Dennett has remarked in several places (such as "Self-portrait", in
Brainchildren) that his overall philosophical project has remained largely the same since his time at Oxford. He is primarily concerned with providing a
philosophy of mind that is grounded in
empirical research. In his original
dissertation, Content and Consciousness, he broke up the problem of explaining the mind into the need for a theory of content and for a theory of consciousness. His approach to this project has also stayed true to this distinction. Just as
Content and Consciousness has a bipartite structure, he similarly divided
Brainstorms into two sections. He would later collect several essays on content in
The Intentional Stance and synthesize his views on consciousness into a unified theory in
Consciousness Explained. These volumes respectively form the most extensive development of his views, and he frequently refers back to them in subsequent writings.
In
Consciousness Explained, Dennett's interest in the ability of evolution to explain some of the content-producing features of consciousness is already apparent, and this has since become an integral part of his program. He defends a theory known by some as
Neural Darwinism. He also presents an argument against
qualia; he argues that the concept is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of
physicalism. Much of Dennett's work in the 1990s has been concerned with fleshing out his previous ideas by addressing the same topics from an evolutionary standpoint, from what distinguishes human minds from animal minds (
Kinds of Minds), to how free will is compatible with a naturalist view of the world (
Freedom Evolves). His most recent book,
Breaking the Spell, is an attempt to subject religious belief to the same treatment, explaining possible evolutionary reasons for the phenomenon of religious adherence.
While it is clear that Dennett does not subscribe to a number of categories (such as
Cartesian materialism and
Dualism), it is less clear which ones he fits into. As Dennett himself puts it:
Dennett self-identifies with a few terms. In
Consciousness Explained, he admits "I am a sort of '
teleofunctionalist', of course, perhaps the original teleofunctionalist'". He goes on to say, "I am ready to come out of the closet as a sort of
verificationalist". In
Breaking the Spell he admits to being "
a bright", and defends the term on several occasions. A "qualophile" is Daniel Dennett's nickname for any philosopher who believes in the reality of
qualia.
