Kinds Of Minds: Toward An Understanding Of Consciousness (Science Masters Series) - Hardcover

Dennett, Daniel C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465073506 ISBN 13: 9780465073504

Publisher: Basic Books, 1996

Synopsis

Combining ideas from philosophy, artificial intelligence, and neurobiology, Daniel Dennett leads the reader on a fascinating journey of inquiry, exploring such intriguing possibilities as: Can any of us really know what is going on in someone else's mind? What distinguishes the human mind from the minds of animals, especially those capable of complex behavior? If such animals, for instance, were magically given the power of language, would their communities evolve an intelligence as subtly discriminating as ours? Will robots, once they have been endowed with sensory systems like those that provide us with experience, ever exhibit the particular traits long thought to distinguish the human mind, including the ability to think about thinking? Dennett addresses these questions from an evolutionary perspective. Beginning with the macromolecules of DNA and RNA, the author shows how, step-by-step, animal life moved from the simple ability to respond to frequently recurring environmental conditions to much more powerful ways of beating the odds, ways of using patterns of past experience to predict the future in never-before-encountered situations. Whether talking about robots whose video-camera ”eyes” give us the powerful illusion that ”there is somebody in there” or asking us to consider whether spiders are just tiny robots mindlessly spinning their webs of elegant design, Dennett is a master at finding and posing questions sure to stimulate and even disturb.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel C. Dennett is Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

Reviews

Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea), director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, avers that language is the "slingshot" that has "launched [humans] far beyond all other earthly species in the power to look ahead and reflect." In this brief study, some of which is drawn from notes for the author's various lectures, and which returns him to some of the themes of his controversial bestseller, Consciousness Explained (1991), he explores how the human mind came into existence. Along the way, he investigates such questions as, How does the mind work? Can we know another's mind? Can a woman know what it's like to be a man (and vice versa)? What are nonhuman minds like? Could a robot ever be "conscious"? Philosopher that he is, Dennett continually raises and refines his questions about these and other subjects, attempting to tease us closer to understanding. By the end of the book, he confesses, he has not so much presented answers as found better questions to ask. Though some readers may be put off by Dennett's cocksure tone, others will be rewarded by his witty, intelligible speculation.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dennett wears his philosophical hat in this short volume, based on lectures given at University College, Dublin and Canterbury University (New Zealand). As a result, there is more intellectual gameplay here than late news from the neuroscience front, making for a volume that is sometimes stimulating, but often frustrating. Dennett (Center for Cognitive Studies/Tufts Univ.) is a clever writer and has written insightfully about mind matters in Consciousness Explained (1991) and evolution in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). But in assuming the philosopher's stance here he admits to raising more questions than answers. At the same time he introduces into these lectures a welter of specialized languages and theories, including the vocabulary of ontology, epistemology, and a string of associated concepts, such as intentionality; the notion of an agent or doer or a ``mind-haver''; physical and design stances; associationism, behaviorism, and connectionism (as in neural networks), referred to as ABC learning and so on. To what avail? Simply, it seems, to come to some conclusions about where in the Darwinian scheme of things thinking and consciousness (and self-consciousness) come into being. In the end, Dennett strongly supports the notion that only with language comes thought. Further, we only arrive in the abstract multidimensional world of ideas by means of written language and the ability to extend our intelligence through the artful inventions of culture and its representations in books, computers, and records (our external mental ``prosthetic'' devices). So nix on intelligent chimps and dolphins, but maybe a kind word for dogs as having been bred to respond to humans. Not a book that will be embraced by animal champions. And not Dennett at his best. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Dennett's clear essay belies philosophy's reputation for abstruseness, something better confined to insular university departments than let loose in public libraries. A popular but serious writer (Consciousness Explained, 1991, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea, BKL My 1 95), Dennett should easily convey his logic about consciousness to the curious with this companionable inquiry. His key concept to discerning consciousness is "intentionality," defined as the something that something is "about," whether it's a molecule that replicates itself, or a John Doe whose purpose is to elude the police. Somewhere across that spectrum of "aboutness," mind comes into existence--is it with bugs? frogs? dogs? robots?--and with such creatures Dennett illustrates what he theorizes makes a mind. That brings up sentience. Many creatures seem to think, like the dog that identifies its human owner from the universe of humans, but Dennett doubts that it--or any creature without language--can reflect on such an act of identifying. Reading like a one-on-one conversation, this intimately written piece should tap the widespread wonder about consciousness. Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0465073506
• ISBN 13: 9780465073504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192