Solipsism is the philosophical idea that one's own mind is all that exists. Solipsism is an epistemological or ontological position that knowledge of anything outside one's own specific mind is unjustified. The external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist.

Video from the Cog Project

Some really interesting stuff in here. Some Cephalopods show more sentience than say, rhesus monkeys, opening up the moral questions again.

He’s onto something here.

Dennett berupaya mendedahkan misteri kesadaran dengan menelusuri rimba akalbudi, mengiringi pembaca dengan pertanyaan-pertanyaan filosofis terhadap uraiannya tentang biologi saraf, sains kognisi, dst. lalu mengakhirinya dengan tetap tak memberikan banyak jawaban atas pokok bahasannya. Seperti kata Dennett, ia seorang filsuf yang "pandai mengajukan pertanyaan ketimbang memberikan jawaban".

There's so much here, that even my second-reading is not enough. Two take-aways this time. First, I often say (following Minsky) that mind is what brains do. But Dennett reminds us that mind is what bodies do. Evolution has laid down a communication system through the circulation of fluids in blood vessels, and then laid down another: our nervous system. Second, I'm often dismissive of consciousness, especially consciousness in the sense of qualia: all-too-often, discussion of qualia are a backdoor to dualism - a sense of something that goes beyond what is. But Dennett emphasises propositional thought - reasoning with symbols, reasoning-about. It made me think about programming languages that offer reification: the ability to represent and compute with their own programming constructs. (Interestingly, though, reification in philosophy works in the opposite direction: from abstract to concrete.)

Not terrible but nothing really good either. Nothing really profound or new substantively, no particularly good explanation of familiar phenomena or ideas, and no deep impressive thinking like in a Steven Pinker way. Overall just a kind of long book that doesn’t really do much of anything.

saya selalu membayangkan buku-buku filsafat-sains populer macam ini lahir dari tangan dingin intelektual indonesia. dannet menulis dengan gaya yang begitu sederhana dan menarik, tapi saya tetap saja kesulitan mengikuti pada beberapa bagian (ini karena pengetahuan sains saya buruk, atau nyaris nol). suatu saat, saya sepertinya perlu membacanya ulang. saya harap ada lebih banyak lagi karya dennet diterjemahkan.

Very well argued, beautifully constructed argumentation. It reminded me of listening to good university lectures, ones whose syllabus and flow was perfected during years, where one idea naturally leads to another and everything fits in (not meaning that Daniel C. Dennet gives a hermetic set not open to discussion and other interpretations, but as a compliment to his style). Excellent!

I love books about consciousness. This one could not hold my interest. I got about 20% through and returned it.

Giving it one star not because it's a "bad book", but because I didn't like it and Goodreads tells me that 1 star = "I did not like it". Now the explanation, why?

The book is full of information but it's mostly abstract questions and ideas, such as plants communicating in certain ways.

I was expecting a more psychological book about unconsciousness based on Science rather than philosophical ideas. Like, deep-dive comparison between animals and us or how one part of the brain gets damaged and who "we" are changes, etc.

I was seeking something interesting to learn, in other words. The book felt more like a never-ending philosophical speech/rant.

I hope this review helps people that are looking into the book from my perspective.

Kinds of Minds is short and written in a style more casual than Daniel Dennett's other books. The first three chapters of this book mainly pose the question and prepare readers with the needed background knowledge (evolution, intentional stance, etc). The real thing starts in chapter 4, where Dennett proposes a classification scheme of creatures:
t- Darwin creatures: agents who have hard-wired designs.
t- Skinner creatures: agents who are born with reinforcers. They can rewire themselves after trial and error.
t- Popperian creatures: agents who can not only learn like Skinner creatures but also simulate the situation in their minds. They can pre-sort options before acting out.
t- Gregorian creatures: the subset of Popperian creatures whose inner environment is informed by designs in the outer environment.

Dennett then discusses why Gregorian creatures are a lot more intelligent than the other three sorts of creatures. He notes that the relationship between tools and intelligence is two-way. Not only does a tool require intelligence to recognize and maintain, but it also confers potential intelligence to its users by allowing them to exploit wisdom invented by other minds. For example, symbols allow Gregorian creatures to offload as much as possible their cognitive tasks into the environment itself, like when we use pencil and paper to calculate multi-digit multiplications. The offloading releases a creature from its brain capacity limit. It also allows technologies to be transmitted through the culture highways, instead of through the slow genetic pathway of inheritance.

Among the tools used by Gregorian creatures, words are the most powerful. They allow Gregorian creatures to represent thinking of minds in another format, thus opens the door for a mind to turn its analytic power into itself and ask questions such as "How to think better about what I should think about next?"

But what has led minds to climb on this tower of internal reflection? Dennett introduces us to a hypothesis that the development of self-consciousness is the product of an arms race of "intentional stance": if you're going to think about my thinking, then I am going to have to start thinking about your thinking of my thinking. A creature might begin to be sensitive to its own thinking because it needs to hypothesize what is going on in others' minds. Or, such sensitivity might be the byproduct of thinking about other's thinking.

Dennett also introduces the ethologist David McFarland's theory about the origin of self-consciousness. McFarland proposes that the need to communicate one's intention may have pushed creatures to seek clear-cut representations of their intentions. Once such representations are formed, they may convince the agent that it has these clear-cut prior intentions governing its actions. Just as thinking about one's own thinking may have come from the need to think about other's thinking, an agent's self-consciousness may have also come from the need to interact with other agents.

Like always, Dennett is full of insights and stimulating questions, such as whether suffering equals pain and "Are plants only slow animals?" But since the first half of the book repeats Dennet's previous works and the rest half is too meandering and sometimes off-focus, I am not giving it five stars.

Buku pertama yg saya baca dari four horsemen yg katanya aliran new age atheism , kata temen saya sih sih si dennet paling konseptual di banding yg lain saya ga tau asal comot aj.

Cukup berat udah lama ga baca buku filsafat , ditambah banyak bahasa2 yg multi disiplin, dari biologi, fisika ,kimia, psikologi, untung masih nyantol dikit2 cuman pas masuk bagian yg mekanistik teknikal macam transduser dan efektor searching2 maknanya lg.

Sejauh ini cukup memberikan pandangan2 menarik tentang akal budi, khususnya cara kerja akal budi dan perbedaannya dari sudut pandang makhluk lain spt hewan dan tumbuhan.Ada jg dr akal budi yg kena disosiatif identity disorder atau kepribadian ganda.Ada 4 macem, Dariwinian,Skinnerian,popperian , dan gregorian.Nah mantepnya slaah satu keahlian manusia lewat teknologi yg dialektis.Kita nemuin ato nyiptain teknologi,teknologi jg kepinteran kita nambah.Yg paling mantep teknologinya bahasa.Masuknya kategori gregorian nih.

Si Dennet ini menelusurinya lewat kedudukan intensional , macem dirasionalisasi hewan ato entitas lain. Berpikir cara manusia di tubuh hewan.

Menariknya pandangannya tentang proses permulaan akal budi manusia dr masih bayi belom bisa ngomong.Kata doi permulaan akal budi kita dr komentar diri semi paham , dapet kata dr org lain tanpa tau artinya . Asal aj diomongin tar muncul pelabelan (masa latihan ini) tar lama2 bener konteksnya baru dah lewat evolusi budaya dan generasi yg diturun temurunin rekognisi makna dan asosiasi objek linguistik menjadi konsep.Jadi menurut doi kata2 lebih dulu dr konsep.Bisa Bacot dulu baru mikir.

Tapi namanya buku filsafat bukan buat ngejawab.Doi sendiri bilang di endingnya.Seenggaknya kita mikir bareng2 tau dimana lobang ama jalan yg lurusnya.Kalo mau belok atau muter balik terserah dah.Asik sih mikir2 bengong ga jelas.

Note to self: nothing new, see tabs for some neat connections to other stuff, esp. Darwinian vs Popperian minds as resembling Type 1 vs Type 2 (can use as example of similar metaphors from other areas, but consider Gigerenzer and R. 1996 for contra).