Consciousness Explained

Dennett sets himself an ambitious goal with the title “Consciousness Explained”. This book is obviously not the be-all and end-all of explanations about this famously slippery subject, but it's an impressive attempt in the right direction. Dennett's writing is easy to follow, but by no means is this a superficial book. This book really digs into the subject of human consciousness, with all its nitty gritty details and confusing edge cases.

Dennett's approach here is courageous, while many philosophers sit around contemplating the inherent mysteriousness of the subject matter, reiterating why the hard problem is just so damn hard, Dennett takes a no-nonsense approach, carefully and systematically unpacking the tricky concepts that relate to the subjective-objective gap while clearing away muddled concepts such as qualia. Far from abstract philosophy Dennett firmly grounds his ideas in modern neuroscience.

Not many books have made me stop and think as much. Dennett manages to clarify a lot of confusion about the subject while offering surprisingly robust alternatives. This book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in neuroscience and/or philosophy of mind. Whether or not you agree with Dennett's ideas.

turns out it's not what i'm looking for.

i probably read a third of it, skipping around. i wanted to read it because daniel dennett is often quoted in steven pinker's and richard dawkins' books, but i think the quotes used by those two learned scholars is really all i need to know. dennett is a philosopher in the abstract, and that's fun and all but what i'm looking for is tangibility and concrete manifestation of these ideas in our physical environment. if i had nothing else to read, i would read it all and probably enjoy it, but i have a lot of other books that i am eager to get to.