Maybe that is right. Dennett is often quite slippery (I think he believes that precision actually makes philosophy worse a lot of the time.)
He also just may have changed his position. The SEP article on Animal Consciousness at one point refers to âDennett (who argues that consciousness is unique to humans)â, but the reference is to a paper from 1995. Looking at the first page of the paper they cite, I think it was the one I vaguely remembered as âDennett denies animal consciousness for Yudkowsky-like reasonsâ. But having skimmed some of the paper again, I found it hard to tell this time if the reading of it as flat-out denying that animals are conscious was right. It seemed like Dennett *might* just be saying âwe donât know, but itâs not obvious, and for some animals, there probably isnât even a fact of the matterâ. (This is basically my view too, I think, except that unlike Dennett I donât think this much damages the case for animal rights.) But even that is inconsistent with âanyone who thinks mammals arenât conscious is totally out-of-step with experts in the field, I think.â And itâs possible the stronger reading of Dennett as actually denying animal consciousness is correct: I only skimmed it, and the SEP thinks so.
Maybe that is right. Dennett is often quite slippery (I think he believes that precision actually makes philosophy worse a lot of the time.)
He also just may have changed his position. The SEP article on Animal Consciousness at one point refers to âDennett (who argues that consciousness is unique to humans)â, but the reference is to a paper from 1995. Looking at the first page of the paper they cite, I think it was the one I vaguely remembered as âDennett denies animal consciousness for Yudkowsky-like reasonsâ. But having skimmed some of the paper again, I found it hard to tell this time if the reading of it as flat-out denying that animals are conscious was right. It seemed like Dennett *might* just be saying âwe donât know, but itâs not obvious, and for some animals, there probably isnât even a fact of the matterâ. (This is basically my view too, I think, except that unlike Dennett I donât think this much damages the case for animal rights.) But even that is inconsistent with âanyone who thinks mammals arenât conscious is totally out-of-step with experts in the field, I think.â And itâs possible the stronger reading of Dennett as actually denying animal consciousness is correct: I only skimmed it, and the SEP thinks so.