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 ‘Dennett (who argues that consciousness is unique to humans)’, 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 “Dennett denies animal consciousness for Yudkowsky-like reasons”. 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 “we don’t know, but it’s not obvious, and for some animals, there probably isn’t even a fact of the matter”. (This is basically my view too, I think, except that unlike Dennett I don’t think this much damages the case for animal rights.) But even that is inconsistent with “anyone who thinks mammals aren’t conscious is totally out-of-step with experts in the field, I think.” And it’s 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 ‘Dennett (who argues that consciousness is unique to humans)’, 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 “Dennett denies animal consciousness for Yudkowsky-like reasons”. 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 “we don’t know, but it’s not obvious, and for some animals, there probably isn’t even a fact of the matter”. (This is basically my view too, I think, except that unlike Dennett I don’t think this much damages the case for animal rights.) But even that is inconsistent with “anyone who thinks mammals aren’t conscious is totally out-of-step with experts in the field, I think.” And it’s possible the stronger reading of Dennett as actually denying animal consciousness is correct: I only skimmed it, and the SEP thinks so.