Rating: 
Summary: Consciousness explained, but not to everyone's satisfaction
Review: Despite the claims of some reviewers, Dennett does provide an explanation, of sorts, for consciousness. The problem is that very few readers are going to find it a satisfactory one. By integrating findings from psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, and by using a clear, persuasive, lively prose style, Dennett gets us to go along with him that it's all just neurons firing in the brain. But where he seems to lose most readers (and where he lost me, even after reading the book twice) is in his discussion of "qualia" (the subjective, "internal" aspects of conscious experience, such as enjoying a glass of wine or a sunset). Qualia, we are told, are illusions that somehow arise from the operations of the nervous system (that is, the processing of sensory information in the brain results in the brain entering a "discriminative state" that just is the sensation of enjoyment that we experience). Well... ok. But I think that most people who are approaching this book are looking for some sort of account of how that neural activity becomes your enjoyment of the colors of a sunset. And I could not really extract such an account from this book (maybe it's there and I just didn't get it). Dennett is the first to admit (at several places in this book) that his theory is not complete, and that this account offers more of a sketch or outline of what a materialist theory of consciousness would like. The questions that he asks, and his dissection and analyses of actual experimental results, makes this an interesting read. "Half the fun is getting there," as they say. But I think that materialists and mysterians will both find this explanation of consciousness ultimately dissatisfying.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting read, but it falls short.
Review: This book ultimately fails because it doesn't explain consciousness. But never-the-less, it makes an interesting read for philosophically minded people who are interested to read about different perspectives of consciousness. I picked up this book with the intention to find out how bundles of physical particles can be 'consciously aware' of their own existence or of their own environment. How can physical particles have responsibility and moral conscience? How can atoms understand anything? How can inert matter appreciate creation and experience friendship and intrinsic value? In this book, Dennet fails to answer any of these questions. It strikes me that the author's intention was to show that consciousness has no inherent 'higher' faculty or meaning, and that consciousness can arise accidentally as a result of random interactions of physical forces - especially via the mechanisms of natural selection. Again, Dennet fails. The author spends most of the book reflecting on the problems facing materialists, and while discrediting many contemporary theories of consciousness, he finally reveals his own theory and views. But these views are far from an explanation - in fact, they are not even a theory - it is merely two more chapters which talk ABOUT consciousness. It is clear that consciousness sits uncomfortably with the neo-Darwinist perspective of reality. Not only is the immense difficulty for scientists to comprehend the nature of consciousness NOT predicted by accidental, blind mechanisms, (especially according to the mechanisms of natural selection alone), but consciousness and self-awareness does not sit well with neo-Darwinists' belief that we are part of a blindly indifferent Universe. With consciousness, comes the existence of intrinsic value, love and friendship, and fully knowing sentient beings who can freely orient themselves to the pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness. Did this really occur accidentally? The brain is designed to retrieve and store information, which is translated into phenomenal experiences which is not contained in the physical states themselves. Just as it would be incredible to suppose that a computer program happened to write itself by chance and then translated itself into words which form a dramatic novel, so it is incredible to suppose that the brain originates by chance and then translates its electro-chemical states into thoughts, feelings and sensations, which give EVERY impression of purpose and value. In chapter 13, 'The Reality of Selves', Dennet attempts to undermine the notion that the self is 'invisible', by comparing it to the centre of gravity, and he says: "After all, one might say a centre of gravity is just as invisible - and just as real. Is that real enough?" Even though the centre of gravity is a completely different type of phenomena to the nature of self-awareness, Dennet unwittingly reveals that neo-Darwinists can only ASSUME the laws of gravity. But in a blindly indifferent Universe, why should material particles continue to obey such mathematically precise and ordered laws as the 'inverse square law of gravity', which enables scientists to predict solar eclipses, to the minute, a millennium in advance. Did THIS occur by chance? What kind of blind, purposeless force gave rise to, and continued to sustain such a cosmos? What kind of blind, purposeless cosmos can accidentally become aware of itself, and start manifesting spiritual creativity? (Did the blind forces of nature accidentally write Paul McCartney's song "Yesterday"? Neo-Darwinists believe so). It strikes me that neo-Darwinists cannot see the wood for the trees. I personally believe that evolutionary change is empowered by the presence of the divine ground of all Being - the Universal Consciousness - God. But this is certainly not a case of "God of the gaps" - rather, it's due to the fact that theism makes SENSE of our existence and this wonderfully ordered cosmos we have found ourselves in. God will always provide the ULTIMATE explanation for science, and it sits comfortably with the spirit and with the intellect to boot. As for Dennet's book here, it certainly makes an interesting read, but it also reveals a certain narrow-mindedness to neo-Darwinian thought.
Rating: 
Summary: It's Tough Going, but ultimately, it succeeds in its aim
Review: This is a truly brilliant work, by one of the (seemingly few) philosophers who, in my opinion, has finally discovered the right way to think about consciousness. I have a suspicion that those harshly critical customer reviews you see above or below this one are from people who couldn't quite stomach the lengthy and complicated arguments. I say this because very often, the complaints they have are precisely ones that the author recognises early on and goes out of his way, in later chapters, to counter. None of Dennett's arguments are acknowledged by any of these people. The structure of the book is as follows. The first batch of chapters are a summary of what exactly a theory of consciousness needs to explain, a rough sketch of Dennett's theory (the "Multiple Drafts Model", contrasted with the myth of the "Cartesian theatre"), and then a long, abstruse section dealing with some scientific experiments that have revealed something of the truly bizarre nature of consciousness. In this section, we see how the "Multiple drafts model" is able to provide coherent explanations for the results of these strange experiments, which would otherwise force us to try to ask unanswerable questions, we were to think in terms of the Cartesian theatre. The second section, which I found to be a little superfluous, deals with the evolutionary background to the issue of consciousness. The next section, deals with the way in which conscious beings communicate or otherwise express our beliefs and desires about the world. Then, towards the end, things pick up dramatically - armed with the formidable tools he has forged earlier on in the book, Dennett tears the concept of "qualia" to shreds, along with most of the familiar thought-experiments connected with it (Mary the colour-scientist, Searle's chinese room, the idea of inverted qualia etc.) This is what I would say to someone who accuses Dennett and his "reductionist" approach of failing to explain the intuitively obvious existence of qualia: The further our scientific knowledge of the world has progressed, the more it has become apparent that the universe in which we live is a bizarre place, and many utterly obvious and common-sensical notions turn out to be invalid (for instance, the idea that two spatially separated events can be simultaneous, the idea that there is such thing as an objectively existing "present", and the "flow of time", so visceral and intuitive, doesn't exist at all - and also, from Quantum theory, the idea that our observation of an event doesn't necessarily affect the event taking place) - so do not object on those grounds alone, against Dennett's theory. Also, if a theory succeeds in explaining why it is that we *think* we have qualia, then I ask you, what more do you want? In summary, this is a wonderful yet somewhat maligned book. Read it at your peril, ye mystically inclined.
Rating:
Summary: Consciousness Avoided
Review: A suitable book for obtaining a general idea of the philosophical debates over consciousness. However, the title is misleading. Rather than explaining consciousness, the subject is avoided. No clear definition of consciousness is ever given; rather, the author provides a list of what consciousness is not.
Rating: 
Summary: Not exactly an investigation of consciousness . . .
Review: This book, as has been often said, might better have been titled "Consciousness Explained Away." However, it does have its merits, particularly in the line of empirical evidence regarding neurophysiological activity. The main problem, though, is that this book actually says _nothing_ of consciousness itself. As with nearly every other approach--whether philosophical, theological, psychological, empirical-scientific, etc.--this book describes very well a whole mess of phenomena arising _within_ consciousness (from synapses to thoughts to human beings) but utterly fails to investigate the nature of awareness itself. It is an analysis of phenomena rather than noumenon, appearances rather than the witness of appearances, and the author, like nearly every other human being, fails to grasp this incredibly simple point. No amount of study and discourse on the nature of neurological activity, computational models, philosophies, thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences, and psychological pathologies is going to give you the slightest understanding of what is aware of all those things. Consciousness--pure, ever-present, expansive awareness--is not a thing, not an object, not an experience, not a phenomenon capable of being observed. Rather, it is the infinite context in which all things, all phenomena, or all experiences arise, stay a bit, and pass away. Never does consciousness itself come or go, and this can be directly verified by everyone. (It is the mind and body--aggregate thoughts, feelings, memories, perceptions--that change, turn off and on, and come and go; never does consciousness itself turn off and become "unconscious." If you mistakenly identify yourself with the mind or body, however, rather than with awareness itself, "you" will naturally seem to fade out along with those things.) In truth, there is only one consciousness, one awareness, and it is the same in all beings, in all places and times. It is the infinite clearing, the vast emptiness, the unmoving space within which all people, places, and things come and go. But the emptiness itself never comes or goes, or even changes or moves at all. It is beyond time, beyond change, beyond spatiotemporal phenomena altogether, and it is what we truly are. Aware of time, you are timeless. Aware of space, you are spaceless. Aware of forms, you are formless. And when you discover the truth of this, the immediately, undeniably verifiable Fact of this, you will know what this world really is, and you will know exactly what you are doing here.
Rating: 
Summary: What?
Review: I'm afraid this book doesn't explain consciousness. It doesn't explain how inanimate matter can understand anything. It doesn't explain how Dennet understands anything. I was more than disappointed. Buy it by all means, but only to laugh at it with your friends. Deary me.
Rating:
Summary: This book is waste paper.
Review: And so is any book that purports to "reduce" consciousness to something else. If you enjoy handwaving, you'll enjoy watching Dennett try to deny the very existence of obvious features of experience (in his chapter "Qualia Disqualified"). His work is surely the *reductio ad absurdum* of all attempts to "explain" mind in terms of matter. If this is how a religion-hating "philosopher" like Dennett "explains" consciousness, give me religion any day; it requires a lot less faith than this junk!
Rating:
Summary: Consciousness pretty much skipped altogether
Review: The one-line summary above says it all. Would that Dennett had been so terse; his failure to address the subject he claims to address would have been obvious.
Rating:
Summary: Consciousness wasn't explained!
Review: As a teacher in Consciousness, the only word in the book relating to consciousness was 'Pineal' which refers to the Pineal Gland. The brain isn't the foundation of 'Consciousness' and unless the mental center is stirred into activity there is no brain activity...relating to consciousness. Consciousness is an inner awareness which leads an individual into enlightenment...this only happens when an individual functions in Higher Consciousness. The entire focus of the book was supposed to be...WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS? From my view point it wasn't answered. If the author of the book knew what consciousness was. . . his book would have taken on an entirely different theme. Rosalie Quattrocchi
Rating:
Summary: Consciousness Reduced
Review: Dennet needs only a single paragraph to live up to his promise, informing the reader that consciousness is a 'Von-Neumannesque machine'. As he is a (non-greedy) reductionist, he thinks that is explaining enough. I tend to agree, because between all the long-winded retoric Dennet presents a lot of arguments that may not prove him right conclusively, but certainly strengthen his point. The book is a fascinating read for materialists and atheists and probably a great annoyance to other people. This perhaps explains the strong reactions to it. I would ignore those: Dennet makes his hypotheses and assumptions clear at the start and if you're not willing to go along with those, there's no use torturing yourself with the rest of the book. If, however, you are wiling to have the belief of Cartesian dualism - the distinction between mind and body - challenged in a provocative way, by all means read this interesting book. For me, it has served as a starting point for a lot of debate.
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