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Summary: One of the great books of this century!
Review: The persons critizing Dennet for "denying" the phenomenon he claims to "explain", apparently fail to understand his theory. Dennet does not deny that "consciousness" exists, he only claims to show that it is nothing more than the accompanying effect of a lot of complicated neural activity. I think his claim is valid, but I understand a lot of people will be uneasy with this conclusion. Sometimes Dennet provokes his opponents somewhat more than necessary. If he argues that "qualia" (the subjective impressions of our sensory perceptions) do not really exist, it is possible he goes a step too far. He might be more persuasive if he recognized more explicitly the existence of two aspects of reality: the material world with its neurons, molecules, quarks, etc. on the one hand, and the "qualosphere", i.e. our subjective world with all its "qualia", on the other hand. I grant that this second world is derived from the physical world. However, in our "human condition", we human beings live in this "qualosphere" and not in the world of molecules and quarks. This explains the emotional resistance many people put up against Dennet's theory. Dennet's critcism of John Edelman seems a bit too harsh to me. Edelman's research on neural networks might contribute some day to a more profound insight in the neural processes that are at the base of our mental processes. Dennet's modell of consciousness will acquire a more solid foundation once we know more about this. I think he is a bit too dismissive of people who concentrate their attention on this aspect. But, of course, "Consciousness Explained" is one of the great books of this century.R. Holsbergen Luxembourg
Rating: 
Summary: nothing explained
Review: "A MAN IS GUILTY OF UNPARDONABLE ARROGANCE WHO CONCLUDES, BECAUSE AN ARGUMENT HAS ESCAPED HIS OWN INVESTIGATION, THAT THEREFORE IT DOES NOT REALLY EXIST."--DAVID HUME. i learned a lot about contemporary philosophy of mind in america and about dennett himself by reading this book. that the former is worthless because the latter is respected. the most difficult lesson for most readers is that a contemporary reputation means nothing.
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Summary: Simply and utterly brilliant!!!!
Review: Have read a series of Dennett's books over the years and have worked with him in my mind as he tried to put the pieces together. This book is a masterpiece. Dennetts, " Darwins Dangerous Idea" is a companion piece which starts to suggest a constellation of ideas on a productive analytical frame to use when thinking about minds.
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Summary: Methinks they doth protest too much.
Review: The web site specifies that reviews must not contain spiteful remarks or comments focusing solely on the author, so anytime you see a review like this, you know that the writer has flown under the radar and gone over the line, breaking the rules to prevent what they most fear: people like you reading this book. Don't be dissuaded. When you deny the deniers by reading the book, you'll see that Dennett delivers on his promise to explain consciousness. The mind, he shows, is a product of the brain, with no ineffable, objectively undetectable soul underneath. He does this with text that never strays from clarity, even when he explains counter-intuitive concepts through stories, quotes and analogies. His writing is intriguing, engrossing and downright clever. This book shows Dennett not only as a great thinker, but a great communicator. Read it and see for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: Hogwash
Review: Daniel Dennett's idea of a spiffy, up-to-date methodology is -- get this -- Skinnerian behaviorism! The man who put rats in boxes and insisted that "inner states" were not valid scientific subjects of study. Dennett "explains" consciousness by denying that it exists. How stupid can you get? This is not just my opinion: it is conclusively demonstrated in John Searle's book, "The Mystery of Consciousness" which has a chapter on this book featuring a revealing exchange between Searle and Dennett. Searle charges Dennett with denying the phenomenon which he is trying to explain, and Dennett (apparently in confusion) admits the charge!! Most of this claptrap has been rendered completely obsolete, in any case, by Terrence Deacon's great book, "The Symbolic Species." Chomsky and Minsky and Hofstadter and a whole passel of pretentious AI gurus go to the wall, and rightfully so.
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Summary: Misguided Arrogance Explained.......
Review: Some of the glowing reviews on this page do not surprise me (perhaps this author has an unusually large extended family round every Christmas?), but for those who may still have some wit in their head and an ear prepared to listen, this is a tract so breathtakingly awful that new adjectives would have to be invented to do it justice. There are a few interesting points made, it is true, such as curious time lapse effects in the way the brain structures its cognitive models, but this observation isn't even Dennett's own, and is buried under an avalanche of verbose and irrelevant twaddle. The text in this book is among the worst ever to have seen the light of day in a work of non fiction which purports to an educational purpose.....filled out on almost every page with dizzyingly bombastic language, meanderings into yawnsome self-invented fantasies, and a prose so teeth-grindingly pretentious that any editor worth (her) title would have to nail (him)self to the chair to save from hurling it in the general direction of the waste recycling unit. As to the claim of the title, *Consciousness Explained*, what can one do except shake one's head in profound embarrassment for the company who saw fit to publish the thing? Dennett employs the age old philosophical device (of very dubious lineage) in which you start out (offering no valid proof whatsoever) by redescribing the central bone of contention to your own personally tailored 'definition' which collapses the issue, and then proceed to claim that others have 'misunderstood' the problem because they are arguing for something which isn't 'really' there (see for example some of the other reviews on this page for more of the same). Erm...........noooooo! This is is the sort of tactic that would earn about 11% in a freshman essay on the rudiments of critical thinking. Dennett, like Hofstadter, Minsky, and other, has drunk so deeply from the well of fantasies fuelling Artificial Intelligence that his logic is irreversibly compromised. Those who may believe that this is a truly great work or Dennett himself a misunderstood genius of Kantean proportions should rejoice, for they evidently have a great deal of reading still ahead of them. For heaven's sake go out and read some of history's REAL 'great books'.....and I promise you the difference will be staggeringly evident. One star awarded for the brat-like cheek of the man.
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Summary: Dennett "explains" consciousness by denying its existence
Review: Talk about philosophical failure! Dennett says he is going to explain consciousness, and winds up denying there is any such thing. This would have fit handily into one sentence (it just did). I understand his motivation for doing this -- he wants to believe that computers are some day going to be just as conscious as animals, but it is really silly. Consciousness is a fact of life. When you're bonked on the head, you lose it for a while. More important, if you want to explain social reality and the group actions of human beings, consciousness and intentionality are your basic building blocks.
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Summary: The naysayers are missing the point.
Review: Consider this: A magician makes a coin "disappear" and you are asked to explain it. You can analyze the illusion and figure out how it works, but you can't actually explain how he made it vanish, since he didn't. It's just a trick, so all you need to do is explain how the trick works, how he made it SEEM to happen. That should be enough to please anyone, but then someone in the audience, upset that you've taken away the mystery, complains that you didn't explain how the disapearance "actually" happened. This is exactly the reaction Dennett's book is getting. He analyzes what consciousness really is and how it must have come to be, yet these people want something more. Not content with having the actual explained, they demand that he explain the mythical but intuitive notions of the Cartesian theater and qualia and a host of other pleasant falsehoods, just so that they can lock science and philosophy out of the human mind, to keep it sacred for the new mysterians. Well, they just can't have it. Dennett does explain consciousness, but to do so he must first blow away the myths and that makes the myth-believers unhappy. He shows that evolution is frugal, never paying for more than is actually needed to get the job done. And this leaves us with a true understanding that is all that much more awesome than the illusion it replaces. If you want to live in a world of pretty colors, avoid this book. But if you care about the truth and want to know what consciousness is and isn't, read it now.
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Summary: An Exemplar of Philosophical Accomplishment!
Review: Dennett has succeeded in crafting an incisive, comprehensive and, most importantly, workable reduction of consciousness. Because his sources are eclectic and his methods sparringly and wittily unorthodox, the immensity of his contribution can often be underestimated. While I am not fully convinced his theory is empirically correct (pending further evidence, most likely theory-internal), it does indeed seem conceptually irrefutable. As such, it will at least provide cognitive scientists with a tentative analysis to integrate into their models until a more technical model (which will almost certainly retain some of Dennett's notions, imo) is elaborated. Contrary to widespread belief, Dennett's premises are firmly rooted in what give every appearance of being perrenial scientific verities, thus belying the alleged transience or trendiness of his metaphors. Moreover, any methodical introspectionist will be quick to percieve that they are thoroughly consistent with our more carefully-thought-out intuitions. A wonderful work of verve, pith and wit. Highly recommended to anyone with an aversion to standard philosophical stodginess but a keen interest in the "substrates" and mechanisms of consciousness.
Rating:
Summary: A pretentious book
Review: If Dennett explains consciousness then it must be cleverly concealed. Perhaps, it is a cryptogram to be solved by the reader. Dennett has no answers, just a lot of stimulus-response stuff. This approach has already reached a dead end. Perhaps Dennett doesn't know.
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