Daniel Dennett

Pomponazzi, Smart, Hurley and Lara: four arguments about the limits of proof

Pietro Pomponazzi was born on 16 September 1462, J. J. C. Smart on 16 September 1920, Susan Hurley and María Pía Lara on 16 September 1954. Four philosophers across five centuries, and one question between them: what can be demonstrated about the mind, and what has to be settled some other way.

David Chalmers, Andy Clark, Daniel Dennett, Saul Kripke, Pietro Pomponazzi, J. J. C. Smart, Susan Hurley

The year philosophy went back to asking what makes something a subject

Four university presses, one accidental theme. Across consciousness, communication, creativity and liability, the 2026 philosophy list keeps circling a question the discipline spent a generation dismantling — and it was engineers, not philosophers, who put it back into circulation.