A long and diffucult book, but well worth the effort. Here Dennett explores the implications of natural selection on other areas of philosophy. The material ranges far and wide, from human consciousness, morality, the evolution of theories of evolution, consciousness and morality.

The meat of the book is devastating criticism of attempts by philosophers and scientists to find attributes that are beyond evolutionary analysis. In particular, he does a thorough job of exposing the shortcomings of the theories Stephen Jay Gould, Noam Chomsky, and Roger Penrose, all of whom have attempted to put the human mind beyond the reach of science.

This book is a MUST read for believers in evolution. It shows how the painful philosophical inversion can and must bet taken all the way down, to the brain, morality, and humanity. Reason and meaning come only AFTER life evolves.

Listen, this is a review tied to time and place and current feeling and what am I supposed to do about that? But, come on, you can only blanche at the Epstein-iness of the citations (Pinker, Minsky, oh my) and the cringey-ness of that late-Clinton, early-Bush anti-Theist Brights high-horsedness. Truly a testament of it times, as well as in the emphasis in AI. Oh well, interesting shit on the Baldwin Effect and determining the correct level of Darwinian reductionist to be (not Skinner, mind you!).

It's been almost 20 years since I first read this book. It was even better the second time around. Ostensibly the book is about the philosophical and scientific implications that result from the theory of evolution. What the book really is, is an excellent primer on thinking about how to think.

The first part of the book presents a good overview of evolution, but also one of the best introductory examples of the philosophy science is and how it works. It seriously ought to be required reading by every kid in America before graduating high school: not because they need to understand Darwin's theory (though that's not such a bad thing), but because they need to understand what science is and how empiricism works (i.e. "Starting in the Middle").

The second part of the book ("Darwinian Thinking in Biology") looks at certain biological critiques of Darwin's view of evolution (primarily those of S.J. Gould). The third part ("Mind, Meaning, Mathematics and Morality") looks at the ramifications the theory has when considered in different philosophical endeavors, linguistics, cognitive science, and computing. Once again, the real treasure here is less about the specifics, that it is the outstanding example Dennett provides, showing _how_ to think critically, how to _do_ philosophy, applying an idea to various challenges and problems.

I can't recommend this book enough.

Dan Dennett, Douglas Hofstadter, Richard Dawkins, Bertrand Russell, Stuart Kaufman were heavy influences on me early on. It has been a long time since I looked at these authors. I probably don't remember specifics but it shaped my outlook as I was reconstructing my mind after becoming a schizophrenic in 1990. They are great guides for someone who wants to reality check after a psychotic breakup. Any facade of sanity I show to the world is reconstructed from doing philosophy with these figures. Darwin's dangerous idea came out in the 1990s and is a good work on this fruitful idea around the diversity of forms winnowed by natural selection It is an awesome algorithm for developing complex forms we see around us. Dennett is a great expositor on this beautiful idea. Good writer and good philosopher.

The first 5 or 6 chapters are actually very good, not as good as any of Dawkins', but still pretty good. But gradually, it turns into a long-winded literature study. And the rambling becomes unbearable. In retrospect, having experienced Dennett's ability of filling pages previously when reading his Consciousness Explained, I should have exercised more caution in beginning this book. Mea culpa.

He puts the 'ism' in Darwinism. But somebody should. The moniker has unfortunately stuck; we may as well make the best of it. Yes, it -- Darwinism -- is like a religion. Specifically, it's something that beats the pants off religion at explaining the natural world. Anytime religions want to get out of that business and focus on spiritual comfort, it would be advisable.

When I started this book I thought I would love it. As Dennett says, the implications of the Darwinian Revolution have not yet been realized by humankind, even though everyone - Darwinians and anti-Darwinians alike - understands that Darwin's idea hits the core of what we care about. Dennett aims to show how Darwin's theory, applied broadly and properly, can inform just about every aspect of human thought.

Dennett explains how Darwinian logic applies to human nature, culture, morality, economics, and more. Which is great. But what is not so great is that Dennett forces you to wade through endless tangents, obscure passages, and gratuitous thought experiments to follow him. Reading this, I couldn't help but wonder how Dennett's editor let some chapters in, when his point could have been made in a few paragraphs (or sentences).

If you want to read every Darwin-related thought that has ever crossed Dennett's mind, this is the book for you. But don't hope for anything like conciseness.

The repercussions of Darwinian theory is that, whether or not Darwin's theories are overturned or thought to have been overturned, there is no going back from the 'dangerous' idea that design (purpose or what something is for) might not need a designer. To this effect, Daniel Dennett demonstrates this by various means, introducing the concept of skyhooks and cranes, whereby skyhooks are regarded (falsely) as the reasoning behind life itself, that doesn't need an explanation: in other words, a miralce, or a devine being. Cranes on the other hand, are based upon physical science and, although wonderfull in their design, still are based on natural concepts.

Daniel Dennett might be one of the few philosophers that understands Darwinism and therefore can set it in light of this background. This might be interesting for some readers, but unfortunately this book didn't met my expectations - his 'crusade' against Stephen Jay Gould's theories was an irritating distraction. Therefore: 2 stars.

His argument mostly center around this one basic thought. How could you think otherwise? Absolutely did not convince me of a thing

After recently re-reading Consciousness Explained of Dennett, I decided to re-read Darwin's Dangerous Idea as well. In the last year I read a lot about evolutionary biology and I wanted to know if after re-reading this book, I would have another outlook on it. On re-reading it, I was amazed at how much insight Dennett packs in this work.

Dennett's main thesis - which is very easily overlookd due to the broad and deep treatment of all sorts of issues relating to evolution as a concept - is the following. An algorithm has (1) substrate neutrality (i.e. is indepent of the materials used to execute it), (2) consists of underlying mindlessness (the process is subdivided and sub-subdivided and so forth, until the only things remaining are simple, stupid steps) and (3) gives garantueed results. Evolution is just such a process, and therefore applicable to not only biology, but also to culture, human psychology, artifical intelligence, etc. This is why Darwin's idea is dangerous: it's very easy and attractive to apply and therefore very easy to lead to unjustified use. Some infamous examples of this dangerous idea are Nietzsche's nihilism and Spencer's Social Darwinism.

In part 1, Dennett takes his time to introduce the idea of evolution as an algorithmic process, the endless and mindless 'search' of nature through what Dennett cals 'Design Space'. This amounts to (what Dennett calls) Darwin's 'strange inversion of reasoning'. Before Darwin, people like Aristotle and Locke thought of a topdown-process of Mind creating Design out of Order, which in itself started out of Chaos. Darwin showed how a simple algorithmic process of natural selection can create the illusion of design (Paley's watch) by 'working' on order. In other words, Mind is an emergent property of Design, which itself is emergent out of Order, which itself is emergent out of Chaos. And all this without Aristotelian notions like an Unmoved Mover or a Final Cause.

In part 2 Dennett outlines the biological implications of this 'dangerous idea'. He speculates - he's not alone in this: he draws on important work of various physicists and biologists - about the creation of Order out of Chaos. In other words: the evolution of our universe, the idea of selection of universes (multiverse scenario) and the origin of life. This 'origin' is nothing but an algorithmic process in itself. When we break it up in small steps, the difficulty of how life can come out of nothing evaporates in an instant. Even though we don't know yet how this process came about in practice, the outlines of the ultimate explanation are clear and physicists and chemists are working on various plausible theories. Another important aspect of part 2 is Dennett's claim that biology is reverse enegineering. We see a specific function and ask ourselves: what was its adaptive function? And is this the same function as the function it has nowadays, or are we looking at an exaptation?
By asking ourselves these questions, we can see 'Good Tricks' - convergent solutions for similar problems (for example the 40+ times an eye evolved or the various designs of wings). In the rest of part 2, Dennett deals extensively with criticisms against this 'adaptationist-view' and shows us that either the issues are a misunderstanding or else the unwillingness of certain scientists to accept evolution for what it is.

In the last part of the book, Dennett explains the implications of Darwin's dangerous idea for humanity. The cultural evolution that took of some thousands of years ago, is itself an evolutionary process consisting of memes competing for minds in the infosphere. Next Dennett takes up the task of explaining 'meaning'. The question of meaning is easily solved if we take into account that meaning is an emergent property of algorithmic processes shaping us. Design a robot that has to find its own way in this world, all the while protecting your interests, and you have created a survival machine that is built on algorithms and that ultimately finds its meaning popping up out of these same processes. Then realize that we humans are survival machines for our genes and you whitness the evaporation of an illusion.

On his way towards the end of this book, Dennett deals with Chomsky's reluctance of accepting evolution as the cause for the 'language organ' and with Penrose's view on consciousness and free will - in my own opinion convincingly. After this he tries to tackle the issue of morality. It is here that Dennett slips up (in my opinion): he gives a very distorted account of sociobiology (misrepresenting E.O. Wilson among others) and skims over evolutionary psychology. Dennett should have made clear that evolutionary psychology and sociobiology are descriptive sciences and that moral philosophy is a presecriptive science. Now he mixes up both in one story, while giving an explanation of one of the major errors in this domain: the naturalistic fallacy. I guess Dennett is not prepared to go the whole way, whereas someone like E.O. Wilson has a much clearer perspective on the issue: culture is on a genetic leash (in other words, the maximum cultural variability is defined by us sharing the same genes).

Dennett ends his book on a confusing note. He proposes we strive for biodiversity, not just in the biological world, but also in the world of memes. In other words: we should value the diversity of different religions and creeds. But only up to a point! Religions, creeds and any other memes or meme-complexes that endanger our society should be put in (metaphorical?) cages, just like we do with animals in zoos. How Dennett sees this working out in practice (especially with the internet) is an open question. He ends his book with the statement that Darwin's dangerous idea - evolution as an algorithmic (mindless, neutral, result oriented) process leading to design, mind and meaning - is a universal acid. It burns through anything which it encounters, but after it's gone we're left with a fresh, healthy perspective on the world and our place in it.

The beauty of this work lies in the deep, philosophical meaning of the themes described in it. This is a book of 500+ pages on a single idea. It's not a book about biology, it's also not a book on evolution, it's a book about a single idea and its implications for humanity. A true masterpiece, were it not for the last two confused chapters on morality.

Dennett starts this book, careful to align the specific context of Darwin's ideas from a material biology context to one of functionalism.

With this alignment, Darwin seeks to atomize all complexity into functional processes so that the material moves within a complexity are atomized into building blocks that allow for a supervenience of complexity to material atoms.

For instance, he applies this maneuver from biological evolution to behavior, psychology, culture and ultimately consciousness. What Dennett notes as being skyhooks constitutes a logical break, such as the jump from ordinal numbers to the smallest limit cardinal numbers. What Dennett calls cranes are moves that constitute supervenience.

This mapping is accomplished by Dennett mainly through a series of analogies and then, through a series of quotes that directly address each complexity through a dialectical structure that aligns various quotations that attempt to get at the root of contrary positions. These contrary positions are then atomized in terms of Dennett's algorithmic supervenience in order to be better incorporated into his algorithmic supervenience. If there is one thing I have noticed, it's that the presence of a dialectical structure necessarily supports an ideological position.

It's hard to moralize ideological positions of this complexity because of its range, but Dennett wishes to highlight the rational consistency possible in atomizing our most difficult endeavors (ethics, culture, subjectivity). This sounds well and good, but until you understand the larger context it is difficult to address how Dennett's book is an expression of an ideologue.

One of the debates in biology is a dispute about how to calibrate survival. Richard Dawkins and Dennett both wish to calibrate adaptation to the level of the gene. Some biologists would calibrate survival to the species, others to ecology. Some to the individual. Each of these optimizations of utility provide a basis for the creation of different terminologies, some of which are impossible given a radically different calibration. For instance, Stephen Jay Gould, who comes from a paleontologist background would calibrate survival to the species and thus has arrived at varyingly different concepts, some of which are nonsensical to someone like Dennett who only sees atomized genes as being the root basis for adaptive difference.

When John Maynard Keynes in the 70s introduced game theory to biology he provided a tool for biologists to compare the utility of different survival adaptations. This revolutionized the field but it forced biologists to try and come to a different basis for how to compare adaptations. I recently read an essay exploring the utility of allowing non-queen workers to breed. Wasps and bees do have non-queen workers that can breed, and it has been shown that the queen may kill these offspring but at other times, may allow them to live so that the workers compete with each other. The question in this essay remained unanswerable because the authors of the essay were unable to provide a basis to decide what level to calibrate their comparison to. Since all the workers in a colony were related, should the adaptation be addressed in terms of the individual? Or the colony? Economics often does not have this problem (individual vs society) because the healthiness of each is hidden by the maximal utility of specific groups. Economists are often political simply because they will hide the (dis)favoring of a group by calibrating utility to the society, or to specific individuals in isolation.

By NOT addressing his heady position to this basic difference, by explaining the mechanisms of his attempt at a supervenience view of adaptation, Dennett dismisses the veracity of other views by distorting them into failed forms of supervenience.

The ideologue that Dennett wishes to superimpose is that of a consistency from the point of genetics.

What makes this position obviously an ideologue is the arbitrariness of Dennett's stopgap. Dennett himself provides this analogy when he explains the problem of "levels". He utilizes the example of a computer in order to highlight this issue. When attempting to explain the processes inherent in a Word processing program, Dennett states that trying to understand the program in terms of electrical mechanics, or even at the quantum mechanics level is too much! We shouldn't try and understand the processor in terms of machine language or even at low level code, we should understand it in terms of the operating system environment and the APIs that the word processor utilizes (as well as the user context needs) in order to best understand how a word processor forms. The "baggage" of quantum mechanics or electrical engineering would be too detailed and merely mechanical from the point of view of the appropriate level, because what makes a word processor isn't the mechanical moves of its basic units but the functional consistency of its end result.

As is Dennetts style, this analogy is very clear, but when we apply this analogy to Dennett's own arguments (should we not understand consciousness in terms of the needs of the individual? In terms of the need for society) does this not go against a genetic view for why consciousness needed to happen? Does not the view that genetics is the key to EVERYTHING, even religion including too much baggage? After all, might not a colony of conscious robots not having genes but needing the same economic, political coordination also form a religion?

Dennett does consider that culture goes far in changing the context of what survival and adaptation means, but he seems to find the "limit cardinal" to be at the level of the gene, rather than providing a multiple level of calibration -- mainly due to this insistence on supervenience being the model we should take. If this is so, however, should he have not started this book talking about Darwinist "survival" of quantum sub-atomic laws persisting in the face of disorder?

Dennett is a brilliant man and more impressively a very clear writer of very difficult ideas. But in his haste to push forward a world-philosophy-science view calibrated to that of the gene, he ends up falling prey to the same problem he would accuse others of, that genetics is a "skyhook" given the properties of chemical biology from which genetic properties can be derived. In the end, the rationality he sees as being factual is in fact, to a large degree an arbitrary choice until he is able to demonstrate that other calibrations to other levels, on their own terms, cannot provide enough consistency and explanatory power as this one. Yet even this point is arbitrary, after all, why cannot all of these different calibrations occur simultaneously in competition with one another?

Wow.

Just wow.

I need some time to process this magnificently well-written and highly persuasive piece of philosophy.

Review to come (someday).