"This book began with a host of questions, and -- since this is a book by a philosopher -- it ends not with the answers, but, I hope, with better versions of the questions themselves." p 168.

One of my favorite non-fiction books. But I'm biased, since I'm interested in the subject. It cleared my thoughts about consciousness by showing me which ideas / questions even make sense or not and why. I watched lectures by Dennett before reading, so I knew what I was getting into.

A mind-boggling book, full of mind-boggling theories about various levels of cognition, in humans and in animals, many of them already proven in laboratory tests. I feel as though I have stretched my mind just by reading this book.

Diskusi buku Ragam Akalbudi di Indonesia.
https://youtu.be/-i8rnyFRPQg

I really enjoy the clarity and well crafted line of argument in this book. I was of the impression that Dennett denied sentient consciousness, but here he presents a rather interesting point that it is not as special as others want to argue that it is. I still think that he is wrong with that, for I think it certainly is a central point for our morality over all. It is however a very tricky business how to interpret other beings' consciousness. The link between sentient consciousness and language is very interesting here. A further interesting thing is that Dennett does not come across as essentialist as I thought he would be. In this I think he is somewhat different from, for example, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. I think I need to read more of Dennett to see more precisely how he would relate to those for example (and they are not philosophers so the comparison might not work). Of course, if I was really diligent I should compare what he says with David Chalmers, Churchland, Searle and others, but I don't really have the energy for that, and I am sure others have done that already in a much more comptent way than what I could. But really, I suppose one should read Chalmers before one make up one's mind about the mind. Good book that provokes thinking.

Dennett wasn't exactly young when he wrote this but the energy is palpable. As the introduction states the book is about questions, but they're very good questions, even if by now they've been repeated often.

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".

Another round from Dennett attempting his best materialistic explanation of the mind. This seems to be his main goal in life. To cut to the chase I would recommend "From Bach to Bacteria and Back" as it is newer and more convincing than this book. The main message of this book is that we should stop anthropomorphizing things, or at least be more self-aware when we do. Specifically, around the experiences of animals. He argues that questions like "what is it like to be a spider, bat, etc" makes a huge assumption, viz that being the creature in question is like anything. He has some interesting thought experiments to feel this out. For example, were your arm to get amputated and you brought it to the doctor to slap it back on you should the doctor give both you and the amputated arm pain killers? Were we to find something so big and complicated in the wild we would probably assume that it would be wrong to dice it up as it would appear to have nerves, etc. etc. Furthermore, if the amputated arm DID feel pain how would it communicate it? The example obviously has gaps, considering that there is "no brain" for the arm, but is the presence of the brain where we assume pain comes from? He then uses the example of rolling over in your sleep to relieve pain or discomfort on your limbs. Do you experience this pain? The big difference between animals and humans (according to Dennett) is language. All creatures receive information through their senses, but his idea is that this information is tokenized in a storable form vis-à-vis words. Consider words to be additional layer on the operating system that allows a system to start labeling nodes in the brain that were just "instinct". [I'm going into non canon examples here, but I think he would agree] Consider various things we all do out of habit, like driving. Have you ever driven a common route and been so up in your head that you were a little surprised when you pulled into work? You were functioning on a sort of auto pilot, much like your heart, digestive system, and most other functions in your body do 24/7. Is it "like" anything to be your heart? Maybe? but we don't offer it the same affordances when it is on the surgery table as we would a cat. Now say that as you are driving your 'attention' comes back to driving. You experience driving, what is it that you are doing when you are experiencing? Perhaps no more than tokenizing incoming visual/audio/olfactory data from related nodes inside your neural meat case to words that act as a sort of post it note to various states. He isn't trying to argue that we should treat living things as automata, but his point is there probably won't be some clean line between organisms that experience human like pain and ones that don't. In fact, I think he would go so far as to say the evidence is indicating that no animals experience pain "like" we do. Another example from the book was a Rhesus Macaque monkey was observed to have one of its testicles bitten off in a fight, but showed few signs of pain and the next day was observed mating again (what a chad), but does that mean Rhesus monkeys don't feel pain? Probably not, but they definitely don't feel pain in that one scenario the same way as humans, which is surprising given their other human like behaviors. He also had a quote in talking about perceptual biases that was worth sharing

"Spatial scale also shows a powerful built-in bias; if gnats were the size of seagulls, more people would be sure they had minds, and if we had to look through microscopes to see the antics of otters, we would be less confident that they were fun-loving."

Not an airtight case for anything, but at the same time it doesn't claim to be. The goal is to bring up questions that make us a little less sure about our assumptions. Also why is it when animal cruelty is brought up, it is mostly stories about dogs or other domesticated animals? He thinks that our domestication has actually turned them mentally closer to humans than other animals. Again debatable, but interesting.

On aina mukavaa lukea kinkkisiä asioita käsitettävässä muodossa, mutta usein tulee sellainen olo, että jotain tärkeää jätettiin kertomatta. Tulee hyväntahtoisesti huijattu olo; kuin olisi katsonut taikurin esiintymistä. Niin tässäkin. Kaikki tuntui kovin selkeältä ja yksinkertaiselta. Asioista edettiin nopeasti seuraaviin jumiutumatta minkään yksittäisen seikan pohdintaan kovin pitkäksi aikaa. Rattoisaa, mutta ei kovin tyydyttävää. Tämä ei tietenkään ole negatiivista kun puhutaan selkeästi yleistajuiseksi tarkoitetusta teoksesta. Pikaruokamaisuus kuuluu homman nimeen.

Kyseessä on (sikäli kuin osaan arvioida) pätevä mutta pinnallinen yleiskatsaus tietoisuuden tutkimukseen evolutiivis-materialistisen paradigman näkökulmasta. Dennett hahmottelee tutkimuksen päälinjat, mainitsee joitain ongelmia ja ratkaisuehdotuksia, mutta ei lopulta vie lukijaa minnekään. Ei ainakaan minua. Tästäkään Dennettiä ei kuitenkaan voi syyttää, sillä hän itse - sekä teoksen alussa että lopussa - painottaa olevansa filosofi, jonka tehtävän�� on tehdä parempia kysymyksiä, ei antaa vastauksia. Dogmaattisuuden uupuminen on lähes aina positiivista, mutta kun Dennett ei ole edes radikaali kyseenalaistaja, jää teoksen anti (ainakin kaltaiselleni vihaiselle nuorelle miehelle) kyseenalaiseksi. Ei tästä ole edes yleistajuiseksi oppaaksi tietoisuuden tutkimuksen perusteisiin, niin ohut se on.

يستخدم داينيل دنييث اسلوب العلم و الفلاسفة لكي يوضح كيفية تكون الوعي في الأنسان .
فيبدأ رحلته من الكائنات البسيطه مرورا بالانباتات و الحيوانات الى الانسان حيث اللغة و المعاناة قفزت فيه لمرحلة متطورة من الوعي .

الكتاب لا يجيب عن الاسئلة مثل (ماهو الخط الفاصل بين الكائنات التي تمتلك الحساسية و بين الكائنات التي تمتلك الأحساسية ؟
ماهو الفرق بين الالم و المعاناة ؟ ماهو الوعي ؟...) لكن يعطيك طرق جديدة في التفكير :)

Big fan of Dennett but this was not one of his strongest works; a lot of musings on the supposed workings of the mind but he’s not putting much meat on the bone of his ideas; the intentional stance as a way of examining conscience and intelligence is a worthwhile exercise though, but the explanatory power of this proposed thinking tool is virtually absent.

Like most Dennett books, it is chalk full of mental fiber and powerfully intuitive thought experiments that effortlessly make his points for him. Dennett gets so many points for eschewing abstruse 'philoso-speak' although here, I wanted a bit more structure.

The book lacks a central agenda and thesis, and I think that this is the reason why I didn't like it as much as I might have—although I may simply be a grinch and unwilling to accept "there are many kinds of minds" as a satisfactory thesis, where other readers might be happy to do so.

Thinking back on the text, I seem to have a hard time pinning down exactly what all those clever remarks and thought experiments were...perhaps I am at fault here, but I suspect that Dennett's conversational tone has gone too far here, wanting structure. He spends so little time with each experiment, it is easy to misplace them.

Very eloquently explained