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Daniel C. Dennett

Consciousness Explained Paperback – October 20, 1992

by Daniel C. Dennett (Author)

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"Brilliant...as audacious as its title....Mr. Dennett's exposition is nothing short of brilliant." --George Johnson, New York Times Book Review

Consciousness Explained is a a full-scale exploration of human consciousness. In this landmark book, Daniel Dennett refutes the traditional, commonsense theory of consciousness and presents a new model, based on a wealth of information from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Our current theories about conscious life-of people, animal, even robots--are transformed by the new perspectives found in this book.

Print length

528 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Back Bay Books
Publication date

October 20, 1992
Dimensions

5.55 x 1.55 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0316180661
ISBN-13

978-0316180665
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Consciousness is notoriously difficult to explain. On one hand, there are facts about conscious experience--the way clarinets sound, the way lemonade tastes--that we know subjectively, from the inside. On the other hand, such facts are not readily accommodated in the objective world described by science. How, after all, could the reediness of clarinets or the tartness of lemonade be predicted in advance? Central to Daniel C. Dennett's attempt to resolve this dilemma is the "heterophenomenological" method, which treats reports of introspection nontraditionally--not as evidence to be used in explaining consciousness, but as data to be explained. Using this method, Dennett argues against the myth of the Cartesian theater--the idea that consciousness can be precisely located in space or in time. To replace the Cartesian theater, he introduces his own multiple drafts model of consciousness, in which the mind is a bubbling congeries of unsupervised parallel processing. Finally, Dennett tackles the conventional philosophical questions about consciousness, taking issue not only with the traditional answers but also with the traditional methodology by which they were reached.

Dennett's writing, while always serious, is never solemn; who would have thought that combining philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience could be such fun? Not every reader will be convinced that Dennett has succeeded in explaining consciousness; many will feel that his account fails to capture essential features of conscious experience. But none will want to deny that the attempt was well worth making. --Glenn Branch

Product details

Publisher : Back Bay Books; 1st edition (October 20, 1992)
Language : English
Paperback : 528 pages
ISBN-10 : 0316180661
ISBN-13 : 978-0316180665
Item Weight : 1.05 pounds
Dimensions : 5.55 x 1.55 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #165,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #313 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy
- #13,343 in Science & Math (Books)

Customer Reviews:
373 ratings

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5 star		68%
4 star		15%
3 star		6%
2 star		3%
1 star		8%

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Karthik Sekar

Ok book. Some highlights but way too long

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2018

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I enjoyed roughly the first 1/3 of this book. The ideas were fresh for someone not in the field, and I think Dan explains key features of consciousness quite well including debunking the Cartesian Theater paradigm. The book is too long. It should be about 1/4 to 1/3 of the length. Dan often takes a simple point and draws it out with flowery, long-winded writing. I found myself exclaiming, "get to the point already" multiple times. I was getting so frustrated that I rifled through the last 1/3 of the book or so.

12 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Brilliant foundation for thinking on consciousness

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2019

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This brilliant book by Dennett, one of the best philosophers of our age, will recreate the way you think about consciousness and build a strong foundation for a scientific, rational explanation of it, inspired by a perfect blend of neuroscience, computer science, psychology and linguistics.
Most of us think of the conscious-self as a decision-maker, a driver of the train of thought. This image is shattered by convincing the reader that there is not a single line of continuous "train" of thought and there is no central point where "it all comes together" . There are multiple inputs, little particles of quasi-narratives, coming from different parts of the brain with different agendas and competing with each other to make their agenda "win", being written and rewritten over and over again in the process.
This theory (hastily summarized here by me) may seem counter-intuitive and maybe even outrageous at first, but the author does his best in slowly chipping away at the established beliefs about consciousness such as the Cartesian Theater and convincing the reader at least to have a new, more rational perspective.
I was also delighted to see that my own recent theories on consciousness are endorsed here. So I may actually be a bit biased in giving this book a perfect 5-star rating. But it deserves absolutely nothing less than a 4 out of 5 for anyone interested in explaining consciousness.

10 people found this helpful

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Middle

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2015

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I don't think it really explains the consciousness it is more like impossibility of explaining consciousness. I might be wrong. The book can really be hard to read, despite the author's effort to make it funny and bearable. It is a complex matter and you must have back ground in psychology to understand different theories and perspectives from different psychologists and scientists. I am a pretty good reader but it took me a long time to read this book. It is over 400 pages in small print since the subject is a more of school subject (similar to text book) it can be boring at times and it really makes you tired to read it. Sometimes it seems the arguments are similar or the same but in the core of the arguments, they are all distinct from the other arguments with slight differences. A psychology major of master's degree or doctorate must read it but for others unless they are really into psychology they might not understand the book or may become bored. I think it is a very well written book with a great argument.

15 people found this helpful

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Alex Vary

Transcendent Consciousness Examined, Exposed, and Excluded

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2014

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In Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett, writes, "Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. . . Consciousness stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. . . . With consciousness . . . we are still in a terrible muddle. . ." Neither Dennett's reductionist approach nor David Chalmers' non-reductionist approach have thus far provided the pivotal concepts needed to resolve the question of the nature or origin of human consciousness. However, Dennett provides a touchstone for testing Chalmer's innovative out-of-the-box conjectures.

In The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers introduces the notion: qualia - phenomena where subjective processing is accompanied by ineffable aspects of conscious experience (which apprehends the redness of red, the beauty of mathematical forms, love, the selfness experience). Indeed, qualia are in the eye of the beholder: the beholder's perceptual experience, the beholder's subjective experience, and the beholder's conceptualization of esoteric attributes of the experience. Dennett presents an argument against qualia; that the concept is so confused it cannot be put to any use or be understood in empirical ways; that qualia do not constitute a valid extension of physical experience.

While refuting qualia, Dennett extols memes which are pregnant ideas and cultural items putatively transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. Dennett, sees memes as a units of selection, which persist across generations like genes. He posits a neural Darwinism where meme evolution can even account for the origin of morality and explain religious belief and adherence to it (Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, also by Dennett)

Dennett attributes the seeming transcendence of consciousness beyond its neural network containment as the "tricky illusory theatrics of consciousness." Dennett's analyses of consciousness places much faith on what constitutes accepted scientific truth and dogma; on huge collections of reproducible experimental data, but not on imaginative thought about what the data might mean or ultimately signify. There is a large body of accumulated physical and neurophysiological data that virtually cries out for imaginative reinterpretation to break the logjam which is blocking blanket acceptance of the transcendence of human consciousness.

In My Universe - A Transcendent Reality Alex Vary offers an imaginative reinterpretation of the empirical data Dennett esteems and contemplates. Vary proposes a paradigmatic framework and some new concepts which can help explain the seemingly transcendent nature of human consciousness. What Vary proposes are akin to 'tools of thought' advocated by Dennett in Consciousness Explained and should serve at least for discussion and elucidation purposes.

Vary presumes that consciousness is an attribute of a reality that preexists its localized foci in self-aware human or their neural networks. Dennett dismisses the notion of such selfness existing before birth as a fiction, ". . . an organization of information that has structured your body's control system (or, to put it in its more usual provocative form, if what you are is the program that runs on your brain's computer), then you could in principle survive the death of your body as intact as a program can survive the destruction of the computer on which it was created and first run." Dennett characterizes the notion of an automaton's or a computer's assumption of transcendent consciousness as a hankering for immortality; as if a computer program could hanker for self-perpetuation, or anything beyond its ken. Dennett shrugs off the dilemma by declaring "as with all the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist - and hope - that there will never be a demystification of consciousness."

17 people found this helpful

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Cosmik Reader

I prefer Annaka Harris Book

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2019

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Almost half of the book is not about conciousness.

5 people found this helpful

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D. Spivak

Excellent book. I resisted getting this book for a ...

Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2014

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Excellent book.

I resisted getting this book for a long time because I thought it was impossible to explain consciousness, and therefore that Dennett had to be wrong, and therefore the title implied that he was a pompous self-assured ass. But as is so often the case, I was wrong.

Dennett succeeds in completely dismantling the "Cartesian Theater", not just in an abstract philosophical way, but in a way that changed the model I have of myself. It's rare to have a truly new thought, but this book succeeded in planting one.

And now, I'm off to buy another Dennett book, because I want to know what he's had to say since 1992!

12 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

tiddles

Very slow at getting to the point - Lots of waffle, very few facts

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2020

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Gave up after 50 pages as I found the level of meandering to get to the point incredibly frustrating. Its probably ok if you like long stories and being persuaded, but not if you want succinct facts and a logical structure.

Shame as I enjoyed listening to the author talk on a Radio 4 documentary but this book was hard work for all the wrong reasons. Not because it was too technical - I wish it were.

One person found this helpful

Michael Hill

Hard going and complex terminology make this a tough, if worthwhile, read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 28, 2017

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Very hard going. Lots of complex terminology. I've a science background (Physics degree) but I found this challenging and need to read it again with a dictionary handy to get the best out of it. The insights I gained were interesting, but I'm sure I'll benefit from re-reading it more slowly and carefully.

5 people found this helpful

Conciousness not explained.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

Conciousness not explained.

6 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

As described & promptly delivered.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2019

Verified Purchase

As described & promptly delivered.

Jammsbro

A superior tome.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 23, 2014

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Dennet has written one of the most interesting, infomative and compelling books I've read in years. Be careful though, you need to be alert when reading this as Dennet doesn't kid gloves the text. His sxentence structure and style of writing is both complex and brilliant.

A fascinating read.

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