Customer Reviews

The Intentional Stance (Bradford Books)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Anybody who wants to seriously wrestle with Dennett's thought on consciousness needs to start here, then move to "Consciousness Explained," and from there to "Freedom Evolves." (It is an update of "Elbow Room," which means that can be skipped. And, although it has some germs of Dennett's thought, "Brainstorms" can also be bypassed.)

Does one have to have a philosophy course touching on intentionality before reading this book? No, not if one is well-enough read in philosophy, psychology or sociology in general to grasp the background of Dennett's ideas.

I rate this a star higher than most of Dennett's later work primarily because it is more introductory, and so we see less of Dennett tripping himself up or avoiding some of the logical conclusions of his speculations.

That said, Dennett is never dull or boring; agree or disagree, he will stimulate your thought.

I believe this work should be considered a classic given the enormous influence the articles in it have had on philosophy of mind, among other areas in philosophy. Much in here is stated more clearly about the Intentional Stance than it is in later works, such as Brain Children. That isn't a criticism. I think that around the time this work was published Dennett was more into legitimizing and explaining the Intentional Stance than into polishing up his account of mind. Indeed in later works, such as "Consciousness Explained" and "Kinds of Minds", he builds off the foundation he laid here to develop his account of mind more fully.

In IS, Dennett comments on just which philosophical schools he aligns himself with, for instance, interpretivism, methodological behaviorism, and functionalism. Part of the message to take home about exactly where he aligns himself is that it isn't really important to him. He lays his arguments down and lets others worry about whether that makes him an interpretivist or methodological behaviorist. A clearer statement of his position regarding categorization of his views can be found in the "Back to the Drawing Board" chapter in "Dennett and His Critics".

In later works, Dennett further clarifies in what sense the entities the Intentional Stance makes use of are real, entities such as beliefs and desires. The most important of these later works is probably "Real Patterns", which appears in "Brain Children". In short, beliefs are part of compression algorithms of behavior that has been subjected to radical interpretation (See Davidson) from the Intentional Stance. A compression algorithm is (you guessed it) something that compresses some series of data. For instance, imagine you wanted to print 1000 1's and you had a computer that understood a programming language that would allow you to do so. One way to output the 1000 1's would be to specify that the computer print 1 and to repeat this command a thousand times. This doesn't compress anything however. Instead, you might tell the computer to "print 1 x 1000". This program has far fewer bits than does 1000 1's. 1000 1's has 1000 bits; the program has around log (base 2) 1000 bits. Hence, because it has fewer bits than what itd output does, that program is a compression algorithm of what it outputs. I recommend reading Gregory Chaitin for further info on Algorithmic Information Theory. In "Real Patterns" (in Brain Children), Dennett makes nice use of the mathematical definition of randomness to define compression algorithms and to set a plausible standard for what makes something a useful abstract object and thus, in a sense, just as real as are all the other useful scientific objects. Much more can be said about this, but this is enough for now.

This book is an excellent starting point for future study. Dennett's writing is as always engaging, insightful, and fairly straightforward.

I've been trying to read every Dennett book since 1996 when I got to read the "elbow room" that really impressed my way of thinking, specially being a psychologist. I usually don't shift books on an author till I got to finish the one I'm into and its been almost two years trying to finish this book to start reading "breaking the spell" that's getting covered in dust.

This book unlikely the most recent Dennett books its a pretty deep investigation and defense into one of the most important ideas of the author as it is the intentional system, but in a rigorous way, so rigorous that some times it gets tedious so I have to let it go for a few days before continue the struggling to keep going through the pages.

I recommend this book only for those who want to know how Dennett got to the "Consciousness Explained" in a step by step and detailed way, but you can get to "Consciousness Explained" and understand it in a "mild" language skipping this sound step if you want to.

I will continue my pain since I decided to read all his books, but like I said before you can enjoy all his other great books skipping this one, but if you do, arm yourself with lots of patience cause you will see as the chapter you'r reading never comes to an end.

Good luck

I am a cognitive science doctoral student. I read this book with a basic background in Philosophy of Mind but without having read all of the main articles in the field.

First, the title... "The intentional stance." The uninitiated will not know that this refers to a subfield of the philosophy of mind called "intentionality." Does Dennett bother giving an overview of the field for those who are unfamiliar with it? No. He makes cute references to the main scholars in this field all over the place, and their main articles and results, etc., leaving all the readers who are not already familiar with his work in the dark. To a reader like me, this book is basically a conversation between Dennett and his friends. It's kind of hilarious to read actually.

Second, the book is completely unstructured. His second chapter presents his theory (again only understandable to those who have closely followed the intentionality debate before reading it), and beyond that, it's "All of Dennett's Thoughts in No Particular Order with No Conclusion."

So basically, this is academic literature at its worst. Only to be read by those who are obligated to because they are scholars in the field. I would have given it a 3 but I took a point off for nauseating arrogance and another point off for an equally arrogant lack of structure ("I am so important that they will read my book and SEARCH for the main points, because they have to!"). I guess there are a few new ideas in it, but Dennett's high falutin', extremely arrogant prose seems to be designed for his own pleasure and for the pleasure of his old boy's club of philosopher friends.

Personally I keep it next to my bed and read it before going to sleep. It's better than sleeping pills. Definitely recommended for the insomniacs.

My real recommendation is to take a serious course in intentionality before reading this book.

Ps - those who have read "Consciousness Explained" will find this book much worse. Consciousness Explained was equally arrogant (nice title) but at least readable by someone who is not already an expert in the field.