Dan Dennett – Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
February 14th 2010 08:24 pm
I’ve just uploaded this to bookcrossing.com , if you want it – get in touch.
I said I would start to do brief reviews for all the books I read (especially as I intend to release most of them on bookcrossing) so here is this one (also on goodreads.com)
Dan Dennett is one author who has genuinely changed my view of the word. Till I read a wonderful short piece by him called “Where am I?” I had written off philosophy and took the view “if you want to know how the mind works, ask a neuroscientist”. Dan is remarkably lucid on philosophy of mind, free will and evolution. He is both an “intellectual plumber” –doing that work that the best philosophers do, patching leaks in peoples thinking– and a great communicator – understanding, consolidating and enthusiastically passing on knowledge in a field not his main expertise (not that you would notice without him owning up frequently).
This is the second in a sequence: Consciousness Explained, Darwins Dangerous Idea and Freedom Evolves. These, along with his earlier works Elbow Room and The Intentional Stance are a superbly compelling explanation of how we come to have free will without any mysterian views about how special consciousness in the species Homo Sapien Sapien must be and accepting that we live in a deterministic universe.
This book in particular is a very good survey of modern evolutionary theory, not the ideal first book but great if you are familiar with the topic. He is a believer in the neo-darwinian synthesis perhaps best espoused by Richard Dawkins. He takes as his central metaphor the difference between cranes (just doing some lifting obeying the laws of physics, however complex they are) and sky hooks (magical lifting devices that do not permit/require explanation). Along the way he rebuts Stephen Jay Gould’s attempts to cast himself as the leader of some revolution or other in biology, Roger Penroses misuse of Godels theorem to link two mysteries together (quantum indeterminacy and consciousness) and does a defence of a meme-based approach to culture. All in all a superb, if somewhat challenging, book.
As an aside, one of the really great things about Dennett is the range and number of citations. He must read nearly all of the relevant literature and makes wonderful use of literary and philosophical references as well – it was a Dennett reference that first brought Jorge Luis Borges to my attention and encouraged me to learn more about David Hume.
A superb book, I recommend it for all with some familiarity with the theory of evolution in it’s modern form who are ready to explore some of its subtleties and prepare themselves for Freedom Evolves.
Rob Hardy responded on 14 Feb 2010 at 9:13 pm #
Sounds interesting – I may well give it a go (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea).
I did read Consciousness Explained many years ago. He failed to convince me, and I finished it thinking that “Consciousness Expained Away” would have been a better title. He tries to reduce consciousness to “reactive tendencies” and information processing, things that can be attributed to computers without the need to suppose they have any awareness of what they are doing. It is this basic awareness that I think there is a desperate need to explain.
So, I am on the side of Roger Penrose in all this. However, I was very glad I had read Dennet’s book. Although I did not agree with him, he argues his case well, which pushed me to examine my own arguments more closely – “opposition is true friendship,” as Blake would say.
tom responded on 14 Feb 2010 at 9:25 pm #
Hi Rob,
I have not long since re-read Consciousness Explained and have doubts myself. I am not sure that the brain in all it’s analogue parallelness would need to simulate a von-neumann machine (and dont understand what he means by a joyceian machine). Fortunately it’s not a choice between Dennett and Penrose however as Penrose is almost certainly wrong (Im struggling to remember the name of a logician who completly destroys his argument, annoyingly I can remember the publisher and colour of a book of his I used at uni but not his name!)
Freedom Evolves is the most compelling and original of the 3 I think.
Tom
Rob Hardy responded on 15 Feb 2010 at 12:36 am #
“… annoyingly I can remember the publisher and colour of a book of his I used at uni but not his name!”
When I was working for Leeds Libraries, we discussed the need for some sort of Linked Data/Semantic Web app that could help answer the “… I can’t remember what it was called, but it had a blue cover” type of query. I might suggest it to my current employers
.
“Almost certainly wrong”? Perhaps in some details, but Gödel and quantum theory certainly have significant implications for philosophy of mind.
thattommyhall.com » 101 Goals – 100 Day Update responded on 15 Apr 2010 at 8:41 pm #
[...] 11 – Reread all Dennett books “all” = the trilogy of Darwins Dangerous Idea, Conciousness Explained and Freedom Evolves Just finished Freedom Evolves, reviewed DDI here. [...]