Thank you for the compliment!

I view Dennett as a near miss for my top spot. I have read several of his works including Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Freedom Evolves (not Consciousness Explained yet, though I suppose I should), and while I think he does really get science, I think Pat Churchland has a precision of thinking that surpasses Dennett's. I can often see a variety of not-too-difficult ways to argue against Dennett (and then counterarguments to those arguments, etc.); with Churchland, the bar to enter the game at all is usually very, very high. Many of the supposed refutations of her ideas that I've read even from professional philosophers are "she doesn't get it", followed by a restatement of a position that she had already meticulously dissected as ultimately incoherent, with no substantial new reasoning to lead one to think differently. Furthermore, (some of) Churchland's students actually do neuroscience research ("neurophilosophy")! I wanted to pick only one, hence Churchland alone. If anyone wants a second prominent scientifically-literate philosopher, I happily concur that Dennett is a good candidate.

The reason I chose Pigliucci over someone like Dennett was because I wanted to make a tie to Medium, for familiarity's sake--and he wrote the most cogent counterpoint to deGrasse Tyson that I've seen. Nonetheless, his inclusion was for different reasons than Churchland's.

Thanks for reading!