Consciousness is notoriously difficult to explain. On one hand, there are facts about conscious experience--the way clarinets sound, the way lemona...
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Apr 07, 2009
Manny
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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
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Jun 03, 2011
Michael
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Bit of a misnomer - I am very pleased to say: anyone who thinks the can explain, or 'has the answer' is either a crackpot, or you run a mile from.
Mr Dennett suggests, gives possibles bordering on probables-for-the-present-time. Which is fair.
You always know you've got a book you're going to like when you read something in it, and go: "yes, I was thinking think/ along those lines" etc!
This, I think, is a book I'm going to like.
I did. Yet at the same fi More...
Mr Dennett suggests, gives possibles bordering on probables-for-the-present-time. Which is fair.
You always know you've got a book you're going to like when you read something in it, and go: "yes, I was thinking think/ along those lines" etc!
This, I think, is a book I'm going to like.
I did. Yet at the same fi More...
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Jan 07, 2012
Naxa
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Well, I have to say this book went all over the place for me. First and foremost my background is mostly in philosophy, but in regards to science neuroscience and linguistics have always interested me most. So why didn't I instantly love Daniel Dennet and this book?
It wasn't so much his conclusions as his methods. As a rough estimate I would say I agreed with him about fifty percent of the time. However as a philosopher, Dennet just sucks, he cant really argue that well and his infe More...
It wasn't so much his conclusions as his methods. As a rough estimate I would say I agreed with him about fifty percent of the time. However as a philosopher, Dennet just sucks, he cant really argue that well and his infe More...
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Jan 29, 2012
Jesse
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This book attempts a third-person, analytic approach to the investigation of the mind/body problem, as opposed to the traditional first-person, inductive approach found in Descartes and Searle. For the first few hundred pages, Dennett relates a serious of rational errors that plague the subject of consciousness; undeniably universal errors such as the phi phenomenon, wherein one posits flashes as movement, and the subject's tendency to say two related but distinct words at the same time. Thi
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Dec 16, 2009
Joshua
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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 bo
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Mar 06, 2007
AJ
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More of a philosophical approach to handling the question of consciousness. Dennett uses this book to suggest an alternative way to see the mind, a way to join the subjective experience of consciousness with the meat and neurons in the brain. His argument is really to show that old ways of thinking are not necessarily the only ways to think about the mind. He proposes his own model of consciousness, but admits it is not necessarily correct, only that the approach is more justified, and that old
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May 22, 2011
Ugh
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Dennett has coauthored a book with Douglas Hofstadter, and so it comes as little surprise that Consciousness Explained suffers from a similar afflication to that which killed I Am A Strange Loop for me - an overabundance of preamble. The affliction isn't as wounding here, but Dennett does spend rather a lot of time defining himself very carefully (or avoiding defining himself equally carefully) for the benefit of other professional philosophers, with the result that I at times found this a very
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Mar 06, 2011
Rick
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Yet another book which magically escaped my attention, though reading it would have promoted my understanding of so much. Better late than never, eh?
And as always, there was no program to my finding it. An old re-met friend rather, who must have been remembering me as I once was well over 30 years ago, lent it to me. He thought the book had my name written all over it.
Indeed! Nor do I wish to lay claim to that identity I would name for myself, acknowledging readily that More...
And as always, there was no program to my finding it. An old re-met friend rather, who must have been remembering me as I once was well over 30 years ago, lent it to me. He thought the book had my name written all over it.
Indeed! Nor do I wish to lay claim to that identity I would name for myself, acknowledging readily that More...
Jul 28, 2009
Robert
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Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett conceives of consciousness as a direct artifact of the brain—in other words, he has a completely materialistic view of the mental world. He believes that the brain is a complex and highly plastic parallel processor that evolved to help its species survive by quickly identifying the "4Fs": friend, foe, food or mate. Such identification was made possible by a wealth of individual discriminators (for example, vertical lines = potential predators), and by t
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Jul 28, 2011
Robert
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Rhetorically, this book is a masterpiece. Without a doubt, Dennett is a master of the persuasive argument, and he pulls out all the stops here: see the gradual shifts in word choice ("the familiar Cartesian Theater" at the beginning morphs by the end into "our old nemesis, the Cartesian Theater"), very carefully chosen metaphorical models in order to pull in all kinds of technological magic, the way he performs a mea culpa without actually admitting guilt near the end of the
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Jul 29, 2011
Jim
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The model of consciousness Dennet describes is convincing, but nearly 20 years after its initial publication, many of its main points have entered our broader discourse. The work he puts into utterly demolishing the idea of the Cartesian theater seems excessive for an audience now attuned to be receptive to his ideas. Were he to update the book for today, he might replace the lengthy expositions of why the Cartesian theater is absurd with some tests at the end of each chapter to see if you've
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Oct 08, 2010
Pvw
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A hard book to plough through and one that is so careful and meticulous that it never reaches an interesting or clear-cut conlusion. Dennett takes hundreds of pages to refute the idea of consciousness as a sentient observer sitting inside man's brain (a concept known as "the Cartesian Theatre"). I could have agreed about that being untrue in half a page. When Dennett has finally finished explaining what consciousness is not, he disappointingly admits that he does not have a good altern
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Feb 12, 2011
Josh
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Apr 17, 2010
Mark
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If Dennett's so smart, why do his trade paperbacks have such crappy fonts?
Great book-Dennett is an enthusiastic thinker, and here he tried to bridge philosophy of the mind, cognitive neuroscience, and evolutionary theory. The book is 20 years old, and in the field of neuroscience, that is a long time, so if a person wanted an up to date scientific summary on brain and consciousness, this wouldn't be it, (maybe Ned Block's recent book-its on my list but I haven't read it) but D More...
Great book-Dennett is an enthusiastic thinker, and here he tried to bridge philosophy of the mind, cognitive neuroscience, and evolutionary theory. The book is 20 years old, and in the field of neuroscience, that is a long time, so if a person wanted an up to date scientific summary on brain and consciousness, this wouldn't be it, (maybe Ned Block's recent book-its on my list but I haven't read it) but D More...
Jan 10, 2012
Helen
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Struggling with this book. Have had it on my New Year's Resolution list to finish reading it for years. It's hard going, not memorably instructive (in terms of following the train of thought as soon as you've stopped reading) and is overly wordy. Probably I am finding it harder as I leave such long gaps between attacking it. Once in the zone, however, many of the points and ideas are thoroughly engaging and interesting. It explains what consciousness is, and looks at current discussion on t
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Sep 29, 2011
Dan
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Great long book explaining how our minds work like a regular (von Neumann) virtual machine implemented on top of this massively parallel (but slow) system of neurons. It helps bridge the gap between "our brains are just neurons" and "but we're CONSCIOUS!" - not all the way, of course, but it offers inspiration that such a gap could be bridged. After this book, you probably will at least be able to think in a way that doesn't imply some magic place where "it all comes tog
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May 14, 2010
Jake
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A better title for this book would be "Consciousness Provisionally Explained, At Great Length", but that probably wouldn't have fit on the book jacket. In five-hundred or so pages, Dennett outlines most of his complete theory of the mind. The big idea is straightforward: there is no "Cartesian theater" where sense-data or memories or anything else is played for an internal observer or decision maker. Instead, consciousness is a stream produced by the activities of countless
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Nov 23, 2008
Gabriel
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This is exactly the kind of philosophy book I wish I had read in college. I had always felt philosophers spent so much time imagining what might be happening in the world and almost no time at all testing those theories. I always wanted to say "Just because you imagine it, doesn't mean it's true". And there are plenty of theories (De Carte's Devil, zombies, etc) that have no effect on the observable world. I can appreciate these theories for being a kind of mental exercise, but by focu
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Jul 23, 2011
Hayden
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Difficult to follow with his integrated empirical data and philosophical input, since he is a philosopher of science; however, the theory he puts forth is progressive and corresponds to common sense, structured logic, and research done in the sciences (neuroscience, psychology, AI, etc.). He's not lying when he says his Empiric Theory of Mind section is the most strenuous to read and comprehend, it takes a decent amount of crossing mental grapevines (he'll have much to say on these hetero-phenom
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Nov 26, 2011
broken6string
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Dennett has some interesting ideas, but he has a bad habit of surrounding them with pedantic clutter. This is a difficult book in which to stay immersed. If pressed to express one complimentary assessment, I would say this book helped divorce me from my own, long-held, intuitively based belief that I have a central, Cartesian seat of consciousness. I came away from the book understanding that identity is a process rather than a thing--a useful epiphany for those who aspire toward awareness.
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Jan 16, 2012
Dennett does a great job of addressing a lot of different arguments in presenting his own ideas and does so pretty thoroughly. He comes from an entirely materialistic perspective and his goal is to basically not so much "explain" as "explain away" (in the words of a different reviewer) consciousness as a conceptual construct. In another of his books he describes the self as the "narrative center of gravity" - an analogy I like and which I think ties in well wit
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Nov 09, 2011
Jeffrey
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Otto is a character created by Dennett to help him explain his subject. Otto represents Everyman who thinks that there is a uniform reality out there which we perceive directly. Otto believes that somewhere inside his head is a representation of realty that he can identify and explore - the Cartesian Theater, of Descarte's fame. Dennett doesn’t agree and hopes to convince you, and me and Otto that there is an alternative explanation. I invited Otto to join me in this book review.
OTTO: More...
OTTO: More...
May 31, 2011
Jacob
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The trick to solving many philosophical problems often comes down to figuring out how to unask bad questions and Dennett mostly succeeds in that aim by offering hypotheses that arguably deal with all the pertinent phenomena without appealing to outdated beliefs (the cartesian theater, dualism and central processing among others which have led to many a bad question).
But this was certainly an oversized mixed bag. One problem I had with CE was that in a number of places Dennett ambigu More...
But this was certainly an oversized mixed bag. One problem I had with CE was that in a number of places Dennett ambigu More...
Sep 01, 2009
Joshua Nomen-Mutatio
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Yes, the title is audacious. Yes, it's not a perfect book. Yes, the subject is extremely complex and really smart people fight about it in prestigious journals, etc.
But Dennett has some fine ideas nonetheless. I go through periods of swinging in one direction and back again when it comes to what I'll just call the "consciousness wars." But lately Dennett's ideas are striking me as more and more correct (and I've always leaned in his and the Churchland's direction since More...
But Dennett has some fine ideas nonetheless. I go through periods of swinging in one direction and back again when it comes to what I'll just call the "consciousness wars." But lately Dennett's ideas are striking me as more and more correct (and I've always leaned in his and the Churchland's direction since More...
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Feb 28, 2008
Geordie
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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
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Mar 21, 2009
DJ
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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
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Nov 18, 2011
Jim
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Like all of Dennet's stuff: Is this philosophy or science? I personally find it to be highly-opinionated philosophy presented as if it is science. I am into the subject, but personally prefer either a presentation of the facts or some, humbler - e.g. gee-I-could-be-wrong-about this-but, philosophical meditation, but not an opinion expressed as if anyone who disagrees with any point is an idiot.
Aug 04, 2011
Cade
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An arduous read in which the line of argument should have been concluded within the first section, rather than being drawn out. Dennett too often goes off on long-winded tangents, which become exhausting.
There are some very interesting themes within this book, but a failure to use them in a timely manner to keep the reader engaged; and, ultimately provide evidence as to the question of the title...
There are some very interesting themes within this book, but a failure to use them in a timely manner to keep the reader engaged; and, ultimately provide evidence as to the question of the title...
Sep 07, 2010
Ronny
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This book doesn't explain what consciousness is or where it comes from, but rather explains how it operates and the illusions it generates. At times enlightening and disturbing, this book can change the way people view their minds. In fact, the very early attacks on the notion of a "Cartesian Theater" are staggering are hard to wrap one's mind around.
Feb 13, 2010
Carl
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It's rough when you get to page 433 of a long, often tedious slog (detailed examinations of dozens of very specific experiments) and the author says "My explanation of consciousness is far from complete. One might even say that it was just a beginning..." Dude! His brain as computer and consciousness as software-effect and self as narrative center of gravity are all interesting, though seem less profound than he suggests. Would rather have read a highly abbreviated version of this ala
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