Daniel Dennett: Reconciling Science and Our Self-Conception aims to do just what its title suggests. It provides an overview of Dennett's wide-ranging body of work, showing its unity as a consistent and largely successful attempt to reconcile the scientific view of human beings as ‘nothing but’ complex causal mechanisms with our conception of ourselves as conscious agents moved not just by causes, but by reasons.
Chapter 1 explicates and defends the goal of reconciliation, locating Dennett's work with respect to its major alternatives in philosophy of mind and sketching his ground both for insisting (against both dualists and eliminative materialists) that reconciliation is necessary, and for rejecting theoretical reduction as a means for achieving it. The remainder of the book falls into two parts: The first examines Dennett's account of intentionality and agency, and the second lays out and defends, with some reservations, Dennett's efforts to use this account to explain such ‘mental treasures’ as consciousness, rationality, free will, and moral responsibility. It also explores his discussion of the relations between intentionality and Darwinian natural selection.
Elton treats the account of intentionality and agency in three chapters. The first provides an introduction to ‘intentional systems theory’, presenting Dennett's well-known distinction among alternative explanatory ‘stances’ (the physical stance, the design stance, and the intentional stance) and his associated behavioristic account of agency. The second considers whether, and in what sense, Dennett's account allows him to see agents and intentional states as ‘real’, given that they do not (as such) participate in causal relations or natural laws. The third explores implications of the account for psychological explanation, particularly for the relation between ‘folk’ psychology and (reductive) ‘scientific’ psychology, and for our understanding of rationality and irrationality.
The first, and weightiest, of the remaining four chapters provides a unifying interpretation of Dennett's various discussions of consciousness and the ‘deflationary’ reforms of folk psychology and our self-conception that the resultant account requires. The second considers interpretive difficulties and inconsistencies in Dennett's work on consciousness, examines standard objections to it, and offers an interpretation of his account of the self as a ‘theorists’ fiction’. Elton's evaluation of Dennett's accounts of intentionality, agency, and consciousness is for the most part enthusiastic. His view in the final two chapters of the book is less sanguine. The first of these explores Dennett's views on the relation between Darwinian evolution and intentional systems. The second takes up Dennett's attempt to show how agents can have (appropriately deflated) freedom and moral responsibility, even though they are made out of ‘nothing more’ than mechanistic parts whose behavior is causally determined.
Each chapter is followed by a useful guide to further reading, including alternatives to Dennett's view and critiques of it, as well as some alternatives to Elton's interpretation. A glossary is also provided.
Elton's Dennett is very much an heir of Gilbert Ryle. The synoptic view of Dennett's work that Elton provides is convincing in showing a version of Rylean behaviorism to be the linchpin of Dennett's thought, and Elton's defense of Dennett's form of behaviorism by means of a comparison among three ‘philosophical temperaments’ (those favoring what Elton calls “common-sense analysis,” “scientific analysis,” and “consensual analysis,” (24–29)) is useful and effective.
Another important influence on Dennett is Wittgenstein. Elton defends Dennett's ‘therapeutic’ approach to philosophy, his “use of stories that aim to shift our understanding” (84) in place of more conventional arguments and explanations. Elton reproduces this method to some extent, but at critical junctures, he also puts forward arguments that he thinks are implicit in Dennett's writing. That these are often somewhat inconclusive may frustrate some readers, but seems to me to be a fair representation of Dennett. Readers must decide for themselves whether this reveals deficiencies in Dennett's position or whether, by displaying the inadequacy of traditional argumentation, it vindicates Dennett's “more artful” (xiii) approach.
Elton's book is largely and impressively successful in laying out the core content and structure of Dennett's work in an accessible way. It accurately reflects (more accurately, I think, than it reports) the strengths and weaknesses of that work. Elton does a good deal of rational reconstruction in achieving his unified view of Dennett's work, and the refinements and reforms that he offers are often illuminating, though they will not be uncontroversial. As a defense of Dennett, the book has mixed success. Elton shows, very clearly, the power of the considerations that motivate Dennett's approach. His treatment also reveals, quite clearly, some of the important tensions and weak points in Dennett's work, though Elton himself seems to regard these as relatively inconsequential. While those unconvinced by Dennett will not be won over by Elton, they may well be clearer about why, and about what they are thereby giving up, after reading his book.
The treatment of intentionality will be of particular interest to philosophers of biology and others with interests in accounts of function. Those interested in the ‘Darwin wars’ will find Elton's analysis of Dennett's views on evolution—in particular his critical discussion of Dennett's attacks on Stephen Jay Gould—to be interesting and suggestive, though admittedly somewhat speculative. The arguments against reductionism and the discussion of Dennett's distinctive nonreductive form of explanation are of potentially broader application and interest for philosophers of science.
My chief complaints about the book are not deep ones. Elton is perhaps too partisan; in particular, he sometimes seems to see Dennett's critics too much through the lens of Dennett's own representations of them. Some central concepts (e.g., “the scientific world-view” (4) and “supernature” (9)) are more loosely specified than I could wish. And for a work so concerned with the scientific view of the world, Elton's book shows a rather odd lack of regard for actual science in its several gestures toward the history of science (e.g., “phlogiston, the stuff that people used to think was given off in combustion” (69)). This attitude is evident also in a scathing reference to psychologists’ philosophical solecisms (153), and an extended discussion of what Elton simply calls ‘behaviorism’ (in a work celebrating the interplay between philosophy and psychology), without any reference to the history of psychological behaviorism (9–14).
