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amralsayed0's review
5.0
This book is brilliant!
I really like that Dennett early on set up analogies like "skyhook" and "crane" and concepts like "Library of Babel" and "Library of Mendel" and after explaining them pretty well leans on that effort for the rest of the book to explain other ideas.
It was particularly interesting to me, given my computer science background, the parallels Dennett drew between optimization algorithms and Darwin's evolution. It was fascinating seeing concepts I'm very familiar with like Conway's Game of Life and search trees and optimization algorithms being used to describe seemingly unrelated theories in biology.
But the later chapters were ... shorter than I expected. I wanted Dennett to go into more depth about morality and its relation to evolution. He critiques other philosophers' moral theories and those who subscribe to social Darwinism relentlessly but offers no moral theory of his own. I suspect that Dennett's view on morality prevents him from making grand statements about it and prefers to stay on the defensive when it comes to morality.
On somewhat of a tangent, I learned the Dennett describes himself as an autodidact and after discovering this word, I completely identify with it! It shows in this book that he studied a wide range of fields from philosophy to biology to computer science and it's amazing to see the view of such a person on evolution.
I really like that Dennett early on set up analogies like "skyhook" and "crane" and concepts like "Library of Babel" and "Library of Mendel" and after explaining them pretty well leans on that effort for the rest of the book to explain other ideas.
It was particularly interesting to me, given my computer science background, the parallels Dennett drew between optimization algorithms and Darwin's evolution. It was fascinating seeing concepts I'm very familiar with like Conway's Game of Life and search trees and optimization algorithms being used to describe seemingly unrelated theories in biology.
But the later chapters were ... shorter than I expected. I wanted Dennett to go into more depth about morality and its relation to evolution. He critiques other philosophers' moral theories and those who subscribe to social Darwinism relentlessly but offers no moral theory of his own. I suspect that Dennett's view on morality prevents him from making grand statements about it and prefers to stay on the defensive when it comes to morality.
On somewhat of a tangent, I learned the Dennett describes himself as an autodidact and after discovering this word, I completely identify with it! It shows in this book that he studied a wide range of fields from philosophy to biology to computer science and it's amazing to see the view of such a person on evolution.
kahawa's review
4.0
This is the fourth Dennett book I've read, and I can now say I've understood and enjoyed 1/8 of them (here's what I thought of Consciousness Explained ;) ). The first half of DDI was painful and waffley, which is how I've experienced Dennett's other books - they promise so much, but they just don't deliver. The second half of DDI was great, in that it was mostly coherent and followable. I find many of Dennett's thought experiments to be convoluted, and his explanations of logical issues to be vague, with perhaps a lot of implied information in his allegories, which are legion, and jarring, and often unnecessary. He uses abstruse examples where clear, logical explanations would suffice.
One of my biggest gripes with DDI is that he didn't, IMO, explain Darwinian evolution as clearly as he should have, nor as often as he should have throughout the book. Evolution isn't a force. Evolution is what we call what gets left over after everything else has died. There are things that can replicate, and there is variation in the replication, and then there is an environment, and some replications survive, and some don't. Whatever survives is whatever survives. I think a lot of books don't make this very clear, and they keep implying that evolution creates something by selecting the fittest. Perhaps this is a remnant of our ancient teleological thinking, because by the time humans came to exist as conscious, rational beings, we were seeing things come into being that were the product of pseudo-teleology, or what Dennett would call a crane (a bottom up process requiring no special, supernatural intervention) that looks like a sky hook (a special case, in which something is inserted into the system that couldn't have come from a natural process). We were designing things, and now we're inclined to see all order as the product of teleological design, rather than sophisticated cranes made from cranes.
Where was I? So yeah, I think he could have reiterated this throughout the book, and it would have been more convincing and more powerful.
Dennett's writing style is often frustratingly unclear. As I mentioned above, he drifts in and out of analogies and thought experiments and logical reasoning while quoting poets and philosophers. Occasionally I would find myself understanding a sentence, but having no idea why he's talking about it. Perhaps I'm just not clever enough for this writing level. I suspect it's all part of his magisterial style of comprehensively addressing something from every possible angle so that by the time he's finished he's sewn together a complete and unassailable argument. To me it feels scattered and incomplete.
That said, he did a very thorough job of critiquing Gould and Chomsky, who for some reason can't give up sky hooks.
Toward the end of the book Dennett tries to talk about morality, and it's a bit weak. He also excoriates religion while suggesting a kind of coexistence with it. His criticisms are valid, but his suggestions are a bit absurd - ie, that religions be preserved in cultural zoos. Besides the fact that many religious people simply wouldn't allow it, what would be preserved wouldn't be the same religion, since many religions have features that require they be followed and proselyted. Dennett is really saying, "I don't want those belief systems because I think they're bad," which is in essence what everyone thinks of everyone else.
I'll add this book to my 'might read again one day' list. Perhaps I'll get more out of the first half.
One of my biggest gripes with DDI is that he didn't, IMO, explain Darwinian evolution as clearly as he should have, nor as often as he should have throughout the book. Evolution isn't a force. Evolution is what we call what gets left over after everything else has died. There are things that can replicate, and there is variation in the replication, and then there is an environment, and some replications survive, and some don't. Whatever survives is whatever survives. I think a lot of books don't make this very clear, and they keep implying that evolution creates something by selecting the fittest. Perhaps this is a remnant of our ancient teleological thinking, because by the time humans came to exist as conscious, rational beings, we were seeing things come into being that were the product of pseudo-teleology, or what Dennett would call a crane (a bottom up process requiring no special, supernatural intervention) that looks like a sky hook (a special case, in which something is inserted into the system that couldn't have come from a natural process). We were designing things, and now we're inclined to see all order as the product of teleological design, rather than sophisticated cranes made from cranes.
Where was I? So yeah, I think he could have reiterated this throughout the book, and it would have been more convincing and more powerful.
Dennett's writing style is often frustratingly unclear. As I mentioned above, he drifts in and out of analogies and thought experiments and logical reasoning while quoting poets and philosophers. Occasionally I would find myself understanding a sentence, but having no idea why he's talking about it. Perhaps I'm just not clever enough for this writing level. I suspect it's all part of his magisterial style of comprehensively addressing something from every possible angle so that by the time he's finished he's sewn together a complete and unassailable argument. To me it feels scattered and incomplete.
That said, he did a very thorough job of critiquing Gould and Chomsky, who for some reason can't give up sky hooks.
Toward the end of the book Dennett tries to talk about morality, and it's a bit weak. He also excoriates religion while suggesting a kind of coexistence with it. His criticisms are valid, but his suggestions are a bit absurd - ie, that religions be preserved in cultural zoos. Besides the fact that many religious people simply wouldn't allow it, what would be preserved wouldn't be the same religion, since many religions have features that require they be followed and proselyted. Dennett is really saying, "I don't want those belief systems because I think they're bad," which is in essence what everyone thinks of everyone else.
I'll add this book to my 'might read again one day' list. Perhaps I'll get more out of the first half.
zoes_human's review
3.0
It has taken me two years and five months to read this. Philosophy and I have never quite meshed. There's something about it, most of the time, that just utterly evades me. I find myself lost and wondering what the practical application of it is. Regardless, I like to exercise my mind, and this was certainly a workout for me.
It seems unhelpfully verbose and obscure at times. I'm not entirely certain who Dennett is trying to convince, but most folks are going to struggle to understand this. I did on numerous occasions, and I'm pretty sure I agree with him. At least, I agree with the bits I understood.
Also, did Gould fuck his wife or something? Such hostility seems well beyond that which would manifest as a result of philosophical or scientific disagreement.
It seems unhelpfully verbose and obscure at times. I'm not entirely certain who Dennett is trying to convince, but most folks are going to struggle to understand this. I did on numerous occasions, and I'm pretty sure I agree with him. At least, I agree with the bits I understood.
Also, did Gould fuck his wife or something? Such hostility seems well beyond that which would manifest as a result of philosophical or scientific disagreement.
adamz24's review
4.0
Much more interesting than Dennett's dealings with consciousness, and easily the best argument for the validity of his status in Philosophy, that I know of.
wmainwold's review
5.0
This book is a great resource for semi-knowledgeable students of evolution. Plus Daniel Dennet is a cognitive scientist, so I obviously love him.
morgan_blackledge's review
4.0
For those of you Game of Thrones fans, Daniel Dennett is like the George R. R. Martin of Darwin.
For those of you Darwin fans, George R. R. Martin is like the Daniel Dennett of Dungeons & Dragons.
For those of you Dungeons & Dragons fans, you're probably already familiar with both George R. R. Martin and Daniel Dennett, so I guess you guys (probably not girls, but maybe) are the intended audience of this review.
Before going any further did you ever notice how Daniel Dennett and George R. R. Martin look like twins separated at birth. Seriously, Google image search them and tell me I'm wrong.
In fact, if you slapped a Greek fisherman's hat and a black Members Only jacket on Daniel Dennett, I doubt I could tell those two apart.
I guess the easiest way to tell them apart would be their bank accounts. My guess is Martin is quite a bit more wealthy than Dennett.
In America you can make a whole heck of a lot more money writing about fantasy then dispelling fantasy (oh snap).
In case you didn't catch my drift, Daniel Dennett has made a career out of writing about Darwin. And to further elaborate, Charles Darwins dangerous idea is like the acid that melts crystal unicorns and rainbows down into a brownish green, smelly ectoplasm with bacteria in it.
Admittedly less fun in many ways than an ancient world of wizardry, craft and jealous, wrathful deities and demigods (Dungeons & Dragons reference). But really fucking clarifying and useful if you want to understand the way the world actually is.
Dennett and Martin are more similar than different though. Both have clearly spent too much time sitting at a desk (that was a fat joke), both are amazingly long winded (in the good way), and both are masterful at bringing their epically vast worlds to life via cool literary devices.
Dennett would refer to such devices as "intuition pumps" i.e. cool functional metaphors (like sky hooks and universal acid) that make difficult ideas suddenly accessible, and thereby more useful and generative.
Warning!
This book is long.
REAL FUCKIN LONG MAN.
Dangalang is it long..............
I'm really enjoying it and still, it feels too long, almost as if it needed a.. uhhh.....how do you say.....editor?
At least one whole (normal) book length section of this epically long book is a ridiculously lengthy and through defenestration (that's right, defenestration, look it up, I'm pretty sure this is a legit alt usage of the word) of Steven J. Gould's theory's e.g. Spandrals of San Marcos and the Panglossian Paradigm. And it's about as warm and fuzzy as a Red Wedding.
Oh my god. I'm so glad I'm not on Dennetts hit list. That man can talk ya ta death. Do not mess with Dan Dennett. He will pillory you with iron verbiage and pitch you out the moon door.
Dennett tosses a lot of ideas around in this book, but the central idea of evolution as a repeating, simple algorithm is probably the one that will really stick with me in the end. It's a cool way of framing evolution via natural selection. A mindless, iterative process that somehow eventually spins minds out of frisky dirt. If you're opposing that dangerous idea, than I got news for ya. Winter is coming.
For those of you Darwin fans, George R. R. Martin is like the Daniel Dennett of Dungeons & Dragons.
For those of you Dungeons & Dragons fans, you're probably already familiar with both George R. R. Martin and Daniel Dennett, so I guess you guys (probably not girls, but maybe) are the intended audience of this review.
Before going any further did you ever notice how Daniel Dennett and George R. R. Martin look like twins separated at birth. Seriously, Google image search them and tell me I'm wrong.
In fact, if you slapped a Greek fisherman's hat and a black Members Only jacket on Daniel Dennett, I doubt I could tell those two apart.
I guess the easiest way to tell them apart would be their bank accounts. My guess is Martin is quite a bit more wealthy than Dennett.
In America you can make a whole heck of a lot more money writing about fantasy then dispelling fantasy (oh snap).
In case you didn't catch my drift, Daniel Dennett has made a career out of writing about Darwin. And to further elaborate, Charles Darwins dangerous idea is like the acid that melts crystal unicorns and rainbows down into a brownish green, smelly ectoplasm with bacteria in it.
Admittedly less fun in many ways than an ancient world of wizardry, craft and jealous, wrathful deities and demigods (Dungeons & Dragons reference). But really fucking clarifying and useful if you want to understand the way the world actually is.
Dennett and Martin are more similar than different though. Both have clearly spent too much time sitting at a desk (that was a fat joke), both are amazingly long winded (in the good way), and both are masterful at bringing their epically vast worlds to life via cool literary devices.
Dennett would refer to such devices as "intuition pumps" i.e. cool functional metaphors (like sky hooks and universal acid) that make difficult ideas suddenly accessible, and thereby more useful and generative.
Warning!
This book is long.
REAL FUCKIN LONG MAN.
Dangalang is it long..............
I'm really enjoying it and still, it feels too long, almost as if it needed a.. uhhh.....how do you say.....editor?
At least one whole (normal) book length section of this epically long book is a ridiculously lengthy and through defenestration (that's right, defenestration, look it up, I'm pretty sure this is a legit alt usage of the word) of Steven J. Gould's theory's e.g. Spandrals of San Marcos and the Panglossian Paradigm. And it's about as warm and fuzzy as a Red Wedding.
Oh my god. I'm so glad I'm not on Dennetts hit list. That man can talk ya ta death. Do not mess with Dan Dennett. He will pillory you with iron verbiage and pitch you out the moon door.
Dennett tosses a lot of ideas around in this book, but the central idea of evolution as a repeating, simple algorithm is probably the one that will really stick with me in the end. It's a cool way of framing evolution via natural selection. A mindless, iterative process that somehow eventually spins minds out of frisky dirt. If you're opposing that dangerous idea, than I got news for ya. Winter is coming.
eswapnil's review
3.0
Wow! It feels like ages since I picked up this book for reading. I was reading it on-and-off for almost a year (may be more). It is difficult book to grasp and author does not make easy to grasp it either. He talks in long and difficult prose. I don't mean to say he didn't try to explain thing very well, it just that this book is not targeted for laymen users. In shorts author does not talk in pigs-and-bunnies. Sometimes some concept just blows your mind and then sometimes it feels like author is explaining same thing again and again and not going anywhere. This books is more about philosophy (given that author is philosopher) than hard science.
lennyankireddi's review
4.0
This lengthy and thought-provoking book by Dan Dennett is more a treatise on Darwinian thought than a commentary on the Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. It highlights and discusses the many offshoots of thought relating to reductionism, utilitarianism, Kantism and many other lines of philosophical rumination when considered in the light of Darwinian principles of the evolution of living organisms, the algorithmic nature of the existence of such and the anatomical and behavioral traits they possess and display. This commentary on the interpretations over time by many celebrated and infamous luminaries of the fields of philosophy, biology - evolutionary and sociobiology and other thought leaders includes the reflections of Darwin himself and dwells on the fallacies and incongruencies of thought committed by the experts, that resulted from either limited or incomplete knowledge or the inability to logically and consistently articulate the meaning of Darwinian existence and its implications on human existence.
Dennett is clearly an adherent to the ideas formulated by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" and to those that have read Dawkins' work and tend to understand and agree with his take on the prime replicator and therefore, the prime benefactor of utility, it is not hard to see the philosophical scaffolding that Dennett builds around these ideas to support his arguments. Dennett spends a considerable amount of page real estate identifying why Darwin's idea is considered so dangerous by so many who are wedded to a traditionalist or exceptionalist interpretation of the meaning of human life and how it stands apart from the meaning of other forms of life. In doing so, he focuses special energy in lambasting Stephen Jay Gould for his insistence on factors other than natural selection leading to selection and goes into many examples why Gould's instances for what he, Gould, presented as new and revolutionary ways of understanding evolution, in reality, fit very well into the well known picture of natural selection as supported by John Maynard Smith.
The text gets a little circumloquacious in places and there is a constant reference to sky-hooks and cranes that if you didn't really get the analogy for the first time it is introduced in the book, you may find hard to fit into the picture in the scores of other places where they are mentioned. There is also the usual philosophical abstraction of thought in many places that is hard for someone who deals more in concrete ideas to follow. However, the book is a prolific provider of fodder for thought and presents many ideas that one may have considered before but not in a certain way that would yield different results or confuse them more. Overall, a long and arduous but decent read.
Dennett is clearly an adherent to the ideas formulated by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" and to those that have read Dawkins' work and tend to understand and agree with his take on the prime replicator and therefore, the prime benefactor of utility, it is not hard to see the philosophical scaffolding that Dennett builds around these ideas to support his arguments. Dennett spends a considerable amount of page real estate identifying why Darwin's idea is considered so dangerous by so many who are wedded to a traditionalist or exceptionalist interpretation of the meaning of human life and how it stands apart from the meaning of other forms of life. In doing so, he focuses special energy in lambasting Stephen Jay Gould for his insistence on factors other than natural selection leading to selection and goes into many examples why Gould's instances for what he, Gould, presented as new and revolutionary ways of understanding evolution, in reality, fit very well into the well known picture of natural selection as supported by John Maynard Smith.
The text gets a little circumloquacious in places and there is a constant reference to sky-hooks and cranes that if you didn't really get the analogy for the first time it is introduced in the book, you may find hard to fit into the picture in the scores of other places where they are mentioned. There is also the usual philosophical abstraction of thought in many places that is hard for someone who deals more in concrete ideas to follow. However, the book is a prolific provider of fodder for thought and presents many ideas that one may have considered before but not in a certain way that would yield different results or confuse them more. Overall, a long and arduous but decent read.