Daniel Clement Dennett III was an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist. He was most recently Professor Emeritus at Tufts University.
Dennett was a firm atheist and secularist, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, as well as an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement. Dennett was referred to as one of the “Four Horsemen of New Atheism”, along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens.
Dennett attended Phillips Exeter Academy and spent one year at Wesleyan University before receiving his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W. V. Quine. In 1965, he received his Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy from the University of Oxford, where he studied under Gilbert Ryle and was a member of Hertford College.