The Ramblings of a Rutgers Philosophy Student. . .

A long time ago when I was an undergrad at Rutgers, I had taken a Philosophy of Mind class. Not one of my better efforts. The three things I remember from it were that we began with BF Skinner and a Behaviorist view of mind, that the Professor teaching the class was impressed with Daniel Dennett, and that I wrote probably the worst paper of my academic career. The paper embraced Hubert Dreyfus' What Computers Can't Do - arguments against the mind as some type of computer.

The topic here, however, is Daniel Dennett and his work. At the time of the above class I chose not to explore his work. That was spring of 1989. Dennett had written Brainstorms. Consciousness Explained came out in 1991. Basically as the undergrad I was I just lumped the Professor teaching the class and Dennett together, and ignored them both. That entailed both short and long term consequences. The short term was simply that I missed a big chunk of what was going on in that class, which led to a poor grade. Not the worst thing. It is the long-term consequences that I find much more interesting.

Since that time I have proceeded to pick up the Intentional Stance, and also read through Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Neither really resonated or grabbed me, but they were interesting enough for me to buy and read. How many philosophy text do grab one? There actually have been some, Now these readings have taken place over the past 20 years. In short, I appreciated that Dennett values Intentionality and Darwinism.

Jump to 2015, more than 25 years since that class and my introduction to Daniel Dennett. A constant theme of mine lately is to read more - things such as the philosophical traditions I had read at Rutgers. Meanwhile, a few years back, I had joined a website - Meetup.com for both work and amusement. In January of 2015 they had announced a new group doing readings of Analytic Philosophy in NYC. That was perfect as my Rutgers' philosophy studies was largely in that space.

Now strangely this group on Meetup.com were asking for a writing sample. At first I had sent them some things I had written back during that Rutgers period. They responded that the material was dated and that they were passing. OK. That, like the class I mention above, could be a blog post or two. I was a bit annoyed, a bit amused. Meanwhile, they had also posted an article which was to be the subject of their first meeting. It was a paper written by David Chalmers, Consciousness and its Place in Nature. It is an overview of the positions taken by philosophers on the subject, dating back to Descartes.

To be continued. . .