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Consciousness explained? Well, no, not exactly. But a brilliant book nonetheless, despite the audaciousness of the title (though I must admit that Dennett concedes that his "explanation" is far from complete and that cognitive theory is really still in its infancy--or at least it was when this book was written). I only read it recently, and perhaps it is a bit outdated for a book about the ever-changing fields of cognitive theory, neuroscience, and psychology, but, if anything, this book does a
it's an ambitious project, I give him that. But a few points, which are the down fall of Dennet in his illusionism approach:1. He is too sure of himself, and increasingly intellectually not-humble. 2. Point (1) leads to him becoming more and more condescending.3. Point (1) also leads him to not to be able to understand opposing sides. 4. Point (3) leads him to make strawmen of his opponents' theories. 5. Point (4) leads him to end up defending and explaining something else (mind) as opposed to c...
I was trying out a new reading methodology for Consciousness Explained, reading the critiques of articles entered in journals alongside the actual text, which allowed me to see both the illegitimacy of some of the criticisms and the serious problems with some of the text. I strongly recommend that methodology. I'll be trying it again at some point soon.Dennett's text is considered one of the most significant texts in modern philosophy of consciousness, which is odd since there are some major cri...
Is it possible? Is this going to finally be the book that explains the mystery of consciousness?No. No it is not.What would it even mean to explain consciousness? Reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where they build this ultra powerful supercomputer to finally answer the mystery of "life, the universe and everything," only to then realize that they don't actually know what the question means.
There were parts of this book that were quite difficult and that I would probably have to reread a few times to fully appreciate, but overall it was a lot easier to read than most works of philosophy and/or science that deal with the same subject matter. There was a lot to think about here. Dennett may not be correct in his several models of how consciousness works, which he labels with colorful names, such as "multiple drafts" and "pandemonium," but he is honest enough to admit that they are ju...
A friend urged me to read this book. I got a couple of chapters into it, and found the author was telling me that "we are all novelists", and that a large part of consciousness was going to be explained in terms of the ongoing narrative we spin in our interior monologues. Shortly before, another friend had persuaded me to read some Derrida, and Dennett's arguments sounded a bit familiar. (Oddly enough, the two people in question had been dating at one point). I looked around in Dennett's book, a...
A bold book from my favorite philosopher-scientist that aims to build a framework for tackling perhaps the hardest question humanity has ever asked - "what is this conscious experience?" As in his other books, Dennett is adept at weaving the "soft" thought experiments of philosophy with the "harder" experiments of the scientific community. Some of his most triumphant points don't have the impact they may once have carried, as much of his material has been accepted (or disproved) in the last two
I love love love this book so much that I am hoping that when I die, the crime scene investigators will find it clutched tightly in my hand and will all have to read it very carefully perhaps to get clues about who killed me and then they will forget completely about investigating the crime and start totally getting into this astonishing book instead and will tell all their crime scene investigator buddies who will read it and tell their buddies and then everyone in the world will read it and th...
