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Loading... Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (1996)by Daniel C. Dennett
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Although I do not necessarily agree with all that Dennett stated in this book, I have to say that he stated it exceptionally well. This was an accessible, high level philosophical book detailing the conception of animal minds vs. human minds. Each philosophical concept he put forward he carefully defined and explained with often amusing examples. The ideas that he came up with himself (i.e. The Tower of Generate and Test, mamataxis, etc.) were novel and interesting without being too difficult to grasp. I enjoyed the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. Although the book was dense in its content, it never strayed too far from what is easily grasped with a bit of mental effort. I'd recommend this alongside Species of Mind which addresses several small flaws in some conclusions that he draws. Definitely able and interesting, and a better place than most for someone to begin to explore the problem of what makes a creature a "thinking," and thus a morally cognizable entity. I did think he ended rather abruptly, right as he picks up momentum on the question of pain and suffering in animals. For myself, the most intriguing discovery was his disagreement with Nagel and his classic essay, "What Is It Like To Be a Bat," which I rather enjoyed. no reviews | add a review
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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. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)153Philosophy and Psychology Psychology Cognition And MemoryLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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One of my favorite non-fiction books ever. It cleared my thoughts about minds by showing me which ideas / questions even make sense or not and why. I have watched many lectures by Dennett before reading the book, so I knew what I was getting into.
This is one book I love to re-read over and over again. ( )