Great insights! Thanks, Dan!

As always, Dennett is incisively critical of the stalking horses that haunt philosophy of mind: zombies, qualia, phenomenality, Mary the color scientist, the "hard" problem of consciousness... This book exposes the lurking incoherencies in these concepts and contrasts them with the mind-boggling successes of the physicalist programs working on understanding the mind: neuroscience, computer science, cognitive science, psychology... It's an excellent piece of work that quotes and takes antiphysicalists about the mind at their word, plainly following through their commitments and deriving the contradictions that arise if they could have consciousness their own way.

My favorite chapter is 4, Are Qualia What Make Life Worth Living? The trilemma Dennett poses to believers in qualia by making use of the cognitive phenomenon of change blindness is hilarious, exhilarating, enriching, and a pleasure to read and reread all the way through. Chapter 2, A Third-Person Approach to Consciousness, and 6, Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet? are close runner-ups, functioning as more constructive works towards building a science of consciousness.

With that being said, there are some negatives. Chapters 3 and 8 are totally dispensable, only serving to offer analogies to stage magic and folk-economics; not much argumentation there. Some of the content is also repeated across the book, word for word, which comes across as lazy. The book could definitely be 2/3 as long by cutting down on these extraneous features, but it is still absolutely worth reading. Dennett has and will always be one of the strongest defenders of physicalism, and his interdisciplinary style makes his works a treasure to come across.

Something has been bugging me more and more about Dennett recently. The more I read about consciousness, whether it be from the perspective of neuroscience, philosophy, or psychology, the more I think there is a real question that needs to be answered about qualia. Qualia, the character of subjective experience. The redness of red. The smell of a rose. The feeling of anger or love, and the experience of pain. Chalmers dubbed this the "hard problem of consciousness", referring to the problem of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. And many brilliant philosophers have expended much energy trying to explain (or explain away) these qualia states in terms of the underlying nuerological processes. Some saying that eventually neuroscience can provide a complete explanation, and on the other extreme, those espousing dualistic theories that state quaila are a real *thing*, separate from physical matter, and most likely not in the purview of science.

Dennett thinks there is no conversation to be had. Qualia do not exist. He spends a lot of time criticizing different views of qualia, stating that the fact that there is no clear consensus in regards to what philosophers mean by qualia is a huge problem for the debate (rightly so). He provides thought experiment after thought experiment that showcase the many errors in logic that go into our normal conception of what qualia is. These are all valid criticisms, but criticizing the logic behind various conceptions of qualia does not change the fact that I have subjective experience, and right now neither philosophy nor neuroscience can explain how this subjective experience is substantiated by neuronal firing. This is an important question, one which we may never have an answer to for all I know. But denying that there is a question in the first place doesn't make any sense to me. One example that Dennett uses is an experiment where a series of alternating pictures are presented to subjects. The pictures are identical accept for one small part which is changed in color. Subjects are asked to push a button when they become aware of the difference in pictures (which takes people a long time). He then asks if before you were aware of the difference, if your color qualia was changing (as the image that falls on your retina, and sent to your visual cortex is obviously changing). He then proceeds to outline all sorts of problems with whatever answer you give. That’s all fine and good, but it doesn’t change the fact that I experienced *something* and Dennett cannot explain how that experience is substantiated in an organism.

I'm as strong a materialist as Dennett is (I guess until Chalmers convinces me otherwise), so to me, I have an even more vested interest in thinking that there needs to be an explanation for how and why qualia exists. Explaining how our neurophysiology substantiates experience, meaning, and a unified conscious experience is to me the holy grain of consciousness research. Whether we will ever get there is up for debate, but pretending the problem doesn’t exist doesn’t make sense to me. Am I missing something? Does Dennett know something I don’t (well, almost certainly he knows a WHOLE BUNCH that I don’t, but I really think he’s wrong to dismiss the importance of qualia)?

Maybe he’ll actually address this as the book goes on (I’m only 2/3rds in). But from what I remember of consciousness explained, it doesn’t seem like he feels any need to. Dennett is great about pointing out logical fallacies in regards to all sorts of theories of consciousness, but seems to be quite content to leave all sorts of vague holes in his theories. Is it because he doesn’t know how to fill in those holes, or doesn’t know that those holes exist?

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Finished, review to come shortly...

"colors, such as the luscious yellow you enjoy when you look at a ripe lemon"
You can't fool me Zombie Dan, you can stare at luscious lemons all you want, we both know you can't see colors!
No, come on, think about it. It's the best explanation why he's like this! I mean see how hard he's trying to not act suspicious, staring at lemons and all that.

The book is very well written otherwise, easy and pleasant to read. I'm sure he's a great guy to stare at lemons with. His theory is pure scientism nonetheless.

Another shovel in the dirt of the mire of discussion about meaning. Abandoned this book, as with another by this author, his writing style getting in my way to the subject matter?

A segment of people tend to heap on Dennett for being "counterintuitive," but when he writes that my brain is a "Joycean machine made of memes" it's like he knows me personally.

This is a collection of essays, talks and theories from throughout Dennett's career as a metaphysical materialist in theory of mind. He continues to be considered one of the world's foremost philosophers and cognitive theorists, and this book is an excellent survey of his thoughts of everything from qualia to free will.

Like most philosophy buffs I know or have read works by, this guy liked to explain himself explaining a little too much. Pretty sure this book could have been cut in half and still posses all the key points.

While Dennett's magnificent opus "Consciousness Explained" is still the crown jewel of his naturalist take on philosophy, Sweet Dreams is a well constructed follow up, a rebuttle to those who have taken issue with his almost undisputed masterpiece.

Dennett's writing is as sharp as ever, but there is something to be said of Sweet Dreams that cannot be said of Consciousness Explained: it is concise. The gift in writing non-fiction is to be able to get a point across simply, and Dennett does that with his Fame in the Brain model.

While it may seem necessary to read Consciousness Explained before settling in to this subsequent piece, Dennett's first few chapters are more-or-less independent, and one barely even needs a familiarity with naturalist philosophy to understand what he is saying as he addresses the philosophical concepts of qualia.

Overall, Dennett's recasting of the Multiple Drafts Model for consciousness is worth taking a long hard took at, and Dennett's assault on the esoteric, less concrete philosophers of his generation is, as always, brilliant.

A concise and clever summary of the ongoing conflict between some philosophers (consciousness is mysterious) and neuroscientists (consciousness is physical and explainable).
Very agile writing but Dennett has a weakness for unnecessary double negatives which hurt my brain.