He may not be crudely scientistic, but it is true that these days Dennett spends more time around scientists than other philosophers. "I find the discoveries in those fields mind candy, just delicious," he says. "If I go to a scientific conference I come away with a bunch of new things to think about. If I go to a philosophy conference I may come away just having learned four more wrinkles in the debate about something philosophers have been thinking about for all my life."

But Dennett also maintains that we need philosophy to protect us from scientific overreach. "The history of philosophy is the history of very tempting mistakes made by very smart people, and if you don't learn that history you'll make those mistakes again and again and again. One of the ignoble joys of my life is watching very smart scientists just reinvent all the second-rate philosophical ideas because they're very tempting until you pause, take a deep breath and take them apart."

Ridicule and misrepresentation are in some sense an occupational hazard for the philosopher. "The best philosophers are always walking a tightrope where one misstep either side is just nonsense," he says. "That's why caricatures are too easy to be worth doing. You can make any philosopher – any, Aristotle, Kant, you name it – look like a complete flaming idiot with just a slightest little tweak."

--Julian Baggini on Daniel Dennett.