Consciousness Explained

In this and many of his other books, Dennett tries to merge results and ideas from different fields into a coherent argument but in each book, he fails miserably.

In most cases, after a few lines of hopeful introduction, he gets stuck in petty quibbles against other scientists and their arguments. He does not even properly outline the idea he is against. He just quotes passages and tries to come up with puns over the words or expressions they used. This is not scientific argument. This is just silly.

Substance of the book is scarce and needs to be dug out from the pile of filling material. Each chapter starts out with promises of cutting edge arguments, continues with their postponements to upcoming chapters and finishes with nothing but confusion over trivial problems.

It seems Dennett used a random sentence generator for this book with all the feedback loops and inputs blocked (if you have read the book, you will know what this means; if you have not, do not bother).

Dennett can always be relied on for clever analogies, provocative themes and interesting thought experiments. For a philosopher, he writes colorfully and well. In the end, though, his book leaves the unavoidable impression that he enjoys the game of thinking a little too much. This, together with his insistence on evaluating first-person, subjective experience using the objective, third-person standards of science, gets in the way of a truly serious and open-minded search for answers.

Although he acknowledges that consciousness is a mystery, Dennett deliberately avoids material that might help illuminate that mystery. He fails to consider the crucial role of emotion, intuition and other non-quantifiable factors, preferring instead to "try to explain every puzzling feature of human consciousness within the framework of contemporary physical science; at no point will I make an appeal to inexplicable or unknown forces, substances or organic powers." Just how comfortably he settles in is clear from the fact that a full 281 pages go by before he finally says, "...at last it is time to grasp the nettle, and confront consciousness itself, the whole marvelous mystery..."

But in spite of raising the reader's expectations, however belatedly, he simply goes on to equate the brain and mind with computer hardware and software, claiming that "Anyone or anything that has such a virtual machine as its control system is conscious in the fullest sense..."

Dennett, in falling into the same cyber-trap as Richard Dawkins and other materialists, yields to the temptation to model the exquisitely subtle and multi-faceted human mind after one of mankind's far more limited mechanical creations. Having set the bar so low, Dennett makes it impossible for his book to shed any real light on what consciousness is or how it came to be.

Instead of the normal yay or nay review I'll post a few quotes that touch on the underlying theme of this book and the problem it deals with.

. . .

The problem with consciousness:

"I'm writing a book on magic." I explain, and I'm asked, "Real magic?" By /real magic/ people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. "No." I answer: "Conjuring tricks, not real magic." ~ Siegel

/Real magic/ in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is /not real magic/. " ~Dennett

. . .

"The brain is just a computer made of meat...no computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing; but most of the time, we aren't either." --Marvin Minsky

. . .

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." ~Clarke

I'm startled by the number of 1-star reviews this book gets. I think most of them just didn't want to take the time to read this book throughly, with care. This book is really a must-read for everyone interested in philosophy of mind.
I spent months, i think almost half a year, reading this book. After page 200 or so, i started again because i lost it. The second time i summarized each chapter in one sentence to keep the overview.
This is not a book to think: "I don't understand this part... Whatever, i'll read through it, it probably won't matter". If you do that, the reading will be boring and you will get frustrated and miss a lot. There is so much information and insights in this book, you don't want to read through it fast.

Although i do not fully agree with him, Dennett has such a good view on the problems surrounding consciousness. His scepticism towards folk psychology and intuition is very healthy. He gives very good arguments against qualia and the zombie-not zombie distinction. Although you don't have to agree with that, at least they show the basic intuitive views have major problems and may need refinement.

I'm probably going to read this book again once i made more progress in the field of philosophy of mind.

Excelent book.

But only one thing bothered me, that I wish I had realized before I started the book. With his "intuition pumps" I think he's confusing 2 things: having a quale, and remembering a certain quale. Don't get me wrong, I think the final answer will go near his lines of thought, but this conflation doesn't help the argument.