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Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking by [Dennett, Daniel C.]

Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking Kindle Edition

by Daniel C. Dennett (Author)

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Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun.

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will. With patience and wit, Dennett deftly deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built.

Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to "think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions."

A sweeping work of intellectual seriousness that’s also studded with impish delights, Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers—in all walks of life—delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers.

Length: 515 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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Product details

File Size: 7606 KB
Print Length: 515 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (May 6, 2013)
Publication Date: April 29, 2013
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00AR354AQ
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #216,602 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #51 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Epistemology
- #52 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Methodology
- #288 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Epistemology

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Pumps, razors, brooms and other vices and virtues of thinking

May 4, 2013

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If you have enjoyed any of Daniel Dennett's other books you will enjoy this. It is a pleasing, humorous and insightful journey into a gallery of mundane and profound thinking tools drawn from a wide-ranging set of disciplines, from literature and science to psychology and philosophy. It's worth noting that this is not really a "how to" book. Instead it's more like a survey of common as well as uncommon tools that human beings consciously and unconsciously use to both understand the world better and communicate and empathize with each other. Not surprisingly, given Dennett's profession, the bent is slightly more philosophical although the book is easy to read and appreciate.

The book starts with the simplest of tools, such as making mistakes. Dennett illuminates how making mistakes is not just ok but desirable since it's perhaps the only way to hone a system of thinking into a useful device. Other parts of the book cover concepts like reductio ad absurdum, Occam's Razor and the wittily-named Occam's Broom which is sometimes used nefariously to sweep arguments under the rug. There's a fair amount of ground Dennett covers before he gets to the concept stated in the book's name - intuition pumps. Intuition pumps refer to anything - from thought experiments to linguistic devices - that somehow make us bypass the process of rigorous thinking and reach a revelation primarily through intuition. One of the virtues of the book is how it describes examples of both good and bad intuition pumps including sleights of hand used by politicians and pseudoscientists. I was quite impressed by Dennett's attention to even very simple tools invoked through common expressions; for instance one of the fallacies he describes is the use of the word "rather" that's routinely used to set up a false dichotomy.

Given Dennett's other writings, it's not surprising to find him often refer to evolution as a rich mine for many of the tools. Variation, making mistakes, and generating lots of ideas to pick the best ones are all traits of the evolutionary process. Dennett also draws on work by diverse thinkers, from Wittgenstein to Stephen Jay Gould to Douglas Adams, to illustrate the power and pitfalls of language and thought. His trademark subtle (and not so subtle) wit and familiarity with a vast amount of pop culture and science is clearly apparent in the writing. The book will definitely reward those who like to think about thinking, and it's one I can definitely see myself periodically savoring like a plate of diverse appetizers.

204 people found this helpful

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Guilherme D. Faria

I abandoned this book in the middle. Here's why:

August 21, 2017

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Dennett is obviously a very smart person. He knows a lot about his field, which includes studies of technology, consciousness and free will. The problem with the book is the problem with most of Western philosophy: it gets into questions that are SO abstract that they lose almost all their relevance to the real world. Those of us who prefer more pragmatic lines of philosophy are left thinking "so what" in a lot of places. The title implied (at least for me) that this would be a 'tool box' type of book. Not quite. Lots of mental experiments about impossible scenarios, for instance.
Why 3 stars and not 2 or 1, then? Like I said, Dennett is very smart, and the book got me thinking even after I abandoned it. If you like this type of abstract meandering, maybe you'll like this. Otherwise, I'd recommend sticking to past and current stoics and people like Sam Harris for discussions about consciousness and free will.

8 people found this helpful

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Thinking tools for those interested in consciousness and free will

November 13, 2014

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Dennett's recent offering is accessible and enjoyable to read. The title suggests that it covers the topic of thinking tools. However the book doesn't include very many general-purpose thinking tools. Those that he does offer are quite basic. I liked the idea of a "boom crutch" as a malfunctioning thinking tool, though. Most of the book is devoted to thinking tools that are useful to budding philosophers interested in free will, consciousness, zombies and Searle's Chinese room. Dennett spends a lot of time on his misguided critics. The David Chalmers and John Searle of the world. Alas, I can't take the opinions of these guys seriously. Dennett's side won these battles decades ago, AFAICS. There's quite a bit of material on consciousness. Finally, Dennett has a big section on free will. The controversy over free will mostly seems like a battle over what the term "free will" means. Terminology is important, but it's hard to get as excited as Dennett does over this debate. Dennett gives plenty of examples where more than just terminology is involved. However, I don't really see it - most of the real disagreement on this topic arises out of the issue of what the term "free will" means. I think that Dennett has been mostly overtaken in the "thinking tools" department by the new rationalists. For the most part, their tools are more interesting, advanced and general purpose than the ones Dennett offers here.

2 people found this helpful

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A really good book, and recommended for as much as you ...

April 4, 2018

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A really good book, and recommended for as much as you care to get out of it. Note that a good bit of content is recycled from Dennett's earlier work. The concept, thesis and delivery are excellent, though some sections feel thinner than others and it becomes easy for the mind to wander off in later sections. While good when a book challenges the mind to wander, these were more of the sort where a shallow pool triggers a thirst for deeper waters.

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james alexander wagner

Get's your brain "pumping"

July 7, 2017

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First philosophy book I have read outside of the classroom. A must read for anyone who likes to think and would like some other tools to do so. Multiple times during the book I would find myself saying "I never thought of it that way". Look forward to perusing the selection of other notable philosophers of my time.

One person found this helpful

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Goffredo Puccetti

My daily dose of Dennett

November 15, 2013

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From time to time I find myself wanting to read Breaking the Spell or Darwin's Dangerous Idea over again and again.
Now I am using this book instead for quick daily fixes of Dennett's wit and insights. I am at 2/3 of it and I am loving it. True, as many have posted, the "wow!" factor of DDI is not there in every single page, but it still is a remarkable collection of thought provoking case histories and experiments. Highly recommended for thinkers in all fields.

5 people found this helpful

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Evolution was never better explained

August 17, 2016

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Some books change you, this one sent me into an existential crisis. I never understood evolution theory so well, from both materialistic and philosophical perspective. What would you do if you unequivocally learned that you were a robot today? would you change anything? The doors this book opens are beyond explanation.

2 people found this helpful

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