Rating: 
Summary: Who are you?
Review: The easiest thing to express, and the hardest to explain, is 'self.' If asked to define who you are, most people [excepting Daniel C. Dennett] would say, "Well, I'm me!" Pressed to define this expression those same people would likely flounder about, ending with something about being "conscious of myself - I know in my mind." It is that notion of consciousness that Dennett seeks to explain to us in this absorbing book on mind/brain awareness. Its audacious title notifies the reader that there are some fascinating concepts examined in this book. Dennett's thinking and writing skills have few, if any, peers, but be advised the going isn't always easy. 'Self' is the ultimate philosophical question and Dennett is challenging some dearly cherished beliefs here. The most common expression of "self" nearly always boils down to the idea that our mind has a central area that observes the world around us. That centre assesses and expresses our concepts of that world in thoughts, speech, writing, whatever. It is that concept that Dennett assaults in this book. Often referred to as the Cartesian Theatre from Rene Descarte's "I think, therefore I am" concept that the brain [physical] and mind [conceptual] were separate, Dennett finds this notion too simplistic. He knows the mind is in the brain. How it works in observing the world and expressing our ideas of it is the theme of this book. Dennett explains many facets of how we observe and how we react to what we observe. He strives admirably to counter the still widely-held belief that consciousness is a tangible "thing" that can be identified and dealt with. No such "thing" is there, he notes. Instead, the mind is weighing input and dealing with many options at once. He posits a concept of this situation he calls the 'Multiple Drafts' theory. The mind/brain is continuously processing information and making selections about what to respond to and how to make the response. Responses may be speech, writing or simply memory storage. While Dennett's use of terminology may make the novice quail, his down-to-earth approach to the issues makes this book delightful reading for anyone. Instead of arcane concepts or lofty language from America's pre-eminent philosopher, we're given many concrete examples of how our minds work. His stature, however, is in no small part due to his skills as a communicator. Those skills are artfully expressed in this book. If you have problems with terms like 'heterophenomenology' or 'qualia', take a moment to go back to his definitions, or read on to enjoy his explanations. Either way, there are rewards. Iin short, this whole book is rewarding and will go far in helping human beings understand just what they are. We are conscious, we think, therefore we are human. How to better understand that situation is amply explained by reading this outstanding book.
Rating:
Summary: Dissolving our last great mystery.
Review: This is an extraordinary book but an extraordinarily difficult book to read and understand. You will need to examine your own belief system about consciousness, set it aside while you read the book and try to understand the authors point of view. Three philosophical ideas run through this book, the first two to be demolished by the author and the third to be put in their place. (1)"The Cartesian Theatre": This is the idea that there is a non-physical mind, separate from the physical brain, where all understanding and consciousness occurs. You can probably already see how this is no explanation at all. But it is a strongly held view by a very large proportion of the population. (2)"Cartesian Materialism": This is the idea that there is a "center" within the brain where all the understanding and consciousness occurs. Again you can probably see that this is no explanation either. It pushes the problem further into the brain and if we now look at this "center" for an explanation of consciousness we are left looking for a center within the "center" and so on in an infinite regress. Its many disguises will fool even the very attentive reader. (3)"Multiple Drafts Theory": This is the theory teased together from the many ideas of the author and his contemporaries. He presents this early on in the book and expands on it throughout the book by means of anecdotes, analogies and thought experiments and shows how this theory can explain well-known conundrums that are unable to be explained by other theories. Reviewers of this book are basically divided into three camps depending on how they re-interpret the books title. (1)"Consciousness Not Explained": Well, what can I say? If you don't make the effort, if you have preconceived ideas about consciousness that you are unwilling to part with, if your anti-materialist stance causes you to read this book for the sole purpose of criticizing its contents, then you will never understand it. But you shouldn't blame the book for your shortcomings. (2)"Consciousness Explained Away": These reviewers are simply mistaken. The author explains that various things that consciousness seems to be is not what it actually is. He shows us how to think about consciousness thereby dissolving the mystery of consciousness. He does not explain away consciousness just the misconceptions about it and provides a theory to account for what consciousness actually is. (3)"Consciousness Explained": These reviewers accept the titles somewhat exaggerated claim as a bit of poetic license. The author himself says that he does not have a complete explanation of consciousness and fully accepts that parts of his theory may possibly be proven to be wrong. But the essential elements, he believes, will stand the test of time. If you are firmly rooted in the Cartesian Theatre and won't budge, this book is not for you. If you unwittingly support some form of Cartesian Materialism, read this book very carefully. It will show you a much more satisfying way to think about our last great mystery.
Rating: 
Summary: Blissful ignorance
Review: I wonder if Dennett has ever truly understood the Kantian dichotomy of noumenon and phenomena. At any rate, nowhere in his book, there is any meaningful reference to this dichotomy, a dichotomy whose significance in the context of consciousness can be missed only by those who are utterly ignorant of the context in question. A sad casualty of my reading this book was my respect for the New York Times. They called it one of the best ten books of the year! I wonder if it was a Jason Blair who gave the book this epithet. In short, Dennett is a philosophical blockhead: he misses the very issue he has tasked himself with tackling.
Rating: 
Summary: A new model to consider . . .
Review: Mr. Daniel C. Dennett is also author of Brainstorms and coauthor of The Mind's I. George Johnson, New York Times Book Review stated that this book was "Brilliant . . as audacious as its title . . ." and I could not agree more. This text is well written and put together in such a manner that the concepts are accessible even to those of us who are not scientists by training. Yet, the change in the model of the brain presented here is very difficult for me to grasp. I like the concept of thinking about a massively parallel processor as the model for how the brain does what it does, but translating that into a new concept of no one central place where "consciousness takes place," is very difficult indeed. Like many, my view of human consciousness was that there was a central place, an observer that kept me neatly in time and space. Not so, says Dennett. "Each normal individual of this species [homo sapiens]," says Mr. Dennett, "makes a self. Out of its brain it spins a web of words and deeds, and, like the other creatures, it doesn't have to know what it is doing; it just does it. This web protects it, just like the snail' shell, and provides it a livelihood, just like the spider's web, and advances its prospects for sex, just like the bowerbird's bower." He goes on to point out that this web of discourse and deeds is as much a biological product as any of the other constructions to be found in the animal world. Mr. Dennett goes on to explain that this complex set of cultural transmissions (memes) such as tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, etc. can best be understood as the operation of a "von Neumannesque" virtual machine implemented in the parallel architecture of a brain that was not designed for any such activities. In other words, we have learned to use our brains for new functions as we evolved. And, as we spin this web of discourse, we create for ourselves a sense of time-space and orient ourselves in that time-space in such a way as to disconnect ourselves from "creation" and give ourselves and others a sense of "individual." The book concludes with appendices that direct themselves to specialized language and explanations for Philosophers and Scientists. All in all, a very difficult but rewarding read. I found this book challenging to say the least, and yet I highly recommended it to those interested in how the evolution of human consciousness.
Rating:
Summary: A Break from Decartes
Review: Contrary to other reviewers, I believe Dennett has a very powerful definition of Consciousness. Having studied this subject for over 12 years I found this book to be truly original. It was a breakthrough - even for Dennett himself (having read many of his other works). His theory is that there is NO central meaner. No homunculus sitting in our heads that "understands" us or exists separate from our body. We are all narratives of our own existence. No more or less real than a character in a story, and like a story our experience is drafted - the blanks are filled in with the most reasonable explanation. Self is the center of narrative gravity of a body. Not something separate from it. Dennett goes to great length to discredit other theories before presenting his own. Thus Dennett holds out from explaining his theory until the end of the book. This may cause many readers to loose interest. If you enjoy reading philosophy you will enjoy this book. IMHO - There is a good chance that 100 years from now Dennett's view of Consciousness will be widely held.
Rating:
Summary: Irritating
Review: Dennett is this pompous author who plunges into the subject without a proper appreciation of the complexities of the matter. If Dennett has explained consciousness, why aren't we building consciousn machines already?
Rating:
Summary: Is Consciousness an Impenatrable Mystery?
Review: If one chooses, as Dennett explains early on, to think about consciousness as if it were not inexplicable, not indecipherable, then one would look for answers with what's available. Writing software programs as I do, I understand how difficult it is to get a computer to "think", let alone to actually think. People just don't yet understand how revolutionary and ingenious evolutionary software is, nor does the everyday person comprehend the radical impact it will have over time. Dennett is dead on. Get involved with computers, read about genetic algorithms and see the types of problems that genetic programming can solve. When you get what its impact is maybe you'll begin to realize that if you tire of "mystery" and want to understand he's laid the path with real information. A real solution to the question of consciousness. All of the pages he wrote were to lay the necessary foundation to help the layman (or the ignorant intellectual) understand the necessary methods of thinking to see the solution. As he wrote in Darwin's Dangerous Idea people don't yet see just how important the evolutionary algoritm is so vital. It happens everywhere we have replication, mutation, and selection. When one wishes to achieve computer behavior that appears intelligent AND you quit trying to program in every possibility, THEN you have to allow the program to present varied solutions and use some testing algorithm to evalutate the solutions for fitness. His whole book seems to be oriented around the brain's massively parallel structure being set up to do just that at all levels. From interpreting input data to choosing output actions. At all levels the mind uses evolutionary algorithms to present solutions and select them. It's incomprehensible to me, that so many miss just how valuable and essential this fundamental process is. But perhaps you have to spend time writing algorithms for a living before you see how ingenious and basic and incredibly powerful this process is. It's no wonder that the human mind works off of this principle.
Rating:
Summary: Dennett's Dangerous Idea
Review: First of all, this guy's book-title smacks of hubris! He is a pedant posing as a philosopher. Using sophistry to weave a web of verbal convolutions, in which consciousness manages to elude him. I've read a lot on the topic of mysticism, encompassing the last hundred years or so, relating to people from all walks of life and I have found the consistency in these personal reports more convincing than anything that Dennett has produced.
I'm not going to be dogmatic, but anyone reading the material that I have read, with an open mind, feels that Dennett has missed something too suble for his logic.
Rating: 
Summary: consciousness denied
Review: The above is the title of a review of Dennet's book by John Searle in his 'Mysteries of Consciousness'... I read Dennet's book first (the title tends to grab you), and after reading it, I knew it was full of ridiculous problems which the author had evaded, and as I was stewing on how to articulate my arguments, I found that another (Searle)had already done so. Basically, this author puts himself in the ridiculous position of denying that consciousness exists at all, insisting that there is no difference between a human mind and the program of a robot. His is a game of language, in which he doesn't want to come out and say 'consciousness doesn't exist' (which truly is his thesis)so he says 'Cartesian intuition' doesn't exist -- AS IF THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO HIS EXTREMIST THEORY IS DUALISM! this book is a huge waste of time, and its contents are ultimately as nasty as postmodern man has henceforth been able to stoop to.
p.s. -- highly recommend the above-mentioned book by Searle. In an appendix to his review of Dennet's book, he includes a furious rebuff by Dennet (hmmm...how can he be so passionately angry and yet not be conscious?) and a further response by Searle.
Rating:
Summary: typical language game
Review: The mistake here is in assuming the mind is SOMETHING - some abstract object waiting for someone to comprehend it. I quote another review: "Three philosophical ideas run through this book, the first two to be demolished by the author and the third to be put in their place. (1)"The Cartesian Theatre": This is the idea that there is a non-physical mind, separate from the physical brain, where all understanding and consciousness occurs. You can probably already see how this is no explanation at all." So the author opposes Cartesianism. That's fine. "(2)"Cartesian Materialism": This is the idea that there is a "center" within the brain where all the understanding and consciousness occurs. Again you can probably see that this is no explanation either. It pushes the problem further into the brain and if we now look at this "center" for an explanation of consciousness we are left looking for a center within the "center" and so on in an infinite regress. Its many disguises will fool even the very attentive reader." The author opposes Cartesian Materialism. Also fine. "(3)"Multiple Drafts Theory": This is the theory teased together from the many ideas of the author and his contemporaries." No comment on that just yet. Continue: "The author explains that various things that consciousness seems to be is not what it actually is." This is a prime example of what Wittgenstein would call a language game. The words, "consciousness" and "mind" are not nouns in the same way "brain" and "chair" are. Point to a chair. Okay, now point to the "thing" called consciousness. Where is it? When you treat abstract nouns the same way you treat physical objects, you are dealing with nonsense. So this is not about materialism versus non-materialism when it comes to the mind. Cartesianism AND this authors ramblings are both nonsense. It is nonsense to say what consciousness actually is or is not. It is a misuse of the language. You'd think people would start to get it after a while. "On Certainty" and "Philosophical Investigations" have been out for a long time. But I guess there will always be those narcissistic egomaniacs who don't feel the need to examine or understand any of the knowledge that has already been given to us.
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