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Consciousness Explained (Penguin Science), by Daniel Clement Dennett
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In Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett reveals the secrets of one of the last remaining mysteries of the universe: the human brain. Daniel C. Dennett's now-classic book blends philosophy, psychology and neuroscience - with the aid of numerous examples and thought-experiments - to explore how consciousness has evolved, and how a modern understanding of the human mind is radically different from conventional explanations of consciousness. What people think of as the stream of consciousness is not a single, unified sequence, the author argues, but 'multiple drafts' of reality composed by a computer-like 'virtual machine'. Dennett explains how science has exploded the classic mysteries of consciousness: the nature of introspection, the self or ego and its relation to thoughts and sensations, the problems posed by qualia, and the level of consciousness of non-human creatures. 'Brilliant ...a torrent of stimulating thought' Richard Dawkins 'Revolutionary ...one of the most mentally agile, intellectually resourceful books you are likely to read' Guardian 'A masterful tapestry of deep insights ...Dennett has written a profound and important book that is also clear, exciting and witty' Douglas R. Hofstadter, author of Godel, Escher, Bach 'Extraordinary ...supremely engaging and witty' Independent 'Dennett's exposition is nothing short of brilliant, the best example I've seen of a science book aimed at both professionals and general readers' The New York Times Book Review Daniel C. Dennett is one of the most original and provocative thinkers in the world. A brilliant polemicist and philosopher, he is famous for challenging unexamined orthodoxies, and an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement. His books include Brainstorms, Brainchildren, Elbow Room, Breaking the Spell, Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Freedom Evolves.
- Sales Rank: #2864184 in Books
- Published on: 2007-12-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.80" h x .91" w x 5.08" l, 1.08 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 528 pages
Amazon.com Review
Consciousness is notoriously difficult to explain. On one hand, there are facts about conscious experience--the way clarinets sound, the way lemonade tastes--that we know subjectively, from the inside. On the other hand, such facts are not readily accommodated in the objective world described by science. How, after all, could the reediness of clarinets or the tartness of lemonade be predicted in advance? Central to Daniel C. Dennett's attempt to resolve this dilemma is the "heterophenomenological" method, which treats reports of introspection nontraditionally--not as evidence to be used in explaining consciousness, but as data to be explained. Using this method, Dennett argues against the myth of the Cartesian theater--the idea that consciousness can be precisely located in space or in time. To replace the Cartesian theater, he introduces his own multiple drafts model of consciousness, in which the mind is a bubbling congeries of unsupervised parallel processing. Finally, Dennett tackles the conventional philosophical questions about consciousness, taking issue not only with the traditional answers but also with the traditional methodology by which they were reached.
Dennett's writing, while always serious, is never solemn; who would have thought that combining philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience could be such fun? Not every reader will be convinced that Dennett has succeeded in explaining consciousness; many will feel that his account fails to capture essential features of conscious experience. But none will want to deny that the attempt was well worth making. --Glenn Branch
From Publishers Weekly
Tufts University cognitive scientist Dennett claims to have developed a major new theory of consciousness, yet his view of the brain as a massive parallel processor is a familiar one. What is different in his counter-intuitive theory is the claim that human consciousness, rather than being "hard-wired" into the brain's innate machinery, is more like software "running on the brain's parallel hardware" and is largely a product of cultural evolution. Author of Brainstorms , Dennett leads the adventurous gently through thought experiments, metaphors and diagrams in a treatise keyed to the serious, diligent reader. He presents a plausible evolutionary scenario of how consciousness could have emerged from the hominid brain. Dennett's audacious, tantalizing foray into the mind's inner workings ties up loose ends at the interface of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience and biology.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Maybe not explained. But explored, analyzed, examined from an extraordinarily rich perspective. Here, as in other philosophical work (Elbow Room, 1984, etc.), the Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts Univ. states that he aims to dethrone the ``Cartesian Theater'' of the mind--that central screen with its implied ``Central Meaner'' who attends to the ``contents of consciousness'': the ghost in the machine with all its implied infinite regress and mind/brain dichotomy. Instead, Dennett posits ``multiple drafts'' of the real world, the product of parallel processing of perceptual and cognitive subsystems compiled by independent ``demons'' vying with each other, with now one or another gaining ascendancy--the whole a form of ``pandemonium'' that results in consciousness. In arriving at this model, Dennett reviews the extensive literature of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, neurology, cognitive psychology, speech and language studies, thought experiments, and the philosophical tradition itself. This discourse is well worth the price of admission to Dennett's own theater of the brain: He is a gifted expositor with a marvelous sense of humor, and, typical of philosophers, ever eager to persuade, answer the reader's objectives, and strike down rival theories. Does he succeed? Not completely. One suspects that metaphors based on artificial intelligence, ``virtual'' machines, and computer technology are just this culture's mind-set at this time. Dennett also pays scant attention to the role of emotions (in comparison to Robert Ornstein, see below), nor for that matter to the emerging concept that the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems should be considered in any schema of consciousness. Nevertheless, Dennett's analysis is so often brilliant, so witty, and so informed by contemporary culture as to make pleasurable the reading of what is truly a complex and demanding text. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Get Your Concentration Goggles, There's A Lot To Learn!
By Mike Morg
As expected from a Dennett book, once you commence you better pack your intellectual suitcase and prepare for a journey. It's a difficult read, and at best I hope that my review can you (the hopefully interested reader) to see and possibly recognize a lot of the topics discussed as I simply lay them out.
In the book, the author sets out to, as he put it on page 16, explain consciousness and the various phenomena that compose to what we call consciousness by showing how they are physical effects in the brain. He claims that he will provide relevant scientific facts, series of stories, analogies, thought experiments, etc.
I'll briefly explain what kind of things where talked about in each PART (not chapter). Note this this is not inclusive because this book is very comprehensive and intricate. This is just a subjectively-motivated outline of [objective] topics I found interesting.
Prelude: How are hallucinations possible?
- Thought experiments like the "brain in a vat" and "a party game called psychoanalysis"
Part 1: Problems And Methods
- Elucidates the mystery behind consciousness
- The appeal to mystification in conjunction to it
- Dualism and it's unreliability
- Challenges of explaining such phenomena
- Introduction to phenomenology as well as heterophenomenology
-Methods and perspectives of phenomenology and heterophenomenology
- Shakey robot discussed
Part 2: An Empirical Theory of The Mind
- The inception of terms; The Multiple Drafts Theory and The Cartesian Theater
- Why the Cartesian Theater is the wrong view of consciousness
- Introduction to the Stalinesque (pre-experimental) and Orwellian(post-experimental) theories of conscious mending.
- Time and experience
- Evolution in relation to consciousness
- Memes
- Joycean Machine
Part 3: The Philosophical Problems of Consciousness
- Zombies
- Blindsight: The discussion of and understand of it
- Hide the thimble thought experiment
- Prosthetic vision
- DIALOGS WITH OTTO. The reason I capitalized this is because it is found throughout the book. Otto is a fiction character and contrarian that Dennett imputes as a way to propose and then dismantle many opposing claims (that the author made up, because of course in the process of writing the book and introducing new ideas there obviously weren't any critics to consider). This is a good author with a proposal at his best.
- Qualia (the intangible "stuff")
- Epiphenomenal Qualia (this was very interesting).
- The clever disqualification of both ^^
- The reality of selves and multiple personality disorder
- Imaging a conscious robot
- Analyzing Searle's Chinese Room experiment
- How to be moral with a materialistic view of consciousness, absent of mythology. Why we don't need myth to appreciate things like dead bodies of loved ones more than broken robots. Here I'm going to throw in a quote of his: "Myths about the sanctity of life, or of consciousness, cut both ways. They may be useful in erecting barriers (against euthanasia, against capital punishment, against abortion, against eating meat) to impress the unimaginative, but at the price of offensive hypocrisy or ridiculous self-deception among the more enlightened."
- The possibility of understanding consciousness
Dennett doesn't claim to solve the problem of consciousness, he rather concedes that his explanation is far from complete. Instead he wants to give us a better understanding, approach, and view of consciousness that distills the fear of many that claim that such a vision is impossible. I fall in the category of readers that didn't find it very difficult to imagine perceived consciousness as being an amalgamation of disparate, "non-conscious", comprehensive and complicated workings of the brain. Nevertheless, I found much of what was discussed to be intellectually stimulating, and enlightening; these don't always need to go hand-in-hand. Dennett's vigor and tone congenially complement the difficult read. 4.5/5.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
There are some great ideas, to be sure
By Andrew Slabchuck
If you're looking for hard science or rigorous philosophy, you won't find much of that here. The majority of this book is a highly speculative sciency-philosophical mixture, lacking the virtues of either. It's very heavy on analogies and figurative language, and relatively light on details—both about the relevant science and Dennett's actual philosophical positions. Whenever Dennett finds himself in the position to explain the details of something he says, he just cites prior work. So, in a certain sense, this is not suitable for a beginner or lay reader, as he will not spend much time explaining what's going on (or why it's going on). Instead, this book is aimed at a niche reader who's already familiar with Dennett's work. But that's somewhat problematic, as much of Dennett's academic work has not stood the test of time, and so modern readers will be unfamiliar with the references in the book. And because Dennett only refers to his contemporaries in veiled ways, it's hard to reconstruct Dennett's positions from how he responds to them. All of this combines for an underwhelming experience. There are some great ideas, to be sure, but they're difficult to locate in the midst of all of the vague and/or dated ideas in the book.
I compare this book to some of John Searle's books from the time, and I find Searle's work to be a clearer and more instructive read. (I should point out that I disagree strongly with Searle, and find myself far more sympathetic to Dennett's viewpoint.) Searle, in a certain sense, is not afraid to pare down, and I think that's a key difference. I think Dennett's greatest sin here is that he tried to be breezy and fun with a topic that deserved academic precision and clarity. He went "pop science" when only hard science would do, and what he ended up with is a book that doesn't, well, actually explain consciousness—or much of anything.
Still, there are important ideas here if you can find them. I cannot vouch for the "evolution of consciousness" chapter's accuracy, but I thought it was an excellent read. I give this book 3/5.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
The definitive book on consciousness
By AJ
This is the best book that Daniel Dennett has written. If you're looking for an explanation of consciousness that doesn't appeal to magic, scientific mysteries, or any other things that don't or can't exist, then this is the book you should read. Admittedly, many of the ideas put forth in this book seem counter-intuitive, but unfortunately as Dennett shows, any account of consciousness that is simple or intuitive cannot explain the phenomenon of consciousness within the constraints of the reality we inhabit.
Also, for anyone interested in this book, don't be put off by the negative reviews. Unfortunately, consciousness is still an extremely contentious topic in modern philosophy, and therefore there will continue to be naysayers for the foreseeable future. If you're concerned about buying a book without knowing whether or not you'll agree with the author's point, I recommend reading the Wikipedia page for Daniel Dennett and then John Searle. If you think Dennett's arguments make more sense than Searle's, you'll probably like this book. However, if you think formulating a scientific account of consciousness is a hopeless endeavor like Searle does, then you might want to skip this book.
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