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A review by socraticgadfly
Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett
2.0
When Dennett first started jumping the shark
I may be a bit harsh in only giving him two stars, but ... maybe not.
Wags have often said the title of this book should be, "Dennett's Idea of Consciousness Explained." And, that's about right.
Dennett is at his best in challenging traditional folk psychology ideas -- and how they have influenced traditional cognitive philosophy -- about what consciousness is and shows how this is wanting.
Where I do find fault is that, assuming Dennett's idea of consciousness is correct, or largely so (and I myself believe that he is at least on the right track, and that modern neuroscience is giving at least partial empirical support to that), he **only** deals in depth with consciousness.
Admittedly, the limitations of heterophenomenology prevent us from delving deep into unconscousness of others from a narrative point of view. And even from the neuroscientific point of view, although an fMRI can study brain processes, we still rely on a person's own **conscious** narrative to describe what it was like **for them** during "brain scan period X."
Dennett stays in cognitive philosophy, and unlike someone such as a Ramachandran, doesn't get on the cognitive science or neuroscience side of this issue very much, and so fails to ask just how much can we learn, or infer, about the unconscious.
Beyond that, he fails to -- as best as can be done today -- to ask just what percentage of our thought processes are conscious, vs. unconscious.
If, as it would appear, a fairly high percentage is unconscious, then to have explained consciousness is not necessarily to have explained a lot.
There's other problems, too. Many of them appear in more degree after this book.
One is that, Dennett starts recycling his material, a little bit here, but more later.
The bigger problem is in what he doesn't recycle.
He doesn't fully state his claim that that evolution is algorithmic until "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," but I think I see it already lurking a bit here.
And, also, whether in this book or 15 years later, he **flat-out refuses** to take the logical next step and reject a "Cartesian free willer" as well as a "Cartesian meaner."
I may be a bit harsh in only giving him two stars, but ... maybe not.
Wags have often said the title of this book should be, "Dennett's Idea of Consciousness Explained." And, that's about right.
Dennett is at his best in challenging traditional folk psychology ideas -- and how they have influenced traditional cognitive philosophy -- about what consciousness is and shows how this is wanting.
Where I do find fault is that, assuming Dennett's idea of consciousness is correct, or largely so (and I myself believe that he is at least on the right track, and that modern neuroscience is giving at least partial empirical support to that), he **only** deals in depth with consciousness.
Admittedly, the limitations of heterophenomenology prevent us from delving deep into unconscousness of others from a narrative point of view. And even from the neuroscientific point of view, although an fMRI can study brain processes, we still rely on a person's own **conscious** narrative to describe what it was like **for them** during "brain scan period X."
Dennett stays in cognitive philosophy, and unlike someone such as a Ramachandran, doesn't get on the cognitive science or neuroscience side of this issue very much, and so fails to ask just how much can we learn, or infer, about the unconscious.
Beyond that, he fails to -- as best as can be done today -- to ask just what percentage of our thought processes are conscious, vs. unconscious.
If, as it would appear, a fairly high percentage is unconscious, then to have explained consciousness is not necessarily to have explained a lot.
There's other problems, too. Many of them appear in more degree after this book.
One is that, Dennett starts recycling his material, a little bit here, but more later.
The bigger problem is in what he doesn't recycle.
He doesn't fully state his claim that that evolution is algorithmic until "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," but I think I see it already lurking a bit here.
And, also, whether in this book or 15 years later, he **flat-out refuses** to take the logical next step and reject a "Cartesian free willer" as well as a "Cartesian meaner."