2005/05/01 by John Dupré · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Epistemology #Excuse #Law #Philosophy #Political Theology and Sovereignty #Political science #Psychoanalysis #Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics #Psychology
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00421.x
openalex publication_date 2005/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Daniel Dennett's review22 This journal, Vol. LXIX, 2004, pp. 473–83 of my book, Human Nature and the Limits of Science,33 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. was apparently conceived as part of a multiple review, anticipating an author's response, so I am grateful for the opportunity to satisfy this expectation. Indeed, Dennett uses this excuse to justify devoting his own contribution to responding to those parts of the book directed explicitly at his own work, leaving other imagined reviewers to take care of other issues. Since he has things to say about most of the topics in the book he evidently interpreted this remit widely, in fact taking the book as “presented as an antidote of sorts to [his] own world view” (p. 482). Let me begin, therefore, by reassuring Dennett that, while I certainly had some critical things to say about some of his views, the book most certainly was not intended as an ad hominem attack. The nine pages (out of 187) on which his work is cited fairly accurately reflects the extent to which his views figured in my thinking. Curiously, his ire seems most strongly aroused by my assault on his views on free will in which, apparently, I agree with nearly everything he says and, worse still, fail to cite him at all.