stylized poses--since the goal of persuading by clear, precise analysis and argument is so manifestly beyond us. But that worldly weariness passed, I'm happy to say, and my cock-eyed American optimism returned. My ambition continues to be to change people's minds, and not just to win people over to my way of doing philosophy, as Bo Dahlbom suggests. But I admit that it is harder than I had thought. It's hard enough to get a good idea, but sometimes it's even harder, apparently, to get others to see what the idea is, and why it's good.

And yet another priceless dig at the "zombie hunch":

Do you know what a zagnet is? It is something that behaves exactly like a magnet, is chemically and physically indistinguishable from a magnet, but is not really a magnet! (Magnets have a hidden essence, I guess, that zagnets lack.) Do you know what a zombie is? A zombie is somebody (or better, something) that behaves exactly like a normal conscious human being, and is neuroscientifically indistinguishable from a human being, but is not conscious. I don't know anyone who thinks zagnets are even "possible in principle", but Nagel and Searle think zombies are.

Comments

[Matt McIntosh]

Er, those are all linked right here. There's a link to the publications page right there on the main cogstud page.

[Frank McGahon]

So they are [slaps self upside head]!