Mind & Society, 6, 2002, Vol. 3, pp. 1-12 9 2002, Rosenberg & Sellier, Fondazione Rosselli A naturalistic perspective on intentionality. Interview with Daniel Dennett by Marco Mirolli Marco Mirolli You describe yourself as a philosopher of mind and you reject the exhortations to get more involved in the abstract problems of ontology and of philosophy of science in general, even if the problems of the philosophy of mind and those of philosophy of science are deeply mutually dependent. I think this is an important issue because, while you say that your philosophy presupposes only the standard scientific ontology and epistemology 1, it seems to me that what you really presuppose is rather a Quinean view of ontology and epistemology, which is not so standard, even if it may well be the one we should accept. Daniel Dennett Well, maybe so, let's see. Certainly I have seen almost no reason to adopt any other ontology than Quine's; and when I look at the work in the phi- losophy of science and more particularly at the work in science, I do not find any ground yet for abandoning a Quinean view of ontology for something fancier. It could happen, but I haven't seen any reason for doing this; so if you want to say that I am vulnerable on this, that's really true. I have stated that I don't see any of the complexities of science or philosophy of mind raising ontological issues that are more sophisticated than those a Quinean ontology could handle; but I may be wrong. You might show me where I am wrong. M.M. No, I also think that Quinean ontology and epistemology are the ones we should accept. The point I wanted to stress is that much of the discussion about the realism on intentional entities is due not to a substantial disagreement on intentionality itself, but rather to ontological assumptions. I mean, for example, your discussion in "Real Patterns ''2 about what you called 'mild realism' versus 'strong realism' and so on. D.D. Well, in "Real Patterns" I presented what I thought the issues were and I showed what the difference was between my position and Davidson's, and between my Daniel Deimett: Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University,Medford, MA, USA Marco Mirolli: Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze Sociali, Universita di Siena 1Cf. Dennett, 1991a; 1993. 2 Dennett, 1991 a.