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Summary: Consciousness Denied
Review: This book is wonderfully written and very stimulating. Dennett's sense of humour breaks the pace of the difficult passages and makes the experience worthwhile. However, one question was never adequately explained - if consciousness is an illusion, who is being fooled? Another question not explored - how can consciousness be a proper subject of scientific enquiry when there is no possibility of empirical falsifiability? Imagine you have all the nuts and bolts needed to create a conscious being. Assemble it and switch it on - now, how do you verify the emergence of consciousness without experiencing this state firsthand?
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Summary: It certa_nly fi_ls in the bl_nks
Review: Dennett's theory of 'consciousness' (or the lack of consciousness), does not resort to mystical explanation like many other ideas do. He, and many others would agree, that non-materialist explanations are a form of 'giving up'.
He may not have explained 'consciousness', but I believe, that he has certainly contributed to our understanding of how and why we think like we do.
'Consciousness Explained' is one of the best books I have ever read, all areas in the text being relevent to the title's 'promise', and convincingly argued. Please read this book and don't be turned off by the other reviews here, you will be stimulated. Quote:
"Only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events could explain consciousness at all. If your model of how pain is a product of brain activity still has a box in it labeled "pain", you haven't even begun to explain what pain is, and if your model of consciousness carries along nicely until the magic moment when you have to say "then a miracle occurs" you haven't begun to explain what consciousness is." [page 154-5]
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Summary: consciousness confounded
Review: Dennet belongs to that class of writers who are so taken by their ideas that they fail to see just about everything else. The point of his book, he may well argue, is to explain why there's no consciousness, in the traditional sense of the word, to explain in the first place. It takes him over 400 pages to do this, meandering into much pointless nonsense along the way. As an expository writer Dennett is simply a show-off, and a bad one at that. On every page he tries to be as cute as possible, without ever seriously thinking about what he's writing. The result is a pompous and often unreadable book. And, by the way, why would anyone call Dennett a cognitive scientist? In what sense is he a scientist I simply do not understand. Even as a philosopher he is inadequate; his way of doing serious philosophy consists of nothing more than dropping names and bragging about his unique understanding of Wittgenstein.
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Summary: Consciousness dissected but not explained
Review: The author may appear to have explained consciousness as an illusion of activities within the brain, but in my opinion he may be putting the cart before the horse. To a person looking at a table in a room, the table is just that a table. To a wood anatomist what appears to be a table to us is a mass of wood cells. To a chemist the table is a mass of atomic particles...ad infinitum. Who is to tell what level of experience is the true one? By accepting consciousness as a thing in itself one is likely to find evidence of phenomena that relates to that level. By seeing it as an inferior aggregation of sub-units, one will experience it as such, assuming that he has found proof for that concept. If consciousness is not material in origin, then by attempting to dissect it as something material will make it exactly that for the observer, but not necessarily in reality.
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Summary: On of the best books ever written on the subject.
Review: This book changed my way of thinking about consciousness from a viewpoint nearly opposite that of Dennett's. It takes an open mind to get the point though and it wasn't until the 3rd reading and after a lot of mulling it over that I realized that Dennett's thinking about consciouness was right on. Dennett's explanation is an in principle explanation and adresses philosophical issues rather than giving a complete detailed theory of the way the brain works. He demolishes some very powerful intuitions. One must be willing to accept that intuitions about consciousness that we all share while irresistable because of the way our brains are built just might be completely wrong. Dennett shows that the our intuitions lead us to feel we have a direct contact with something mystical (consciousness, qualia, raw feels etc.)that needs explaining. He also convincingly argues that there is no such mystical entity matching our intuitions but rather just computational, embodied brains managing in, and forming theories about world and self. Read this book --but carefully!
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Summary: CONSCIOUSNESS NEVER EXPLAINED
Review: It's rather interesting that a book whose title promises to explain consciousness never makes the attempt. Dennet thinks he has ways to think about the consciousness problem, but all he has done was to confuse the matter even more by introducing more terms and metaphors that are all too fatiguing in philosophical writings. A more fitting title, I suggest, would be CONSCIOUSNESS NEVER EXPLAINED.
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Summary: One emergent self says, "Read this book!"
Review: The outrageous title is not an exaggeration. Dennett provides the reader with abundant, detailed clinical and observational evidence that our minds don't work at all the way we think they do. He dismantles the traditional Cartesian theater (in which interpreted images are presented to the conscious mind) and gradually builds up an alternative view. The result is a model of consciousness as an ongoing series of drafts with no finished product, in which selfhood emerges through complexity, feedback and parallel processing. Dennett banishes dualism convincingly, and his writing is not only dense with new revelations, but clever and amusing. It made me laugh, it made me think. Highly recommended for conscious minds
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Summary: Excellent starting point
Review: Dennett does an excellent job of making it perfectly clear that there is no ghost in the machine and there is much more to be done. He attempts to come up with a meaningful model as a starting point for a scientific hunt for consciousness and does a strikingly good job. However, as the philosopher is suppossed to do, Dennett concentrates on posing the right questions that need to be answered by neuroscientists involved in the hunt for the source of the emergent properties of the brain and avoids making hypothesises on a biological basis. An inspiring and, more importantly, a challenging read
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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.
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Summary: Strutting & Fretting
Review: A person less sure of themself might have titled this work, A Theory of Consciousness. Not so Daniel Dennett. Here flat out he says Consciousness Explained. That alone demands you read this book if you are the least bit curious. Your curiosity will be rewarded.
While the text is dense it is not ponderous. It is filled with examples, details, and descriptions. All are well reasoned and thoroughly researched. As one from the humanities with a deep interest in science, this philosophical work bridges my cognitive gap and stimulates the synapses. Or if you will, it struts and frets across my non-cartesian stage in multiple drafts.
Is it explained and the issue resolved? I recommend you read Consciousness Explained and make up your own mind.
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