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Consciousness Explained (Penguin Science) | 
 enlarge | Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 1970
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0140128670
Dewey Decimal Number: 149
EAN: 9780140128673
ASIN: 0140128670
Publication Date: June 24, 1993
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 The Introduction to Consciousness August 10, 2008
Steve S. (Los Angeles)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Consciousness Explained" is the best place to start if you want to begin the venture into this perplexing area. Dennett's books is well organized, well thought out, and does a wonderful job of explaining difficult concepts in a way that is interesting and relatively easy to understand.
Another reviewer titles his review "Consciousness Denied." That is a fair comment. Many people think that Dennett explains away consciousness, rather than explaining it. In fact, I agree with that critism myself -- I think. I tend to agree with John Searle (again -- think). The one star rating, however, is grossly unfair. Consciousness is a very hard problem, to put it mildly, and Dennett's reasoning and opinions are crucial for two reasons. First, they are very well thought out, and well expressed. Moreover, Dennett is one of the key writers in the area, and if you read anything else about consciousness, you will find references and responses to Dennett.
Other authors worth reading in this area include John Searle (no friend of Dennett), Susan Blackmore, Steven Pinker, David Chalmers, V. S. Ramachandran and Antonio Damasio.
 Consciousness dissected, described, but still not explained July 22, 2008
Richard Mongler (The Internets)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This rather long and sometimes rambling book achieves at least two thirds of what I expected. Dennett completely demolishes the Cartesian Dualism model, showing through anecdote and experiment that ideas of a separate mind and body are completely out of touch with reality.
A large portion of the book is dedicated to dismantling ideas that are built on this model, I found the non-linear, revisionist perception of time to be one of the most powerful and thought provoking revelations.
Drawing from many fields of science (computing, psychology, neurology and evolutionary biology to name a few) he then goes on to describe his alternative model for consciousness. His multiple drafts theory is empirical, making falsifiable scientific predictions and I believe his description to be an accurate one.
The book is sometimes quite difficult to follow, philosophy is rarely an easy read but I've come to expect popular science writers to speak plainly, where Dawkins coins snappy and self-explanatory words such as "meme" or "concestor" Dennett's "heterophenomenology" is a nine syllable monster. Also it is not a riveting read, it has taken me almost a year to finally finish this book. I enjoyed the experiments, anecdotes, evolutionary biology and computer science much more than the reams of prelude and philosophical reasoning. In my opinion it would have been better as two books, one a highly technical exploration of the philosophy of mind and another popular science for the layman. I would have enjoyed the latter much more.
Finally I think that the title is misleading, it did transform my understanding of human consciousness but it raised as many new questions as it answered. I am no closer to understanding what consciousness is, what it means to be, or whether consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe or an emergent pattern in matter. Perhaps "Consciousness Described" would have been a more fitting title.
 Consciousness NOT explained! June 9, 2008
Richard
6 out of 16 found this review helpful
I gave this book one star ONLY because the title of the book is sensationalist. Dennett does NOT know what consciousness is, and so does not even try to explain it. I keep hoping someone will, but each time an individual makes such a claim, I am deeply disappointed.
Dennett neatly sums up his thinking in an interview. Whatever we say we are experiencing, Dennett begs to differ. According to Dennett, consciousness is merely a complex interaction of billions of brain cells, nothing more. How we experience what does not exist Dennett fails to explain. It's not so much consciousness explained as consciousness banished. Consciousness, according to Dennett, is merely our unscientific, subjective misinterpretation of the activities of a biological information processing system. We are not scientists, Dennett is claiming, and, therefore, what we say we are experiencing is not what we are actually experiencing. We are, in effect, deluding ourselves, experiencing some kind of mass hallucination, creating a rich experience of feeling alive that really isn't there. How we do this if we are not really conscious, Dennet does not explain.
This isn't science! You cannot ignore what others say they experience by claiming they are not intelligent enough to interpret their experience.
Having read some research papers on visual consciousness written by academics at London University, I know scientists don't know what consciousness is. All they can say is some brain cells are "conscious" while others are not. They can't explain why some brain cells become "conscious" while other, identical ones, do not, or why we experience what we do, what it is that we are experiencing, or how the brain creates a feeling of self. Unfortunately, consciousness is a mystery, and remains a mystery.
Dennett is like a religious person - his mind is made up before the facts are in. He has already decided consciousness is explainable, and so will use every trick in the book to avoid admitting that it is - at present! - unexplainable.
Dennett is cleverly arguing away consciousness, not actually explaining it. He claims a computer made sufficiently complex can become conscious - that is, it has acquired a property called "consciousness", but then fails to explain what that property is.
An analogy: I ask a scientist what is the colour purple? He or she responds by saying: if you mix red and blue together (cause brain cells to interact!), you get the colour purple (consciousness!). The scientist is right, I do get the colour purple, but this doesn't tell me what the colour actually is: wavelengths of light; and then what light is: energy.
In the latest research into split-brain patients (the left side of the brain is effectively detached from the right side), Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, sheds some interesting light on consciousness: "...perhaps even more profound, he explains how, even though split-brain patients have isolated hemispheres, they experience a unified consciousness - that is, feel as though they are of one mind." (Scientific American, June 16, 2008, "Of Two Minds, One Consciousness").
Given our current knowledge, anyone who claims consciousness is explainable is tendentiously interpreting the facts.
Not too long ago, consciousness was virtually a taboo topic, but it's gaining prominence again. Unfortunately, scientists are staring THROUGH this object of interest, instead of AT IT! No one is explaining what consciousness actually is. I feel pain - what is it? I see colour - what is it? I feel a sense of self - what is it?
Masterful October 16, 2007
Mr. C. J. Oldfield
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A fabulous book, exciting to read, which cannot be said of much philosophy. Dennett outlines his Multiple Drafts model of consciousness as an alternative to the traditional model, which he calls the Cartesian Theatre. Most of the philosophical problems of consciousness, Dennett claims, arise because most of us are still (though we would not admit it) attached to the idea of a Cartesian Theatre, the place where everything 'comes together before consciousness'.
 Consciousness 'explained' October 9, 2007
Mr. Cu Hollands (Birmingham, England)
6 out of 18 found this review helpful
The book possesses no more explanatory power than its ability to obfuscate the issue. Dennett concludes that 'it seems as if [consciousness] is there', but then concludes that it's some kind of cognitive faculty, something like the 'faculty of a faculty', or to put it bluntly, the 'means of a means'.
As Strawson notes, the religious are eminently more justified in their beliefs than the 'Dennettians'--at least a religious fanatic is prepared to admit the existence of consciousness [which if we get right down to it, is just about the only fact we can infer about the world].
Anyone who denies the existence of consciousness needs their head thoroughly examined, preferably from a distance.
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