This is a book whose value goes way beyond its subject matter. This book is so valuable because Dennett's participation in fundmental issues of cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and philosophy of mind have drawn comments from so many other leading intellectual figures. By looking at what different authors think of Dennett's various distinct ideas in basic issues of philosophy of mind and evolution, it is possible to learn more about their own, and that seems to be part of what the editors intended to do. That makes this examination of Dennett's ideas, and especially their influence outside of his field, a kind of rosetta stone for understanding many current issues in philosophy and biology.

For example, there is a chapter on the evolutionary psychologists' critique of social sciences, showing how it builds on Dennett's evolutionary cognitivism but strays from it at some points. The contrast helps point out the strengths and weaknesses of both the evolutionary psychologists' and Dennett's views, as well as helping clarify what might remain of the foundations of social sciences once the smoke clears. Similarly illuminating is the chapter on Dennett's participation in debates with Stephen Jay Gould over the search for adaptations in studying human evolution.

Dennett's ideas are presented very clearly in a way that non-specialists can appreciate, and the choice of authors who are experts in other fields (rather than solely philosophers) works well in most cases, showing that ideas do matter, and that good philosophers sometimes do have an identifiable and positive impact on other areas of culture.

Daniel Dennett has become the pivot point for all modern ideas in human cognition - philosophy's successor term. Unlike the classical philosophers, Dennett adheres to no "school" of philosophy. Indeed, one of the editors of this book attempts to coin the phrase "Dennettian" to establish a new such identity - an effort Dennett himself simply ignores. Dennett's many writings do not lend themselves to any rigid classification. Pinning him down is attempting to transfix the ultimate moving target. Dennett's tactics have led to criticism ranging from mild admonitions to scathing invective. This group of essays, resulting from a 1998 conference at Memorial University in Newfoundland, is a collection of advice, critique and demands for explanation from this innovative thinker . The book's tone is
perfectly captured in Dennett's response essay, "With A Little Help From My Friends." It is pure "Dennettian."

Don Ross' Introduction expresses the frustration many have felt about Dennett's writings: "Do Dennett's works 'come together' into a coherent view of the world?" The answer to that question must be sought in the essays as each author struggles to address it through various elements found in Dennett's writings. The first part takes up his views on evolution. This is right and proper, since his "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" [DDI] is easily the most important book published since Darwin's "Origin of Species." Timothy Crowe challenges various aspects of Dennett's view of how evolution works, falling, quite consciously, into Stephen Gould's assertions about "maladaptations." Paul Dumouchel's following essay on Dennett's use of Forced Moves and Good Tricks in DDI shows how a critic must demonstrate understanding before offering appraisal.

Following these openings, the essays move into a more "philosophical" vein. [Dennett would argue those "scare quotes" would deter some or mislead others!] Ruth Millikan, adhering to Dennett's stand that cognition is a human extension of the evolutionary processes, suggests modification to a fundamental of Dennett's thinking - the Intentional Stance. She wants better identification of "intentionality" of natural selection. Her unease is echoed in Tom Polger's essay on the use of "conceptual fictions" such as "zombies," artificial biological beings with no discernible intentionality, a concept Dennett has repeatedly rejected.

Other essays in this collection further attempt to fix Dennett's ideas within some identifiable framework. Christopher Viger, Timothy Kenyon and William Seager, particularly the latter, all seek Dennett's abandonment of a "purely naturalistic rule" for his thinking. These admonitions Dennett dismisses as a misunderstanding of how nature works. Flexibility is the key, and is Dennett's lodestone. Among the remaining essays, Andrew Brook's symbolizes the dichotomy faced by Dennett adherents: how to fix on that elusive object without eroding its valuable contents. Brook reminds us that Dennett has spent thirty years giving us an account of consciousness. In that time, Dennett has challenged long-standing concepts in philosophy. Brook implores Dennett to clarify several of his definitions, in particular the distinction between the "seeming" of an object and the actual "subject" under discussion. How do we distinguish between a thing and our idea of that thing? Brook disclaims any attempt to bring down Dennett's Multiple Drafts model of consciousness, but feels he has "domesticated it a bit." Reader unfamiliar with the Multiple Drafts model are urged to take up Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" for the most innovative idea of the mind's workings currently available.

Space limitations forbid a thorough recapitulation of all the essays. It goes without saying that Dennett directly addresses each essayist's points [where these are discernible, which isn't always the case]. He acknowledges where clarity in his work is required, but often finds the interpreter has missed his meaning. In philosophical writing, that is often a given. With most explanations of human reasoning being labelled with various "-isms," Dennett stresses his discomfort with such constraints. He's to be admired for resisting such limitations, and reading his responses, we are reminded again of why the conference was convened. Dennett is more than a square peg resisting a round hole. He's polygonal, reflecting the scope of his diversity of interests and abilities. He stands apart from "mainstream" concepts, remaining unique as the leading figure in cognitive studies.

I've been a fan of the OUP short introdctions to various philosophers, they don't have one on Dennett, so I got this instead. I assumed that this book would be similar to the OUPs. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's much better (except for the ugly cover and poor quality printing). It's lively, clever and not in the least bit patronizing. Generally speaking, the difiiculty with analytic philosophy of mind lies not so much in the specific problems and philosophical solutions floating around, so much as with the ridiculously dense prose that most philosophers write. Symons' book is a very clear guide to the recent debates for the novice and a breath of fresh air for professional philosophers. Personally, I've gained a new appreciation for the sophistication of Dennett's view, and contrary to what you might have picked up from philosophical hearsay, he's not just saying that we're all robots. However, I have to say, I bought the book as a quick way of getting a short account of Dennett's ethics. But as it turns out, there's no real mention of his ethical theory in Symons' book! Maybe it's because the author is smart enough to know that this is the weakest part of Dennett's thinking. Aside from that important deficiency, this is a lovely little book. Symons' account of Dennett's theory of consciousness is very clear. He does in about 20 pages what it takes Dennett himself 350 pages to do in Consciousness Explained.

John Symons has produced a beautiful, small book on the philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett, which is actually a full-fledged introduction to the philosophy of mind today. A high-level introduction, mind you, which takes the reader back to the heyday of analytic philosophy with W.V.O. Quine: Symons may be the first specialist of philosophy of mind to really understand its background in the rest of analytic philosophy, and this is partly why he can write so clearly and not clog up our understanding with too much 'C-fibre firing', 'weak supervenience' and the like. Dennett's important notion of "heterophenomenology" (which may be less far removed from phenomenology 'tout court' than either Dennett or Symons think) finally becomes clear. Besides writing well and clearly, Symons makes several novel contributions to philosophical thinking on these topics. My personal favorite has to do with what he calls "the normal respect for science", in Dennett's terms "nothing special, TIME magazine standard" (note that Dennett might be thinking of TIME a few decades ago!). Symons shows nicely how philosophy, and cognition in general, should not be understood as something separate from the natural world. There is only one world we live (and think) in: the natural world. As John Dewey put it in the early 1920s, experience, science and philosophy are continuous. Science gives us the best understanding we have of this world; but philosophy and even 'metaphysics' have a job to do as well, in non-doctrinaire terms. Anyone interested in these issues, not just in the 'homuncular' philosophy of Dennett, should read Symons' book.

A remarkably lucid, concise, and comprehensive introduction not only to Dennett's work but to the last 60 years of philosophy of mind--and in less than 100 pages. It frames debates with such clarity and evenhandedness that it makes you wonder how the field ever became as muddled as it is today. (Though the book's dextrous avoidance of jargon suggests an answer to THAT question.) Most current philosophers are more like philosophy critics, quibbling ad nauseum about their colleagues' interpretations of their interpretations of an earlier generation's interpretation of a doctrine whose original proponents abandoned it years ago. Dennett is one of the few who tackles the big questions in philosophy of mind head on. Because he doesn't waste time negotiating among all of his discipline's various voguish "isms," and because he defends his positions with so much evidence from the hard sciences, he tends to get classified as a cognitive scientist, or a cognitive psychologist, or an artificial intelligence theorist, or even an evolotionary biologist (when he's defending Darwin). But with this judicious overview of more than 30 years of evolving thought, on everything from free will to the question of whether machines can feel, Symons reclaims Dennett for philosophy. And not a moment too soon.

The Mind's I promises more than it delivers. Perhaps this is not surprising given the immensity of the subject, i.e., what is consciousness, what is self, who am "I". Hofstadter and Dennet wisely avoid attempting to answer these questions directly. They choose instead to share a collection of 27 science fiction stories and scientific essays from various authors, sharing their own "reflections" after each entry. The selections range from the playful (The Riddle of the Universe and Its Solution) to the analytical (Minds, Brains, and Programs), and the editors are to be commended for including a sampling of authors whose views they do not share.

Ironically, this is the basis of one of the book's weaknesses. Hofstadter and Dennet quickly dismiss opposing views as being based on false analogies, yet to win the reader over to their camp they employ similarly flawed analogies. (Of course, analogies are like false profits -- they should not be trusted.) A number of the reflections following certain science fiction entries choose to focus on the impossibility of the plot rather than the philosophical questions raised. Moreover, the editors' emphasis on artificial intelligence and whether machines can have souls, while occasionally helpful in pushing the reader to determine his own definition of consciousness, tends to obfuscate rather than clarify what should be the main thrust of the book: who am (is?) "I"? Finally, key concepts (e.g., dualism) are not clearly defined early on, a handicap for the casual reader.

But there is something worthwhile in The Mind's I for most readers. The science fiction fan will more than get his fill; the fiction writer will have fun imagining entire universes he has created; and the introspective soul will be seduced into reflecting on whether "I think therefore I am" is a strong enough argument.

After writing the magnificent 'Godel, Escher, Bach', for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter (a professor at my alma mater, Indiana University) collaborated with philosopher Daniel Dennett on this anthology of essays and stories that explore the areas of human and artificial intelligence.

What is the mind? What is the self? Is there really a soul? Are feelings and emotions artificial constructs of information bits inside of us, and if so, is it possible that machines can think and feel for themselves?

For that matter, do we truly think and feel for ourselves?

Hofstadter and Dennett have selected pieces that approach these questions from many angles, from hard-science observational techniques to spirituality dimensions in stories. Each piece is followed by a reflection that sets the context of the piece in relation to the larger question of intelligence.

Contributors include mathematician Rudy Rucker ('Infinity and the Mind'), philosophers Raymond Smullyan (perhaps best known for logic puzzles) and Robert Nozick, literary figures such as Jorge Luis Borges and Stanislaw Lem, and pioneers in the field such as Alan Turing.

The editors use a section of Turing's early article on 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' from 1950 to set up much of the subsequent discussion. One often overlooked idea from Turing, oddly popular among British scholars of the first half of the twentieth century (and still more prevalent among British scholars and intellectuals than those of other cultures) is the idea of ESP and paranormal abilities. Turing felt that the final difference between machine-thinking, once it had reached full potential, and human thinking would be that humans have the capacity for ESP and other such abilities.

Turing's foundational point rests on the answer to and the meaning of the question, will a machine ever think? Turing's answer to this is yes, and upon this assumption, the meaning of a machine thinking becomes the critical determinant. People infuse too much emotionalism into the question, Turing thought. Ironically, half a century after Turing and two decades after publication of The Mind's I, people watch depictions of thinking machines in science fiction shows without a second thought, even as these shows explore the connection between thinking and emotion.

As many of the essays and stories make clear, it is often as much the way the question is asked as it is the content of the answer that can make a difference in the way the observer reacts and interprets. And yet, it becomes difficult to distinguish linguistic intelligence, intellect, and 'having a soul'. One question that is addressed can serve as illustration: Do animals have souls? For instance, does a chimpanzee with with partial linguistic ability learned in a laboratory and greater ability to care for herself and her offspring have more of a soul than an human being who is physical and mentally impaired? Almost everyone would say no, but how this difference is characterised becomes difficult in many contexts.

Terrel Miedaner has an intriguing set of stories, 'The Soul of Martha, a Beast' and 'The Soul of the Mark III Beast', which explores the fuzzy dividing line between the way in which we think of human feelings, animal feelings, and potentially even machine emotional responses. Part of the analysis of Hofstadter and Dennett focuses upon the construction of the stories, which are purposefully designed to evoke human emotional responses to anthropomorphised creatures. But this begs the question -- if we can anthropomorphise them, to what extent might they in fact have elements in common with human beings that make them worthy of consideration on a human level?

Issues such as the difference between education and programming, free will and determined patterns, conscious and unconscious potentials, and (perhaps both most maddening and enlightening) the difference between reality, apparent reality, belief, and thought about belief (see Smullyan's 'An Epistemological Nightmare').

This is a very entertaining, often witty, occasionally disturbing book, that presents these philosophical problems in an accessible format.

The significance of this book's subject will keep it a timeless classic. The topic, of course, is "I". "Who am I? Can I explain my mind? Can I formulate what happens in anyone's mind?" And, of course, the daunting question: "can a computer become/have a mind?" With these troublesome queries in hand, Hofstadter and Dennett have collected a string of loosely connected essays to invigorate your thinking. As the Preface states, the anthology "is designed to provoke, disturb, and befuddle . . . readers." If it fails, the readers certainly cannot blame the "composers and arrangers," as the editors dub themselves.

Nothing in here is arcane or pedantic - there are no scholarly papers as such. In fact, some of the 27 submissions are from the realm of "SF" [in the delightful definition of that term coined by writer Harlan Ellison - "speculative fiction"]. Among these offerings are essays by Jorge Luis Borge and Stanislaw Lem. There are, of course, some philosophical statements. Fortunately, none of these require knowledge of "schools of philosophy." All that is required to read this book is a desire to open your own mind and speculate on how you think. And, perhaps, what you think.

A major virtue of this book are the "Reflections" following the essays. In these Hofstadter or Dennett [or both] provide further insights on the author's offering. The "arrangers" don't enlarge on the article or "interpret" its meaning. That's left to the reader. The editors do, however, frequently pose further questions adding to the value of the selection. There is little opportunity, except in a few cases, to critically assess the author's position. With SF, a "philosophical position" is rare in any event. Even so, the SF entries are not mere space adventures, but contributions to the idea of what makes a "self," particularly in a society with high levels of technology.

Concepts of "self" as confronted with modern technology form a sub-theme of the collection. The Turing Test provides a pivot point for many of the essays. Can a computer achieve "intelligence" defined in a blind test of responses to questions? Turing's original essay, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" is offered early in the book, with a thorough examination of the issues raised in an imaginary dialog following. Turing's thorny question is directly addressed in further essays and in the "Reflections". The editors make their own comments on this issue which, of course, is a foundation of developments in Artificial Intelligence [AI].

Dennett, whose capacity for wit is finely honed, brings those skills to these pages. His own essay on brain-body relations is a treasure for stimulating reflection. Hofstadter contributes three essays of his own. The real gem in this collection is Raymond Smullyan's "Is God A Taoist?". This dialog between a deity and a mortal on the issue of "free will" is outstanding - there is no other word that fits. It is fundamental reading in examining the human thought process and the laws of nature. The following Reflections by Hofstadter is rich with questions raised by Smullyan. Hofstadter notes that many will consider the essay "blasphemous," but that charge might be laid on the whole book. That, of course, is what gives it much appeal. While the open-minded will benefit most from this collection, you need only to leave your mind slightly ajar to benefit from what the "composers" have offered you.

Daniel Dennett's _Elbow Room_ is a nicely written piece on the compatibility of determinism and free will. He notes that even if the world is deterministic, there is a certain amount of freedom (or elbow room) for man to operate within. The previous reviewer who stated that "you don't have to think about it very long to realize that free will can't exist in a deterministic [universe]" has apparently missed all of the philosophical work relating to "Compatibilism," which is the very idea that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive. Dennett presents a nice case for the plausibility of this viewpoint, pointing out why the scary thought experiments that others have created to make determinism seem so horrible cannot be reality. He also makes a clear distinction (that is sometimes blurred) between fatalism and determinism, and in questioning some underlying assumptions makes the idea of free will much more understandable. It may take some concentration to read (I am only beginning to study Philosophy and so had to read a number of sentences over before fully comprehending), but that hardly takes away from the quality of the book. Definitely recommended!

The previous reviewer completely missed the key points of this book. Dennett, whose brilliance is evident in most of his works, makes the point that free will without determinism is no free will. If your choices aren't determined, but are outside cause and effect, then they are random, aren't they? If your choices are random, then how are you effecting them? You are not, and hence have no will. The point is not whether the world is deterministic or not (even if it is, it doesn't mean it's tractable), but that it is still YOU that controls your actions, even if you were influenced. Of course you were influenced, how else do you decide something?

Outstanding book - Dennett is a great writer. He tackles one of the most important philosophical issues with this little volume, are we free or not? Does free-will exist or is it just a fanciful dream? Dennett does a good job of putting these questions in their right historical, philosophical, and scientific context. I read this for the first time in Grad School and have kept it in my library since. If you want to understand the issue of free-will, correctly, then you need to purchase this book and give it a read.

Daniel Dennett is attempting a thankless task, but one that is long overdue. Back in 1984, with the publication of Elbow Room, he sought to liberate free will - that perennial hobgoblin of philosophy - from a surplus of metaphysical baggage that is increasingly difficult to justify based on what we know about how brains work and how minds evolved. On these two topics, however, Elbow Room required the reader to reserve judgment. Since then, Dennett has given the world Consciousness Explained (1991), which, as the title implies, tries to tell us how brains work, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), which tries to explain how minds evolved, and in the process provides one of the most lucid accounts yet of the philosophical implications of Darwinism. Now, with Freedom Evolves, Dennett attempts to tie it all together.

The problem with this book, as far as I am concerned, is that it feels rushed and disjointed. I was more than happy to read all 500+ pages of DDI because the topic deserved that much space and, honestly, that book is a pleasure to read. The topic of free will, if anything, requires even more space to develop, and I would have gladly sat through six or seven hundred pages if necessary. As it is, my understanding of Dennett's arguments is sketchy - even after letting them sink in a few days and re-reading a few sections - so sketchy, in fact, that I won't attempt anything like a synopsis here, for fear of bungling the job. Beyond that, I was a little annoyed with the amount of recycled material from CE and DDI.

So why is Daniel Dennett's task a thankless one? Because he insists that free will is not an "illusion" as some hardcore materialists claim - nor is it some "extra something" in the sense implied by traditional dualist philosophers. There are a lot of feathers to ruffle in this area. Affirming free will on a strict materialist basis would be quite a feat, if done clearly and convincingly. I believe that case can be made, and that it should be made, and that Dennett is qualified to make it. Unfortunately, in Freedom Evolves he didn't do so as clearly and convincingly as I wish he had. Until Dennett or somebody else does so, the task will remain long overdue.

I am honored to be the first to review this book. I have read most of Dennett's previous books (Elbow Room, CE, and DDI) and many of his essays but I have always felt a little anxious about his conclusions; like he is the crow in the Dumbo cartoon (read the book). Why is this man smiling?

Freedom Evolves ties together all of his previous books. He convincingly shows how a naturalistic account of ourselves gives us REAL free will. He also clarifies many previous arguments.

Dennett defines freedom as the "capacity to achieve what is of value in a range of circumstances." Despite the prevailing view, science does not decrease our freedom through exculpation, but increases it by giving us more options and self-control. He also points out that memes give us freedom by giving us new standpoints. Also, memes are tools and need to be used to work; that is, we still have to think. This is a very important point because almost everyone I try to explain memetics to hates it because they feel it robs them of their self. It does the exact opposite!

Dennett says that a human self results from an interpersonal design process and to become autonomous, we need a little help from our friends. I would add to this point by saying that some of the best "friends" we can ask for help in the arduous process of creating an autonomous self are the great artists of the ages. This is a point Richard Rorty has recently been making.

This is a fantastic and extremely important book. I am a philosophical dilettante (but I am a scientist) and I appreciate Dennett's extremely useful and lucid writing. If only more philosophers were like him.

More importantly, this book is wonderfully hopeful and can be thought of as a philosophical self-help manual. Now I know why he is smiling.

The first point to make about this book is that Daniel Dennett's ability to engage readers is well-nigh unprecedented in current scientific or philosophic writing. Reading him is like watching a lion-tamer whose daring keeps us, breathless, on the edge of our seats.

His basic effort is to reconcile the determinism of Darwinism with the humanist's concern with human freedom. To do so he jettisons the notion that free will is a metaphysical concept. Rather, he explains it in terms of contemporary objective science, specifically via the same sort of evolution that led to the development of the eye or of language. He relies heavily on Richard Dawkin's concept of the evolution of memes: ideas that compete with each other just as other characteristics do via natural selection. In other words he argues that freedom of will grows and evolves. To achieve this conclusion he makes the point that determinism (a cause mechanistically producing an effect) is not the same as inevitability. He uses an example from baseball (shades of the late Stephen Jay Gould!) to make his point. He says that a batter has a choice of turning away from a pitch that is going to hit him or allowing it to hit him, depending on which action will help his team. His action is not determined by the prior history of the universe, but by his own analysis in the moment. In a different game, he might make a different choice. This, and other similar arguments, lead Dennett to the conclusion that the more we know, the more varieties and degrees of freedom we can have. Thus, modern man has more freedom than did, say, the Neanderthal.

Essentially then, Dennett, whose earlier work in the areas of consciousness (another concept that gives determinists fits) are seminal, asserts that natural science is the ally of freedom, not an argument against it. The audacious arguments he posits to support this position are breathtaking in their scope and are, for this reader, convincing.

Dennett is a philosopher who is interested in science. In "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", Dennett works hard to translate key results from the science of evolutionary biology into a form that non-scientists (particularly those with a background in philosophy) can make use of. For the skilled performance of such an important service, we have to recognize Dennett as a national treasure.

"Darwin's Dangerous Idea" makes the point that no idea is worth wasting your time on if it cannot stand in the cold light of the harshest criticism. You can read plenty of praise for "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" here, but what about serious criticism? How does this book stand up to its critics?

If you quizzed academic philosophers, working psychologists, and cognitive scientists you would find many who never read any of Dennett's books and who would tell you that reading Dennett is a waste of time. This is the same treatment the Darwin himself still gets in some quarters. A large part of "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" is Dennett's attempt to explain why Darwin's revolutionary ideas on evolution have provoked such a response. The short answer is that evolutionary thought is "strong acid" the dissolves many of the ancient dogmas that some people try to cling to. The explicitly stated purpose of "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" is that Dennett wants to show why people need not feel threatened by the truth and power of evolutionary thinking. Of course, people who do not "get" Dennett's presentation continue to feel threatened and try to prevent other people from reading Darwin, Dennett, and anyone else that threatens their comfy old ways.

In addition to the subject matter, Dennett's style in "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" also provokes condemnation from academicians. Dennett dares to cross disciplinary boundaries and deals skillfully with the task of relating dusty academic pursuits to real human concerns. Many philosophers and scientists who lack the intellectual bandwidth to keep up with Dennett can only play the tired old game of calling Dennett a joke. This is the same treatment that Carl Sagan got for his masterful efforts in the service of humanity. If you are a professional philosopher or scientist who believes that "real ideas" are only written in opaque jargon and published in obscure academic journals, then do not buy "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", its broad perspective and clarity of vision will fracture the narrowness of your mind.

In addition to the general criticisms of "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" that come from people who have never read the book, there are criticisms that actually relate to some of the specific ideas that are in the book. For example, Dennett explores the idea that Darwin's theory of natural selection was not a detailed mechanistic account of biological evolution (after all, Darwin had no idea that DNA is the basis of inheritance), but rather an algorithms for producing adaptation or "fit" between living organisms and a complex environment. Some people do not like Dennett's view of Darwinism as algorithm. As a biologist, I feel that viewing Darwin's ideas on natural selection as an algorithm is both correct and refreshing.

There are two "isms" that Dennett makes use of in a most talented fashion: reductionism and functionalism. In philosophical jargon, "reductionism" is what you do when your computer does not work and you systematically search for the problem by investigating each component of the hardware and software. Functionalism is what people do when they think about something like a heart in terms of its function, without imagining that there must be something magical in the material of a living heart that prevents us from building a mechanical pump. As a philosopher who learned much from Wittgenstein, Dennett is not a Platonic Thinker, and Dennett's style of philosophy shows just how powerful functionalism can be as a strategy for understanding reality in the absence of Platonism. If you are like many academic philosophers and have been indoctrinated with the idea that reductionism and functionalism are evils, then you should probably not read this book. You risk learning how narrow your education was.......Dennett might actually pull you out of the dark ages. If you can appreciate a philosopher who uses any available tool that helps us "carve the world at its joints", then you are in for a treat.

"Darwin's Dangerous Idea" does not simply deal with biological evolution in the narrow sense of Darwin's time. Dennett also deals with the application of evolutionary thought to ideas and he has whole-heartedly adopted Richard Dawkin's term "meme" to describe an idea that spreads through minds and societies. It is clear that the idea of evolving "memes" receives the same bitter opposition that Darwin's original ideas on biological evolution received. If you want to see a book-length statement of this sort of sour grapes argument against evolutionary thought, spend your money on the book "Darwin's Black Box". Ever since Darwin published "Origin of Species", critics have been complaining, "Well, you do not know all of the details of evolution, so I refuse to believe any of it. Get back to me when you have a real theory and all of the details have been worked out." This no-nothing attitude displays a deep ignorance of how science makes use of theories that are the best game in town. Evolutionary biology and memetics are both young sciences in that they have just begun to scratch the surfaces of their complex subjects. It is silly to dismiss them as "handwaving" unless you have a better theory.

Dennett's claim in "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" is that evolutionary thinking is central to philosophy and our ability to understand our place in the universe. Dennett's effort deserves to be read and treated with reasoned counter-claims. I predict that "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" will do well in the game of "survival of the fittest".

I loved this book. I've read a lot of the popular literature on evolution and Darwinism, and this is far and away my favorite. This is the book to read when you're already quite familiar with the subject of evolution from a biological perspective, because Dennett assumes his reader already accepts the Darwinian framework. I wouldn't recommend this to people who like to debate Creationists (Dennett himself mentions the controversy only in passing), because there is nothing here in the way of factoids to wield against your online foes. This is an examination of the way Darwinism has changed our philosophy of the Meaning of Life.

Dennett has a great metaphor in the "universal acid" of Darwinism. With it, he argues that when Darwin showed that species were not immutable, the fixed-species model of biology dissolved along with the very foundation of Essentialist philosophy. After this revolution, we could never again look at
such concepts as Species or Life or Consciousness as clear-cut distinctions instead of matters of greater or lesser degree.

The modern synthesis later made it clear that the DNA copying process, competition, and unpredictable environmental factors were responsible for the wonders of nature. The focus changed from the plan to the process, and the Intelligent Designer was replaced with a complex but mindless algorithmic process that produced results. The very notion of Intention in nature was seen as an illusion.

Dennett believes that the demonstrated power of a mindless process frightens those who would try to retain their long-held illusions. Unfortunately, that number includes many professed evolutionists who consider themselves intellectually superior to Creationists. Those who maintain that Darwinism is only biology and who try to keep the universal acid from penetrating into the philosophical realm are clinging to notions that Darwinism itself put to rest over a century ago. The central claim of Darwinism is Design-without-Designer, and you either subscribe to it or you don't. If you deny that the cranes of natural selection did all the design work, the burden is on you to show us the magical skyhook responsible for doing the work instead.

I think Dennett is fair to the scientists he criticizes herein. Stephen Jay Gould was a terrific writer, but Dennett's philosophical edge is much sharper and shreds Gould's attacks on "Darwinian Fundamentalism" and "panadaptationism" to pieces. Noam Chomsky's engineering approach to linguistics was revolutionary, and Dennett gives him the credit he deserves. However, Chomsky's assertion that natural selection couldn't have been responsible for the evolution of the language instinct is just the sort of irresponsible "skyhook-seeking" that Dennett deplores.

This book is full of ingenious thought experiments and philosophical hair-splitting. Dennett assumes the reader is familiar with complexity theory, Artificial Intelligence, memetics, and game theory, and he's fond of answering questions with more questions. If you're ready for a challenging mental workout, this is for you.

I am writing as one who has long treated Stephen Jay Gould's work as "gospel" (forgive the expression!), and as an avid user of technology but harsh skeptic with regard to artificial intelligence. This book is harshly critical of Gould in many ways, staunchly defends artificial intelligence, and convinced me that Dennett's views are justified on both fronts. As an evolutionist recently deeply involved in professional and person discussions with many intelligent and thoughtful creationists, I have looked for a thoughtful and convincing book on the logic of macroevolution that takes a much less arrogant attitude towards religious views than does Richard Dawkins (and sometimes Gould himself). Dennett makes many of Dawkins' strongest points even more cleary, and his original terminology, metaphors and interdiciplinary links, while not as flashy as Gould's, are more carefully chosen for clear explanatory value and should be more easily understandable to many people. The book is certainly not easy going, but is well worth the effort, and MIGHT, unlike Gould or Dawkins, engage those of a religious bent without enraging them as well.

Dennett makes excellent points throughout this little book, especially from an evolutionary standpoint. But at the end, it appears that Dennett holds that nothing is a mind untill someone adds language, as if a brain was kool-aid and language water. Things are not so simple. For example, Dennett tries to conclude that since minds are made up of what he calls little "machines" then a mind is just a machine until proven otherwise. His proof seems to be language. But I fail to see if that is the logical conclusion from his early arguments. Isn't language at the end also made up of "machines"? Dennett does not only use an emergent theory in support of his conclusions, but I doubt that would make a difference.
So at the end, humans are conscious because of language and direct evidence for individuals, but animals are not because thay do not have language and we cannot directly see what is like to bo one. There are times in the book where Dennett even puts into question wether deaf-mutes would really have a true human mind! There is a trend among theorists that holds that language tranforms inert matter into conscious matter. Now, truly, language separates human consicousness from other kinds of minds, but it does not follow that language is a necesary condition for consciousness itself. Dennett, who is a strong A.I supporter, should know this. I mean, does a computer has to have language to be conscious? Or for that matter is language then also a sufficient condition for consciousness?
Dennett also fails to discuss many important things that should be considered when talking about animal minds- language studies in higher primates, working memory in animals, etc...- Granted, these are all inconclusive, but should not be ignored. I think Dennets view of consciousness is really strange and confused...He once denied the existence of qualia! But this is no argument. I can confidently say that one does not emerge knowing much about minds after readind this book.

I got started on Dennett's many books when a friend recommended Consciousness Explained and I haven't been able to put the topic down ever since. Dennett continues his clear, straightforward style in this book which is much more readable than Consciousness Explained, but still provides ample challenge for the reader.

Dennett starts with the statement, "I am a philosopher, not a scientist," yet his command of what is going on in the sciences is most impressive. His ability to make incredibly complex ideas of evolution understandable to the lay person is amazing and consistent. Through the use of words and diagrams, we are brought up to date on the latest thinking on what mind is and how it is evolving.

Kinds of Minds tackles very emotional and controversial topics such as "are we so sure that all humans have minds? . . . Could it be that all animals and even plants and even bacteria have minds?. . . What kinds of minds are there?" The reader is then lead through a series of logical steps, replete with information on the latest scientific and philosophical thought, and left to finally decide these big questions on his or her own.

This is definitely a must read book for those interested in the human mind, consciousness, and ethical treatment of our fellow beings in this interconnected web of all existence.

If you aren't familiar with the works of Daniel Dennett, this is the starting point of choice. This American philosopher's ability to pose thought-provoking questions is unmatched. In this collection, the focus is on "what is a mind?" How do we define "the mind" and are humans the sole possessors of it? Dennett is not only deft at posing these posers, he presents the questions and his explanations with philosophy's finest prose and wit. His other advantage over his fellow cognitive scientists is his use of Darwin's "dangerous idea," evolution by natural selection. As products of that process, humans are not exempt from its rules. That framework raises the issue of whether other creatures can be said to have "minds." Dennett explores this issue with skillfully chosen examples. These are part of the list of "kinds of minds."

Dennett is famous among philosophers for devising the concept of "the intentional stance." The intentional stance is interpreting the behaviour of an entity." The range of entities is extensive - a simple thermostat has predictable behaviour - when the room is cool, the device closes a circuit turning on the heat. According to Dennett, the simplest creatures exhibited similar "robotic" behaviour, but as life evolved, more complex patterns developed. Dennett argues that "adopting the intentional stance is not just a good idea but the key to unraveling the mysteries of the mind - all kinds of minds." In his view, intentional systems have progressed along the course of evolution in ever complex steps. Humans, with the development of language, have achieved the highest level of cognitive abilities.

Dennett addresses what many philosophers call the "mind-body" question. Those who feel the mind and body must be considered separately will face some challenging assertions here. Perhaps more importantly, those who may not feel disposed to read philosophy, will find much stimulate thinking about who they really are. Dennett keeps his presentation clearly formulated and easily readable. Quick, simple answers to questions about thinking are not Dennett's style. This is a slim tome, but the few pages are packed with rigorously conceived concepts. The words flow easily, but the content will bear repeated readings. As Dennett reminds us, there are countless questions about what a mind is, with many answers remaining to be derived. This book provides the starting point for that quest.

Very slow and far too long book based on a few crucial experiments or diseases: the color-phi-phenomenon of Koler, the experiments of Libet and Multiple Personality Disorder.

Half of the book is spent to reject the Cartesian model of an exact location of consciousness in the brain and to replace it by a multiple version model.
The other part is an explanation of consciousness in terms of a self-developing computer programme that organizes the brain's activity.
Language plays, for the author, a great part in the structuring of the human mind.

Roger Penrose (The Emperor's New Mind) from a physical point of view and Gerald Edelman (Bright Air, Brilliant Fire) from a biological point of view proved for me convincingly that the brain is not a computer and that its action cannot be compared with a computer programme. Trying to explain the working of the brain or of consciousness in this way is for me a dead end.

On the other hand, it is possible that language structures the mind, but before that, the mind had to permit the coming into existence of language (the mind was there before language). There is a reciprocal adaptation.
The all importance of language foreces the author to state that without natural language the mind of the deaf-and-thumb is terribly limited. This is not true, for they can learn to speak with their hands.

I agree with the author's definition of the (biological) self and also with his statement that the brain was in the first place developed to do other activities (to choose between fight or flee...) than read and write.

Although I still learned a lot by reading this book, I cannot recommend it.

N.B. 'L'acte gratuit' is an element of the philosophy of Bergson, not of Sartre or Gide. On the contrary, Gide ridicules it in 'Les Caves du Vatican', where a commuter pushes another commuter out of a running train as an ... 'acte gratuit'.

Mr. Daniel C. Dennett is also author of Brainstorms and coauthor of The Mind's I. George Johnson, New York Times Book Review stated that this book was "Brilliant . . as audacious as its title . . ." and I could not agree more. This text is well written and put together in such a manner that the concepts are accessible even to those of us who are not scientists by training. Yet, the change in the model of the brain presented here is very difficult for me to grasp. I like the concept of thinking about a massively parallel processor as the model for how the brain does what it does, but translating that into a new concept of no one central place where "consciousness takes place," is very difficult indeed. Like many, my view of human consciousness was that there was a central place, an observer that kept me neatly in time and space. Not so, says Dennett.

"Each normal individual of this species [homo sapiens]," says Mr. Dennett, "makes a self. Out of its brain it spins a web of words and deeds, and, like the other creatures, it doesn't have to know what it is doing; it just does it. This web protects it, just like the snail' shell, and provides it a livelihood, just like the spider's web, and advances its prospects for sex, just like the bowerbird's bower." He goes on to point out that this web of discourse and deeds is as much a biological product as any of the other constructions to be found in the animal world.

Mr. Dennett goes on to explain that this complex set of cultural transmissions (memes) such as tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, etc. can best be understood as the operation of a "von Neumannesque" virtual machine implemented in the parallel architecture of a brain that was not designed for any such activities. In other words, we have learned to use our brains for new functions as we evolved. And, as we spin this web of discourse, we create for ourselves a sense of time-space and orient ourselves in that time-space in such a way as to disconnect ourselves from "creation" and give ourselves and others a sense of "individual."

The book concludes with appendices that direct themselves to specialized language and explanations for Philosophers and Scientists. All in all, a very difficult but rewarding read. I found this book challenging to say the least, and yet I highly recommended it to those interested in how the evolution of human consciousness.

I believe it was Thomas Wolfe who once remarked with pride that he was a generous literary putter-inner, while minimalists like Ernest Hemingway were stingy leaver-outers. No one who finishes "Consciousness Explained" will doubt that Dennett belongs among the putter-inners. For example, on reaching page 280 the reader is casually told, "I have been coy about consciousness up to now." If only we had known, Daniel, that you've been toying with us through half the book...

Dennett does make a coherent case, but the theme is buried in so many asides and diversions that one needs a conceptual GPS to stay oriented. Since he has the whole map in his head, the author naturally tends to forget that others on the tour bus may have lost their bearings two or three turns ago. On the plus side, Dennett's pleasantly conversational tone, clever analogies and colorful terminology (Stalinesque, Multiple Drafts, Witness Protection Program) help to sustain our interest and clarify difficult concepts.

The big picture (I think) is that investigations of consciousness have traditionally been hindered by reliance on the concept of a "Cartesian Theater" in the mind where a homunculus (the audience) makes conscious observations. As long as the nature of the theater and the homunculus remain elusive, the whole approach merely begs the questions of what consciousness is and how it happens. Dennett proposes that neither the theater nor the audience exists (i.e. the analogies are empty) and that a massively parallel process he calls Multiple Drafts is more descriptive of what happens in a conscious brain. The thrust of his argument is that understanding consciousness requires no ultimate appeal to mind/brain dualities, souls, spirits, quantum weirdness or other trappings of the "it can't be straightforward" school. This has led disappointed devotees of the ineffable to make dismissive remarks like "Dennett explains everything under the sun EXCEPT consciousness." Don't believe it.

Dennett's background in philosophy serves him well in addressing the subtleties of cognition, but the resulting terminology may wear a bit on the reader. Sometimes I thought that if I saw the 22-letter monster "heterophenomenological" one more time, I would scream. On the other hand, Dennett's tale of the imaginary deity Feenoman, based on the root of this word, manages to be both hilarious and instructive. The book is an excellent choice for those who are not merely inclined, but also steadfastly determined, to learn more about the machinery of consciousness.

I must give credit to Dennett for trying very hard to make his ideas clear, because he does a better job than most philosophers, but the book is still a bit boring.

The ideas Dennett raises are (inevitably) very interesting, as we are talking about the brain, so there is lot of material here to keep you thinking. A lot of the arguments he makes don't exactly make sense (i.e. comparisons that don't apply), but his is a voice worth considering.