Quick! Name a living philosopher. Chances are if you can do it at all, you're going to say Peter Singer, Martha Nussbaum, Shelly Kagan, or Daniel Dennett.
Dennett is probably the best bet because he plays the game at several different levels. He was known until the death of Christopher Hitchins as one of the four horseman of the atheist apocalypse. But his work on free will and consciousness have conferred a kind of celebrity on him.
At dinner, before I interviewed him at the Mark Twain House recently, I asked him if he had seen Sir Tom Stoppard's play about consciousness. "Yes," he said, "in London with Sir Tom," whom he met on a Paul Allen cruise to St. Petersburg with Martha Stewart and Robin Williams. See what I mean?
GUEST:
- Daniel Dennett - Philosopher, writer and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He's the author of many books, most recently, he co-authored with Linda LaScola, Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind
MUSIC:
- "I Fall For It Every Time" by Grant Langston
- "Patterns" by Weird Al
- "Ain't Necessarily So" by Peggy Lee
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Chion Wolf and Betsy Kaplan contributed to this show.
