Consciousness Explained: Difference between revisions

{{a|book review|}}{{Br|Consciousness Explained}} {{author|Daniel Dennett}} <br>''First published September 28, 2004''<br>

{{br|Consciousness Explained}} is a hard, but rewarding, book. It pays to have a look at {{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}} first; some of the ideas Daniel Dennett expounds there, particularly on the nature of [[algorithm]]ic progression, are useful for getting a handle on Dennett’s central theme in {{br|Consciousness Explained}}. Dennett’s views in each are really quite closely related. However, the “intuitive gap” (i.e., the distance in credibility between what Dennett proposes and how things “seem” intuitively) is huge in the case of consciousness, but comparatively small for {{t|evolution}}.  

*'''Consciousness''': Intuitively, there’s a “central meaner” in the brain sitting in a “[[Cartesian]] theatre” enjoying the son-et-lumière. Dennett says this is an illusion, and there is no “narrative centre” of consciousness at all - in not so many ways, consciousness itself is an illusion; an aggregation of multiple sensory inputs and outputs of the cerebellum, all of which are performing their own functions independently of each other. “BUT AN ILLUSION TO WHOM?” you want to scream. It just doesn’t seem to make sense.