The American Daniel C. Dennett, one of the most read and discussed philosophers in his country in recent times, died this Friday in Portland (Maine) at the age of 82 due to complications from a lung disease, as confirmed by his wife, Susan Bell Dennett. , to the US press.
His extensive career leaves behind more than twenty books, some of them bestsellers such as Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness (1996), in which he focused on various areas such as consciousness, free will, religion and biology. evolutionary.
"There is no science without philosophy, there is only science whose philosophical baggage is accepted without discussion," defended Dennett in the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (1995), which cost him heated confrontations with other American thinkers.
Dennett tried to explain brain development in terms of the evolution of humans from other forms of animal life throughout the 1990s.
In 1991 he already expressed that consciousness could only be understood by understanding the physiology of the brain, which he saw as a kind of "supercomputer."
Later, religion would be one of his great fields of study. The author, an openly atheist, published an investigation with his colleague Linda LaScola, titled Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind (2013), in which he interviewed dozens of clergy who revealed their skepticism but considered that their work provided comfort to the faithful.
His works even had musical adaptations. This is the case of Mind Out of Matter (2014), which involved the ingenious American composer Scott Johnson, known for combining melodies with speeches of different cadences and timbres.
