From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: "Consciousness Explained"
Date: 6 Oct 92 19:39:31 GMT
Article-I.D.: usenet.Bvpt9v.IvJ
Organization: Indiana University

In article <1992Oct6.125319.17906@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:

>In article <9228019.4978@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> wadley@mullauna.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Gregory Robert Wadley) writes:

>>I'm reading "Consciousness Explained" by Dan Dennett.
>>Can anyone tell me what the reaction to this book has been?
>>References would be good.
>
>I understand there will an entire issue of another
>journal (Inquiry?  Someone correct me...) devoted to a similar
>collection of responses to CE.
>	The reaction has been considerable.  Dennett must be spending
>fulltime responding to his critics.

That's about right.  Dennett told me recently that he'd hoped to be
working mostly on a book about evolution by now, but still has most
of his time taken up by the fallout on consciousness.  There will
be a special issue of _Inquiry_ devoted to the book (I've seen the
papers; most of them are quite critical), a similar special issue
of _Philosophical Topics_, and a forum in _Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research_ with commentaries by Sydney Shoemaker,
Frank Jackson, and David Rosenthal (I'm looking forward to this one).

I would say that the consensus reaction to the book has been that
it's very provocative and interesting, with some nice analyses of
various cognitive phenomena, but that when it comes to the central
mystery of consciousness (i.e. the nature of subjective experience,
and why such a thing exists at all) it does very little to dispel
the mystery.  The standard line is to call it _Consciousness
Explained Away_ rather than _Consciousness Explained_.

I think that the overall effect of the book will probably be positive,
in causing people's attenion once more to be focused on this central
problem, and making them realize that for all these decades of
sophisticated cognitive science, consciousness remains just about
as much of a problem as it's always been.

My personal opinion is that given his starting assumption -- materialism --
Dennett's book as as good as treatment as consciousness as you are
going to get.  (He says somewhere near the beginning of the book
that one of his tenets of theory-formation is that "dualism must be
avoided at all costs".)  As such, it is better than most materialist
treatments that try to have their cake (consciousness) and eat it
too (materialism).  If you read Dennett closely, you'll find that he,
unlike most "materialists", is prepared to bite the bullet and deny
the existence of qualia (the central aspect of the mystery).  Most
people find this ridiculous, and indeed I take it to be a reductio
ad absurdum of the theory, but at least it's honest.  I certainly don't
think that there can be any better materialist explanation of qualia,
and Dennett does a good job of showing that.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech