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Critical bibliography
Dahlbom, Bo (Ed.) (1993)Dennett and His Critics (Cambridge MA, Basil Blackwell). An important collection of articles by Dennett's critics and his reply to them. The ‘unhortodox’ introduction by Dahlbom is of special interest because it is the best of the very few attempts to give a comprehensive analysis of Dennett's philosophy.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1969)Content and Consciousness (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul). The PhD thesis of Dennett, written under the supervision of Gylbert Ryle. There are two main reasons to recommend the reading of this book: first, the most important ingredients of Dennett's philosophy are already present in this relatively short book; second, this is where both Dennett's debts towards Ryle and Quine and his very new ideas are more explicit.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1978)Brainstorms (Montgomery VT, Bradford Books). The first collection of Dennett's articles, divided in four parts. The first is about the general assumptions of his philosophy, while the others are dedicated to the three particular themes in which Dennett has divided his work: intentionality, consciousness, and free will.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1981) Making Sense of Ourselves,Philosophical Topics, 12, n. 1, special number, reprinted as J. Biro & S. Shanan (Eds),Mind, Brain and Functionalism, Norman, University of Oklaoma Press 1982; now in Dennett 1987. The response to Stephen Stich's “Dennett on Intentional Systems”,Philosophical Topics, 12, 1981, reprinted in W.G. Lycan (Ed.),Mind and Cognition, Oxford—Cambridge MA, Basil Blackwell, 1990, 4th edition 1994. In this article—and in the reflections on it (appeared in Dennett 1987)—Dennett discusses in depth his thesis of the presupposition of rationality implicit in all intentional attributions.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1984)Elbow Room: the Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Dennett's book on free will. An interesting discussion on the notion of ‘intuition pumps’ and on their importance and dangerousness in the philosopher's methodology can be found here.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1987)The Intentional Stance (Cambridge MA, The mit Press). The book dedicated to Dennett's theory of intentionality. It's a collection of articles posterior toBrainstorms. I recommend “True Believers”, “Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology”, “Styles of Mental Representations”, “Evolution, Error and Intentionality” and, especially, “Starting On the Right Foot”, which is a sort of introduction where Dennett unusually makes explicit his theoretical and methodological assumptions.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1988) Précis of The Intentional Stance,Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11. A sort of summary of Dennett 1987, followed by a collection of critics by a number of philosophers, cognitive psychologists, artificial intelligence researchers and evolutionary biologists, and by Dennett's response to them.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1991a) Real Patterns,Journal of Philosophy, LXXXVIII (1), reprinted in Dennett, 1998. Dennett's ultimate word on ontology of intentional entities (and on ontology in general).
Dennett, Daniel C. (1991b) Two Black Boxes, http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/twoblack.htm#1. An ‘intuition pump’ (that is a mental experiment) biult in order to reveal the necessity of intentional language for describing and explicating some ‘real patterns’.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1991c)Consciousness Explained (Boston, Little Brown and Company). A deep, extensive, penetrating and illuminating book that try to resolve (or ‘dissolve’, or ‘elude’) the hardest problem (or ‘pseudo-problem’, or ‘mystery’) left to science: consciousness.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1993) “Back from the Drawing Board”, in Dahlbom (Ed.), 1993. The reply to Dennett's critics, which includes interesting defences of two Dennett's practices: his discomfort with giving labels to his theories and his denial of ‘playing the game of ontology’ too seriously.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1994) “Self-Portrait”, in S. Guttenplan (Ed.),A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford, Basil Blackwell), reprinted in Dennett, 1998. Very important article, where Dennett self-analyses his work with an historical perspective. Together with Dennett 1969 and the first chapter of Dennett 1987 (“Starting On the Right Foot”), it is certainly the place in which Dennett is more explicit about his debts towards Ryle and Quine.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1995)Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York, Simon and Schuster). An important book on the theory of evolution by natural selection and its upshots on philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, ontology, social sciences, and ethics.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1996)Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (London, Phoenix). A very useful introduction to Dennett's theory of mind: short, easy-to-read and fascinating.
Dennett, Daniel C. (1998)Brainchildren (London, Penguin Books). A collection of the last most important articles by Dennett. They cover various subjects and disciplines, such as philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, artificial life, cognitive ethology and methodology for cognitive science.
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Mirolli, M., Dennett, D. A naturalistic perspective on intentionality. Interview with Daniel Dennett. Mind & Society 3, 1–12 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02513145
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02513145