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Daniel C. Dennett

Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (Jean Nicod Lectures) Hardcover – February 25, 2005

by Daniel C. Dennett (Author)

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In the years since Daniel Dennett's influential Consciousness Explained was published in 1991, scientific research on consciousness has been a hotly contested battleground of rival theories -- "so rambunctious," Dennett observes, "that several people are writing books just about the tumult." With Sweet Dreams, Dennett returns to the subject for "revision and renewal" of his theory of consciousness, taking into account major empirical advances in the field since 1991 as well as recent theoretical challenges.

In Consciousness Explained, Dennett proposed to replace the ubiquitous but bankrupt Cartesian Theater model (which posits a privileged place in the brain where "it all comes together" for the magic show of consciousness) with the Multiple Drafts Model. Drawing on psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, he asserted that human consciousness is essentially the mental software that reorganizes the functional architecture of the brain. In Sweet Dreams, he recasts the Multiple Drafts Model as the "fame in the brain" model, as a background against which to examine the philosophical issues that "continue to bedevil the field."

With his usual clarity and brio, Dennett enlivens his arguments with a variety of vivid examples. He isolates the "Zombic Hunch" that distorts much of the theorizing of both philosophers and scientists, and defends heterophenomenology, his "third-person" approach to the science of consciousness, against persistent misinterpretations and objections. The old challenge of Frank Jackson's thought experiment about Mary the color scientist is given a new rebuttal in the form of "RoboMary," while his discussion of a famous card trick, "The Tuned Deck," is designed to show that David Chalmers's Hard Problem is probably just a figment of theorists' misexploited imagination. In the final essay, the "intrinsic" nature of "qualia" is compared with the naively imagined "intrinsic value" of a dollar in "Consciousness -- How Much is That in Real Money?"

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Consciousness puzzles scientists and philosophers as much as it baffles the rest of us. Elusive, enigmatic, and difficult to define and probe, consciousness has a peculiar quality that rouses people to insist that somehow it differs from the rest of the physical world and that there is something unique about each person's subjective experience. Enter Daniel Dennett, a philosopher who directs the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. In his provocative book, he explores several hot debates over whether consciousness can ever be explained--such as our inability to objectively study subjective experiences or qualia, the impenetrable properties of sensations. Despite our stubborn feelings that consciousness involves something extra--a spirit, soul, miracle or magic--Dennett contends that consciousness is no more than an intriguing but inadequately explained aspect of neural activity. Consciousness is often celebrated as a mystery, he writes. I think this tradition is not just a mistake, but a serious obstacle to ongoing scientific research that can explain consciousness, just as deeply and completely as it can explain other natural phenomena: metabolism, reproduction, continental drift, light, gravity and so on. Like a persuasive magic show, consciousness fools us into believing that the brain's seamless illusion is real, even though consciousness is a purely biological phenomenon. To make his point, Dennett works through various thought experiments. One involves imagining a perfect zombie that exactly replicates a person's perceptual and neural processes. Should there be any real difference between the zombie and the conscious person, he wonders? He also attacks the claim that a mechanistic theory of consciousness could not explain such a difference, if it existed. Another thought experiment involves imagining Martian scientists studying human consciousness. In principle, he says, Martians should be able to observe and inspect the mechanisms underlying earthly conscious experiences and, in some sense, grasp what it is like to be human. In time, Dennett believes people will realize that third-person methods of the natural sciences suffice to investigate consciousness as completely as any phenomenon in nature can be investigated. Like vitalism--the 18thcentury belief that some inexplicable force animates living creatures-- consciousness will ultimately yield to scientific explanation.

Richard Lipkin

About the Author

Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor Codirector of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds; Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness; Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting; Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (all published by the MIT Press), From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Mind, and other books.

Series: Jean Nicod Lectures
Hardcover: 216 pages
Publisher: A Bradford Book (February 25, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262042258
ISBN-13: 978-0262042253
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 14 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,502,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5154 in Cognitive Psychology (Books)
- #2715 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy
- #3737 in Medical Cognitive Psychology

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Ideophile

Against Mental Vitalism

May 7, 2012

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Sweet Dreams is the 2005 addendum to Dennett's philosophical arguments against mental vitalism. In it, he again takes aim at "zombies" - those philosophical thought experiments that are exact physical/behavioral copies of you but are not mentally alive (how many would still buy into such thought experiments if we replaced the word "mentally" with "physically"? - and what does that say about the coherency of the idea of "zombies"?); in it, he again takes aim at "qualia" - those extra bits of phenomenal experience that lay beyond scientific explanation.

My favorite of the essays was "Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?" In that essay he puts to bed the often-asserted argument that he dismisses consciousness as an illusion - when what he actually dismisses as an illusion is the notion of consciousness-as-vital-force. What he dismisses is the notion that consciousness is the vital force without which a "zombie" is not mentally alive; what he dismisses is the notion that consciousness is the qualia-left-over once you've subtracted away the physical. And for Dennett, mental life is no less worth living in the absence of a mental life force than physical life is any the less worth living in the absence of a physical life force. He's simply providing philosophical arguments that lead to a full rejection of the mental vitalism that is implicit in arguments for zombies and qualia.

Four stars for not really being a stand-alone work (this is a follow-on to "Consciousness Explained") and for being a little repetitive.

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Banapana

Dennett and His Career

June 21, 2009

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I feel like this work is a summation and a review of Dennett's work. It's not readily available to those who are not already familiar with common problems in the philosophy of consciousness--problems like zombies and qualia. But if you are familiar with these problems, the book reads like a definitive statement. Here is Daniel Dennett, perhaps nearing the end of a career, putting his foot down. And thank goodness (not God--this is Dennett after all) for that. As Dennett has always been one of my favorite philosophers, one of the men whose intuitions I have been always willing to follow, sometimes without the necessary evidence, it is good to see him come down firmly on one or another side of these issues. Without question, in this work, he is at his lightest (I've laughed out loud several times reading it). But he still asks the hard questions of Searle, Tye and Chalmers. Gut instincts and feelings of "Surely" and what is "obvious" tell us nothing about consciousness since common cognitive science has taught us that so much of what we "know" is often an illusion. There is more to functionalism than people are willing to admit yet, and this book is clearly ahead of the curve. Thank goodness for Daniel Dennett. We may yet come to understand ourselves. (As an aside, you can get an interesting taste for this book by watching Dennett's lecture on TED:[...]

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Hank

A much shorter version of his unjustly celebrated "Consciousness Explained ...

April 17, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

A much shorter version of his unjustly celebrated "Consciousness Explained." Read this instead of that one. Enjoyable read, but arguments are lacking.

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CESAR MAYORAL FIGUEROA

Five Stars

September 7, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Just a must.

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chung hsieh

Five Stars

August 27, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

excellent!

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Stephen Kellogg

Overlapping (& Redundant) Series of Lectures

August 13, 2005

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

My hope was that this series of lectures, which were partially reworked for the text, would present a more cohesive, sequential,less redundant, discourse on the issues. Examples are used, and reused, using identical text, which does nothing to advance or deepen understanding on the issues. Little reference is made to other major experts and their work in the field, except as a means for for highlighting the author's own views, and there is definitely an ego at work here.

30 people found this helpful

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Carlos Camara

Dennett at his finest and again on consciousness

June 8, 2013

Format: Paperback

In this book, a brilliant follow-up to his seminal work, Consciousness Explained, Dennett takes on some of his critics and reassesses his ideas on consciousness. The result is a well-argued, clearly written theory of consciousness.

First Dennett discusses his old friends, Zombies (Chapter 1). Those physically and functionally identical creatures to us that nevertheless lack consciousness completely. The idea itself is what he calls an "intuition pump", a thought experiment that aims to show a metaphysical truth about the world, but ends up only showing the intuitions behind some phislosopher's thinking. Dennett points out that the idea of zombies is question begging, and is evidence only of faulty reasoning. Similar points apply to the explanatory gap. Theories of consciousness need to be true (or close to it), they do not need to satisfy all intuitions and hunches. Mysterianism is too quick and dirty. Although it might be true, as Dennett imagines, that in hundreds of years philosophers will say "how could they have thought zombies were possible?", this does not mean that the Zombie hunch was an obstacle, a waste of time. Modern science says the same about the now defunct concept of elan vital, or the life force, supposed to explain what we now know are molecular biological phenomena, but it is another thing to say the discussions they engendered were fruitless.

I agree with Dennett in that there is something inherently wrong in thinking about zombies and deriving whole philosophical theories out of them, but I also believe thought experiments help in clarifying some issues. Dennett continuously complains of those who accept the conceivability of zombies do so without independent argument, relying in their intuitions and preconceptions on the matter. But in part Dennett's aversion to zombies relies in his strongly functionalist approach. He at one point (pages 19-21) does seem to differentiate a form of "strong" metaphysical functionalism from a weaker one, but it is unclear (to me) which he adheres to. Now this could be seen as lacking independent argument as well, even if any type of functionalism ends up being right after all.

Heterophenomenology is clearly explained as a methodological approach, and not a metaphysical one (Chapter 2). This "neutral" perspective does not have to decide between first- or third-person views when trying to explain consciousness, but does not deny the existence of first-person, subjective data either. The apparent ineffability of phenomenal states needs to be accounted for, but not the other way round: the apparent ineffability of phenomenal states does not determine what can and cannot be accounted for by a naturalistic approach.

Science is not in the business of explaining magic: if there is something magical about consciousness science better not explain it, it must explain it away (Chapter 3). Dennett views "the hard problem" as a residue of believing that consciousness is magical. "How could qualia be explained? Explanations must leave something out! Surely, the physicalist explanation does not capture the subjective phenomena!". But this is no argument, and Dennet is right. "How could", "must", "surely" are intuitions, not premises. There is a problem in explaining how consciousness is/ is realized by/ is correlated to/ supervenes on the brain, but its difficulty is not a sign of unsolvability.

Dennett clarifies his position on qualia (Chapter 4). He is not, as many of us thought, an eliminationist, but a revisionist. He does not deny the existence of qualia (he actually might be agnostic about the matter), but argues that philosophers conception of qualia is misguided. Of course, if thought experiments like zombies and colorblind Mary are themselves deeply flawed, and they are used to derive the "properties" of qualia, what we end up will be flawed as well. Incorrigible? Ineffable? Intrinsically subjective? Says who? And why? If we construe the concept of qualia as unexplicable in third-person objective terms, it is begging the question to then argue that they indeed not so explicable.

The knowledge argument is wrong for the same reasons as is the conception of zombies, and the shaky ground qualia are on do not help at all (Chapter 5). If Mary knows all physical facts, and you take naturalism seriously, then she learns nothing new when exiting her black and white room. If this is counterintuitive, it's not naturalism's fault. Naturalism has in fact made progress. The "global dynamic integrated network/workspace" model of the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness is a good start (Chapter 6). In sum the book is a must read by anyone who has thought hard about consciousness studies, and establishes Dennett as a central player in the field. One cannot agree with everything, but at least now it is clear that although consciousness was not explained after all, some obstacles have been removed, and progress has been made.

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