"I'm mediocre in a lot of things," Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy Daniel Dennett said. "I'm mediocre in playing the piano and doing pottery. My profession - it's the one thing I'm really not mediocre at."
Dennett, who is also co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, was first a visiting assistant professor during the Tufts Summer Session in 1968. Soon after, his first book, "Content and Consciousness," was published in 1969. By now, he's authored at least 16 others in addition to over 400 scholarly articles about the mind.
Dennett is drawn to philosophy - the scientific view of the mind - because of humanity's natural tendency to question how the mind works. Dennett's work, though honest in its venture, has been described as controversial.
"I was once denounced as a secretly paid CIA agent - that was pretty scary," he said.
Far from it, Dennett obtained his bachelor's degree in philosophy from Harvard in 1963, and soon after obtained his doctor of philosophy from Oxford University in 1965. Despite his background in philosophy, he enjoys spending time in labs with other scientists.
He claims that the assumptions that most make about the mind are false. According to Dennett, the mind seems intuitive to most people because we think we know how our own mind works, and we therefore assume we are experts; he maintains, however, that we really aren't.
He told the Daily that when he reads about an overconfident assertion, even if it's from a credible figure like Harvard Professor Emeritus W.V. Quine, who taught Dennett, he immediately tries to come up with ways to support the contrary viewpoint. This, he points out, is not such a bad thing.
"Inquiry depends on controversy - we need people who want to show that they're right and you're wrong," Dennett said.
This debate is a two way street, as Dennett's work is highly contested in the field.
"It's important to encounter people who think my ideas are dangerous," Dennett said. "That is when I know I'm hitting a nerve."
He tries to instill this way of thinking in his students, too. When he teaches, he doesn't want his students to believe him, but rather believe his facts.
"I tell my students that I want them to make me argue for whatever they don't like," he said. "Just agreeing with my conclusions is a recipe for a low grade."
He wants his students to participate actively in his classes, and to really fight for their opinions no matter which side. He discusses this idea in his latest publication "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking," where he covers ways in which students can better use their intuition to think reliably about hard questions. Dennett said he ultimately wants to heighten a sense of anxiety in his audience about what they're reading.
"It is easy to be seduced by bad arguments," he said. "I hope to seduce them with good arguments."
The reason why Dennett has been able to make such a name in his field may be his explanation for how it is best to teach philosophy.
"I don't think that there is any topic in philosophy that can't be made accessible to educated people," he explained.
There are two ways to teach philosophy, according to Dennett: one is creating turgid explanations that only the elite few can understand so that the field is almost like an "inventory of a shoe store" and impossible to understand. The other is making complex discussions accessible.
He explained that in order to reach a wide range of readers, he always tries to make sure he understands the topics he is discussing as best he can before putting his ideas out there.
"I want to understand it well enough to explain it to others. If I can't explain it, then I don't understand it," Dennett said. "If you really want to test whether a professor knows what he or she is talking about, ask this question: 'Can you give me a very simple explanation of that?' If they can't answer it, they don't know it."
He pointed out that he has had to pay a price for this type of thinking, and this is where his critics step in. His critics claim that he is a "populariser."
Dennett pointed out that there are some professors who want it to be hard work to understand philosophy, while his only intent is to make it available to the average student.
He said that, as such, his target audience is usually university students.
"My official target is undergraduates. That way if I overexplain my concepts, my colleagues and rivals will not be insulted," he said.
Dennett maintains that he still has the framework of arguments that he wants, but not in the same detail that most philosophers use. He is hopeful that his ideological critics who think he is wrong on principle can entertain the idea that there are other perspectives out there.
"I'm your friend," Dennett would say to his critics. "I'm not attacking morality or methods of the humanities. But we have to put them on new foundations. Don't depend on riddled, out-of-date, obsolete traditions that some people hold. Replace fragile traditions with more supple and defensible foundations."
Dennett supports exploring new ideas in practice, too. He co-founded the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts. One of the projects, for instance, was a software package to help students taking introductory statistics to have an experimental learning experience.
When he is not teaching, Dennett farms. He has been a farmer for the past 43 years. This year, however, he is selling his farm in Maine, since it has come to be more hard work than fun.
He pointed out enthusiastically, though, that he is having the time of his life at Tufts.
"What could be better than hanging around with smart people?"
