Daniel Dennett is the philosopher I keep returning to.
He died on April 19, 2024. That is the same calendar day Charles Darwin died in 1882, which the universe surely meant as a nod.
He was the philosopher who respected science and engineering. I loved his intuition pumps for thinking clearly, and I keep one of my own. I side with him on consciousness too. A line attributed to him says that one surprising discovery of modern psychology is how easy it is to be ignorant of your own ignorance. That is what I call low reflexivity.
In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea he argues that natural selection joined two worlds. One is the world of mechanism and matter. The other is the world of meaning and purpose. Until Darwin the two looked impossible to bridge, and Dennett calls Darwin’s idea perhaps the greatest anyone ever had. At this point in history I think he was right.
The same slow, step-by-step view dissolves the mind-body problem. The unified self is a marvelous evolved illusion. There is no little person at the center of consciousness. And nothing about calculation is “mere”, since it was only ever a matter of scale and complexity.
Deep emotional attachment is what life is about. Nurturing it is what brings happiness, the closest thing we have to a highest good. His attributed advice is the one I keep: find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.