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Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking
Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun.
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will. With patience and wit, Dennett deftly deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built.
Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to "think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions."
A sweeping work of intellectual seriousness that’s also studded with impish delights, Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers—in all walks of life—delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers.
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will. With patience and wit, Dennett deftly deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built.
Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to "think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions."
A sweeping work of intellectual seriousness that’s also studded with impish delights, Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers—in all walks of life—delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers.
496 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2013
About the author
Daniel C. Dennett
60 books2,903 followersDaniel Clement Dennett III is a prominent philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, science, and biology, particularly as they relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Dennett is a noted atheist, avid sailor, and advocate of the Brights movement.
Dennett received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W.V.O. Quine. In 1965, he received his D.Phil. from Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied under the ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle.
Dennett gave the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. In 2001 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize, giving the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts University, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Dennett received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W.V.O. Quine. In 1965, he received his D.Phil. from Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied under the ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle.
Dennett gave the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. In 2001 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize, giving the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts University, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 337 reviews
July 16, 2013
I had to quit after 68 pages. Dennett apparently had a class of freshmen review this book - I wish he would have had a couple actual philosophers review it as well. If you have an understanding of philosophy and basic thinking tools, this book is not for you. If you already are an independent thinker, this book is not for you. If you are easily impressed by name-dropping and misleading examples, this book is for you.
The book starts out poorly with way too much name-dropping and Dennett admitting that he heckles lecturers for fun. He has very basic ideas of "thinking tools" and then uses very complex examples with very limited context. In these examples he takes cheap shots at fellow philosophers, while not providing enough context to really be able to agree that Dennett is in the right.
In chapter 1 he makes an innocuous yet unsound argument, and it is worth mentioning because it shows that he is very careless with his arguments throughout the book (or at least to page 68.) He states: "Evolution works the same way: all the dumb mistakes tend to be invisible, so all we see is a stupendous string of triumphs. For instance, the vast majority - way over 90 percent - of all the creatures that have ever lived died childless, but not a single one of your ancestors suffered that fate."
So...the majority of creatures don't pass on their genes. Dennett calls that an illustrative example of how ALL dumb mistakes are invisible (er..."tend to be invisible", whatever that means.) Who says that the 10 percent procreators aren't passing on dumb mistakes? Who says that sexual selection isn't selecting for "dumb mistakes" (ie. genes that make an animal more noticeable to predators, or genes that inhibit an animal to move swiftly.) His example is crude, and if the response is that "dumb mistakes" are ones that don't permit a creature to pass on its genes, then that just begs the question and proves nothing.
The above example was just a red flag. Things start to get really bad in Sections 13-15.
13. Dennett provides us an example where four characters all come, via different paths, to "believe that a Frenchman has committed murder in Trafalgar Square. He then adds that that proposition ("Frenchman committed murder in TS") does not occur to them. Thus they all have the belief without formulating the proposition. Dennett makes an implicit assumption here that you actually can have a belief without formulating a proposition. An implicit assumption that becomes a painful assumption when he drives his point home that people generally believe: "chairs are larger than shoes, that soup is liquid, that elephants don't fly." If I ask you if you believe that 44 plus 88 is 132, would you say yes? Had you ever formulated that proposition before? Isn't it quite likely that you believed the proposition only after the deduction? Thus, when someone witnesses Jacque shooting Bill, and Bill dying, the belief that a "murder" took place may not happen until post-deduction, that is, until the proposition is actually formed. Or when you're asked, "do elephants fly?" you first think of an elephant and then deduct that it can't fly? Dennett has not shown that I actually believe elephants don't fly without ever articulating the proposition one way or another.
14. "What this intuition pump shows is that nobody can have just one belief." Excuse me? Dennett, read a couple neuroscience books and then just take this section out. Even the pop psychology book Incognito should suffice. Even if Dennett's premises are sound (which at least one isn't), his conclusion isn't. His argument here is so poorly constructed I'm not even sure how to attack it. I think his argument goes like this: 1) Apparently inserting a false "belief" into Tom causes him to say something that he doesn't truly understand. 2) That shows that if we don't truly understand something, it isn't a true belief. 3) That shows that the only way to truly understand something is if it is coherent with other (sound) beliefs that one holds. 4) That shows that beliefs are thus supported by other beliefs. C) Therefore, "nobody can have just one belief."
I'm lost on how he got "beliefs MUST be supported by other beliefs" from the proposition "beliefs are supported by other beliefs." Also, I would re-write proposition 3 as "That shows that the only way to truly understand something is if it is NOT INCOHERENT with other (sound) beliefs." Stated this way, Dennett proves absolutely nothing and wasted 3 pages. I can have a single belief, and no other beliefs, and that single belief is not incoherent with any other belief. It pains me that Dennett is making money off of this book.
15. "Daddy is a doctor." This 1-page section did it in for me, I cannot continue this book. A little girl states the proposition "daddy is a doctor." 20 years later she makes the same proposition, only now she has a more sophisticated understanding of the words "daddy" and "doctor." Dennett writes, "If understanding comes in degrees, as this example shows, then belief, which depends on understanding, must come in degrees as well, even for such mundane propositions as this."
No! I am not convinced! A five-year old girl who utters the proposition "Daddy is a doctor" can have a full 100% belief in that proposition. 20 years later she can make the proposition, with a more sophisticated understanding, and still have a full 100% belief. Dennett, how does the 5-year old "fall short" of a full belief? Does she know that "daddy" refers to the person who tucks her in at night? Does she know that this person helps sick people in exchange for money? Then WHERE IS SHE FALLING SHORT?!!?!??! Maybe with other arguments not in his book, I could be convinced that I'm wrong and Dennett is right - but his one page argument is far from convincing and far from sound.
EDIT: I was so mad at Dennett that I didn't properly attack his argument. I will use an analogy: You have a lightbulb. At first, you can just turn a switch to turn the light on. But you get bored, and decide to make it more fun. You add a second mechanism - the switch needs to be flipped, and then you have to clap before the light goes on. You get bored again, and tweak it one more time: You have to turn the switch, then clap a specific pattern in order to turn the light on. No matter how sophisticated or complicated your INPUT might be, has absolutely no bearing on how sophisticated the OUTPUT might be. Any computer scientist or civil engineer could have told Dennett this.
Conclusion: I can't take any more poor logic from someone who is so pompous, name-drops relentlessly, and criticizes other philosophers without providing sufficient context for the reader to actually evaluate the criticism.
The book starts out poorly with way too much name-dropping and Dennett admitting that he heckles lecturers for fun. He has very basic ideas of "thinking tools" and then uses very complex examples with very limited context. In these examples he takes cheap shots at fellow philosophers, while not providing enough context to really be able to agree that Dennett is in the right.
In chapter 1 he makes an innocuous yet unsound argument, and it is worth mentioning because it shows that he is very careless with his arguments throughout the book (or at least to page 68.) He states: "Evolution works the same way: all the dumb mistakes tend to be invisible, so all we see is a stupendous string of triumphs. For instance, the vast majority - way over 90 percent - of all the creatures that have ever lived died childless, but not a single one of your ancestors suffered that fate."
So...the majority of creatures don't pass on their genes. Dennett calls that an illustrative example of how ALL dumb mistakes are invisible (er..."tend to be invisible", whatever that means.) Who says that the 10 percent procreators aren't passing on dumb mistakes? Who says that sexual selection isn't selecting for "dumb mistakes" (ie. genes that make an animal more noticeable to predators, or genes that inhibit an animal to move swiftly.) His example is crude, and if the response is that "dumb mistakes" are ones that don't permit a creature to pass on its genes, then that just begs the question and proves nothing.
The above example was just a red flag. Things start to get really bad in Sections 13-15.
13. Dennett provides us an example where four characters all come, via different paths, to "believe that a Frenchman has committed murder in Trafalgar Square. He then adds that that proposition ("Frenchman committed murder in TS") does not occur to them. Thus they all have the belief without formulating the proposition. Dennett makes an implicit assumption here that you actually can have a belief without formulating a proposition. An implicit assumption that becomes a painful assumption when he drives his point home that people generally believe: "chairs are larger than shoes, that soup is liquid, that elephants don't fly." If I ask you if you believe that 44 plus 88 is 132, would you say yes? Had you ever formulated that proposition before? Isn't it quite likely that you believed the proposition only after the deduction? Thus, when someone witnesses Jacque shooting Bill, and Bill dying, the belief that a "murder" took place may not happen until post-deduction, that is, until the proposition is actually formed. Or when you're asked, "do elephants fly?" you first think of an elephant and then deduct that it can't fly? Dennett has not shown that I actually believe elephants don't fly without ever articulating the proposition one way or another.
14. "What this intuition pump shows is that nobody can have just one belief." Excuse me? Dennett, read a couple neuroscience books and then just take this section out. Even the pop psychology book Incognito should suffice. Even if Dennett's premises are sound (which at least one isn't), his conclusion isn't. His argument here is so poorly constructed I'm not even sure how to attack it. I think his argument goes like this: 1) Apparently inserting a false "belief" into Tom causes him to say something that he doesn't truly understand. 2) That shows that if we don't truly understand something, it isn't a true belief. 3) That shows that the only way to truly understand something is if it is coherent with other (sound) beliefs that one holds. 4) That shows that beliefs are thus supported by other beliefs. C) Therefore, "nobody can have just one belief."
I'm lost on how he got "beliefs MUST be supported by other beliefs" from the proposition "beliefs are supported by other beliefs." Also, I would re-write proposition 3 as "That shows that the only way to truly understand something is if it is NOT INCOHERENT with other (sound) beliefs." Stated this way, Dennett proves absolutely nothing and wasted 3 pages. I can have a single belief, and no other beliefs, and that single belief is not incoherent with any other belief. It pains me that Dennett is making money off of this book.
15. "Daddy is a doctor." This 1-page section did it in for me, I cannot continue this book. A little girl states the proposition "daddy is a doctor." 20 years later she makes the same proposition, only now she has a more sophisticated understanding of the words "daddy" and "doctor." Dennett writes, "If understanding comes in degrees, as this example shows, then belief, which depends on understanding, must come in degrees as well, even for such mundane propositions as this."
No! I am not convinced! A five-year old girl who utters the proposition "Daddy is a doctor" can have a full 100% belief in that proposition. 20 years later she can make the proposition, with a more sophisticated understanding, and still have a full 100% belief. Dennett, how does the 5-year old "fall short" of a full belief? Does she know that "daddy" refers to the person who tucks her in at night? Does she know that this person helps sick people in exchange for money? Then WHERE IS SHE FALLING SHORT?!!?!??! Maybe with other arguments not in his book, I could be convinced that I'm wrong and Dennett is right - but his one page argument is far from convincing and far from sound.
EDIT: I was so mad at Dennett that I didn't properly attack his argument. I will use an analogy: You have a lightbulb. At first, you can just turn a switch to turn the light on. But you get bored, and decide to make it more fun. You add a second mechanism - the switch needs to be flipped, and then you have to clap before the light goes on. You get bored again, and tweak it one more time: You have to turn the switch, then clap a specific pattern in order to turn the light on. No matter how sophisticated or complicated your INPUT might be, has absolutely no bearing on how sophisticated the OUTPUT might be. Any computer scientist or civil engineer could have told Dennett this.
Conclusion: I can't take any more poor logic from someone who is so pompous, name-drops relentlessly, and criticizes other philosophers without providing sufficient context for the reader to actually evaluate the criticism.
June 10, 2013
"Intuition pumps and other tools for thinking" is a mixed bag of goods. Don’t let the title fool you: this books is less about "thinking tools" than it is about Daniel Dennet's favorite philosophical thought experiments. Dennet devotes a short and wanting section to general 'thinking tools' (think Okham’s razor), but otherwise spends the majority of your time laying out his personal ideas concerning evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.
First, the pros: the subject matter is fascinating, and Dennet's treatment is unusually accessible. Most chapters consist of self-contained thought experiments, and the flanking discussions are written in simple, direct prose.
And there are a couple of gems here. In "Trapped in the Robot Control Room," Dennet convinces you that the mind doesn't enter this world as a 'blank slate.' In "Mary the Color Scientist," he forcefully refutes a famous argument in support of qualia. In fact, the entire section about free will (and how it's not incompatible with determinism – a philosophical position called compatibilism) is really quite good.
Unfortunately, as a whole, the book falls short. The writing never feels very tight –it's as if the book were written in one sitting, without the oversight of an editor. 'Braindump' isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind. And when your subject matter concerns such fuzzy and controversial topics such as meaning and consciousness and, this laziness is unforgivable.
Additionally, Dennet often takes on a weird, personal, I-hate-this-philosopher-I'm-refuting tone that comes across as strikingly unprofessional, and generally made me feel pretty uncomfortable ("There is a good project for a student of rhetoric: combing through Gould’s huge body of publications and cataloging the different species of boom crutches [Dennet’s word for 'deplorable aids to obfuscation'] he exploited"). This disparaging tone is rather ironic, as it is completely at odds with Dennet’s own advocacy of 'Rapoport’s Rules' in chapter 3 – essentially, the idea that you should be as generous and charitable of your opponent's views as humanely possible.
On the whole, I'm glad I read "Intuition pumps." At his best, Dennet is thoughtful and provocative. He doesn't hide behind complex philosophical jargon, and his passionate tone mostly refreshing. It's just a shame that he's kind of an ass, and that he seemingly pumped this book out without much post-processing. Give him an editor that will call him out for his shit, and we'll talk again. Until then – there's plenty of other fish in the sea.
Fun quotes
"[the layperson thinks:] 'I can’t change the past, but if indeterminism is true, I can change the future.' Nope. Change the future from what to what? From what it was going to be to what it is going to be? You can no more change the future than you can change the past. The concept is incoherent." (391)
"Can you conceive of string theory? … it is unintelligible to be, but for that very reason, I wouldn't be willing to declare it inconceivable or impossible." (289)
"When other people start getting inquisitive, they find that 'God works in mysterious ways' is a convenient anti-thinking tool… I think we should stop treating this ‘pious’ observation as any kind of wisdom and recognize it as the transparently defensive propaganda it is." (430)
First, the pros: the subject matter is fascinating, and Dennet's treatment is unusually accessible. Most chapters consist of self-contained thought experiments, and the flanking discussions are written in simple, direct prose.
And there are a couple of gems here. In "Trapped in the Robot Control Room," Dennet convinces you that the mind doesn't enter this world as a 'blank slate.' In "Mary the Color Scientist," he forcefully refutes a famous argument in support of qualia. In fact, the entire section about free will (and how it's not incompatible with determinism – a philosophical position called compatibilism) is really quite good.
Unfortunately, as a whole, the book falls short. The writing never feels very tight –it's as if the book were written in one sitting, without the oversight of an editor. 'Braindump' isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind. And when your subject matter concerns such fuzzy and controversial topics such as meaning and consciousness and, this laziness is unforgivable.
Additionally, Dennet often takes on a weird, personal, I-hate-this-philosopher-I'm-refuting tone that comes across as strikingly unprofessional, and generally made me feel pretty uncomfortable ("There is a good project for a student of rhetoric: combing through Gould’s huge body of publications and cataloging the different species of boom crutches [Dennet’s word for 'deplorable aids to obfuscation'] he exploited"). This disparaging tone is rather ironic, as it is completely at odds with Dennet’s own advocacy of 'Rapoport’s Rules' in chapter 3 – essentially, the idea that you should be as generous and charitable of your opponent's views as humanely possible.
On the whole, I'm glad I read "Intuition pumps." At his best, Dennet is thoughtful and provocative. He doesn't hide behind complex philosophical jargon, and his passionate tone mostly refreshing. It's just a shame that he's kind of an ass, and that he seemingly pumped this book out without much post-processing. Give him an editor that will call him out for his shit, and we'll talk again. Until then – there's plenty of other fish in the sea.
Fun quotes
"[the layperson thinks:] 'I can’t change the past, but if indeterminism is true, I can change the future.' Nope. Change the future from what to what? From what it was going to be to what it is going to be? You can no more change the future than you can change the past. The concept is incoherent." (391)
"Can you conceive of string theory? … it is unintelligible to be, but for that very reason, I wouldn't be willing to declare it inconceivable or impossible." (289)
"When other people start getting inquisitive, they find that 'God works in mysterious ways' is a convenient anti-thinking tool… I think we should stop treating this ‘pious’ observation as any kind of wisdom and recognize it as the transparently defensive propaganda it is." (430)
November 16, 2014
An intuition pump is a thought experiment or similar cognitive "device" designed to elicit answers to difficult philosophical problems. In --Intuition Pumps And Other Tools For Thinking-- Dennett uses his favorite intuition pumps to (sort of) dismantle difficult philosophical questions such as: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.
I avoided Dennett for a long time because he comes off as such a grumpy old dick in his lectures and Ted talks. I am pleasantly surprised to find that his writing is a lot of fun and quite accessible. Reading this book is like being invited into a cool (not creepy) old dudes garage. He's got all kinds of cleaver little home made gadgets laying around, and its fun as hell to sit there and watch him tinker.
I'd give this book 5 (rather than 4) stars if the book didn't lose momentum in the third quarter. But it does. So out comes the 4 paddle. It's still a brilliant book by a brilliant guy. Well worth the investment.
I avoided Dennett for a long time because he comes off as such a grumpy old dick in his lectures and Ted talks. I am pleasantly surprised to find that his writing is a lot of fun and quite accessible. Reading this book is like being invited into a cool (not creepy) old dudes garage. He's got all kinds of cleaver little home made gadgets laying around, and its fun as hell to sit there and watch him tinker.
I'd give this book 5 (rather than 4) stars if the book didn't lose momentum in the third quarter. But it does. So out comes the 4 paddle. It's still a brilliant book by a brilliant guy. Well worth the investment.
March 16, 2017
If you've read other Dennett masterpieces, you come away thinking both that the man is a genius and that he's a genius that tends to ramble on. That is not the case in his latest work. He combines many of his previous ideas and some new thoughts into this volume of brief insightful chapters.
Dennett covers a wide range of philosophy favorites including consciousness, free will, determinism, artificial life, evolution, and meaning. He gives the reader tools to use when thinking about complex problems. Some of these ideas include:
- When does a robot become complex enough to become "life"? If you gave a robot the tools that evolution uses, is it capable of evolution or merely following a program? Are you merely following a program? How would one know the difference?
- If a tool takes on a new use, does it take on a new purpose? Is the old purpose gone? Was there ever a meaningful intrinsic purpose?
- How many different creatures could be produced with a library of DNA genomes?
These are a few of the questions that you'll contemplate as you navigate this mind-penetrating volume. It's written in the familiar Dennett style with plenty of quirky fabricated terms and odd scenarios that only a philosopher could conjure. It also delves deep into the science of evolution which Dennett never fails to mention. The author views this process of our origin as pertaining to every phenomenon that must be contemplated by our species, and so it does. For those with a shorter attention span, the chapters have been prepared succinctly but with all of the thoughtfulness of the author's longer tomes.
If you feel that the unexamined life is not worth living, then this book will give you some new tools for that examination as well an entertaining look into the mind of one of the remaining philosophers that is always worth a read. Dennett doesn't disappoint.
Disclaimer: This book was provided by the fine publisher W.W. Norton free of charge for the purpose of review through goodreads' "First Reads" program.
Further disclaimer: Any publisher that sends me a quality book free of charge will be referred to as a "fine publisher".
Dennett covers a wide range of philosophy favorites including consciousness, free will, determinism, artificial life, evolution, and meaning. He gives the reader tools to use when thinking about complex problems. Some of these ideas include:
- When does a robot become complex enough to become "life"? If you gave a robot the tools that evolution uses, is it capable of evolution or merely following a program? Are you merely following a program? How would one know the difference?
- If a tool takes on a new use, does it take on a new purpose? Is the old purpose gone? Was there ever a meaningful intrinsic purpose?
- How many different creatures could be produced with a library of DNA genomes?
These are a few of the questions that you'll contemplate as you navigate this mind-penetrating volume. It's written in the familiar Dennett style with plenty of quirky fabricated terms and odd scenarios that only a philosopher could conjure. It also delves deep into the science of evolution which Dennett never fails to mention. The author views this process of our origin as pertaining to every phenomenon that must be contemplated by our species, and so it does. For those with a shorter attention span, the chapters have been prepared succinctly but with all of the thoughtfulness of the author's longer tomes.
If you feel that the unexamined life is not worth living, then this book will give you some new tools for that examination as well an entertaining look into the mind of one of the remaining philosophers that is always worth a read. Dennett doesn't disappoint.
Disclaimer: This book was provided by the fine publisher W.W. Norton free of charge for the purpose of review through goodreads' "First Reads" program.
Further disclaimer: Any publisher that sends me a quality book free of charge will be referred to as a "fine publisher".
July 1, 2015
هذا الكتاب يستخلص ببراعة العشرات من أدوات التفكير ومعدات الاستدلال التي تتعلق بالأسئلة الكبرى في الفلسفة: المعنى، الفكر، التطور، الإرادة الحرة، معنى الوعي، وما شاكل.
لا زلت معجبا بمدى براعة المؤلف، وهو الفيلسوف التحليلي القدير، في النفاذ لصلب الموضوع دون التعكّز على مصطلحات نادرة أو تعابير مستغلقة. وأنصح المهتمين بقراءته على مهل، لأن مادته ليست سريعة الهضم.
لا زلت معجبا بمدى براعة المؤلف، وهو الفيلسوف التحليلي القدير، في النفاذ لصلب الموضوع دون التعكّز على مصطلحات نادرة أو تعابير مستغلقة. وأنصح المهتمين بقراءته على مهل، لأن مادته ليست سريعة الهضم.
October 27, 2014
I liked this well enough. Dennett can write clearly and engagingly. But I never got over the nasty taste in my mouth induced by some really mean-spirited drive-by ad hominem assassination of someone I guess Dennett still holds a shiv for -- Stephen Jay Gould. The odd thing is that, on the issues in question, intellectually I would side with Dennett rather than Gould. But continuing to attack an opponent after the person in question is dead and in no position to mount a defence strikes me as being both unnecessarily shrill and betraying an unattractive insecurity of his own at some level.
Anyway, if you can overlook the nastiness of the chapter attacking Gould (in which the arguments may have merit, but the tone is unforgivable and inappropriate), this is a pretty decent book.
The last quarter of the book is the weakest, where his arguments linking consciousness and evolution simply fail to gel, in my opinion. But the rest of it is a pretty good read.
Anyway, if you can overlook the nastiness of the chapter attacking Gould (in which the arguments may have merit, but the tone is unforgivable and inappropriate), this is a pretty decent book.
The last quarter of the book is the weakest, where his arguments linking consciousness and evolution simply fail to gel, in my opinion. But the rest of it is a pretty good read.
September 12, 2015
It's ironic that Dennett concludes his book with a chapter on why philosophy is still valuable, because halfway through it I was starting to toy with the idea that the world would be better off if philosophy departments all over it were shut down and its inhabitants told to find a real job :-) But first, a disclaimer: I am firmly in the positivist camp, Dan is basically preaching to the choir here. Only he's doing it badly.
But wait! What's this about preaching? Isn't this book about thinking tools? Weeell...sorta, but no. The beginning is though, but even that he does badly. The intuition pump (thought experiment for us mere mortals) with tunable knobs was neat, though that's Hofstadters apparently. Occam's razor was a bit of a letdown, he treats it as a common sense rule of thumb and seems oblivious of the fact that it can be derived from Bayesian theory. There's his utterly childish refutation against Roger Penrose's theory (which is IMO both wrong and extremely interesting, and which I suspect Dennett doesn't really understand in the first place, given his stated aversion for quantum mechanics). Then there's the distasteful naming of a number of rhetoric tricks as 'Goulding', after the late SJ Gould. What the feud between Gould and the Dawkins clan was about is still beyond me, as it always seemed to be about technicalities, and I often wonder what real working evolutionary biologists think of the bitchfight between these two pop-sci prima donnas and their supporters.
After that it quickly devolves into an overly long regurgitation of Dennett's well-known positions on evolution, consciousness and free will. Nothing against that, but it shouldn't be in this book. This is not a collection of thinking tools, this is a defense of his ideas. And again, if you ask me, not a very good one. The endless exposé on what is a computer? Conway's game of life, again? There's much more interesting things to say about these topics, and they can be said in a much shorter span as well.
I remember being impressed with Dennett a long time ago, maybe I've come too far since then, or maybe he's been stuck in the same arguments. It's much clearer to me now that his understanding of science itself is not as impressive as it seems, as for example his position on quantum mechanics, and his statement that he tried and failed to understand its mathematics (honestly, it's not that hard), seem to indicate. Which explains why his advocacy of science as a worldview often seems to do more damage than good. Hence my initial (and possibly overreacting) remark: philosophers of the world, get off your ass en get a real job dammit! Maybe do some actual science.
But wait! What's this about preaching? Isn't this book about thinking tools? Weeell...sorta, but no. The beginning is though, but even that he does badly. The intuition pump (thought experiment for us mere mortals) with tunable knobs was neat, though that's Hofstadters apparently. Occam's razor was a bit of a letdown, he treats it as a common sense rule of thumb and seems oblivious of the fact that it can be derived from Bayesian theory. There's his utterly childish refutation against Roger Penrose's theory (which is IMO both wrong and extremely interesting, and which I suspect Dennett doesn't really understand in the first place, given his stated aversion for quantum mechanics). Then there's the distasteful naming of a number of rhetoric tricks as 'Goulding', after the late SJ Gould. What the feud between Gould and the Dawkins clan was about is still beyond me, as it always seemed to be about technicalities, and I often wonder what real working evolutionary biologists think of the bitchfight between these two pop-sci prima donnas and their supporters.
After that it quickly devolves into an overly long regurgitation of Dennett's well-known positions on evolution, consciousness and free will. Nothing against that, but it shouldn't be in this book. This is not a collection of thinking tools, this is a defense of his ideas. And again, if you ask me, not a very good one. The endless exposé on what is a computer? Conway's game of life, again? There's much more interesting things to say about these topics, and they can be said in a much shorter span as well.
I remember being impressed with Dennett a long time ago, maybe I've come too far since then, or maybe he's been stuck in the same arguments. It's much clearer to me now that his understanding of science itself is not as impressive as it seems, as for example his position on quantum mechanics, and his statement that he tried and failed to understand its mathematics (honestly, it's not that hard), seem to indicate. Which explains why his advocacy of science as a worldview often seems to do more damage than good. Hence my initial (and possibly overreacting) remark: philosophers of the world, get off your ass en get a real job dammit! Maybe do some actual science.
February 27, 2022
Many who have read this probably came away believing that the title should really be extended a bit, adding “Tools for Thinking…like Daniel Dennett.” Which is great if you’re already a materialist like Dennett. The author doesn’t hide this at all. In fact he openly admits it. He would argue that whether or not a reader agrees with the way he thinks, they’d have to do some thinking in order to have an opinion one way or the other. And this is the primary goal of the book: to get whoever reads it to think. Planted within the many intuition pumps and lessons on how to think ‘like the author’ are basic core ways of learning ‘how to think.’
The pumps include ways of considering the leading philosophical issues: meaning, evolution, consciousness and free will. A brief foray into explaining the ins and outs of computers, while at times enlightening, at others was so overly involved and technical it either went over my head or lost my interest. Which leads me to the weird problem of audience; Dennett states early on he went through all the pumps in this book with, as he describes, “bright undergraduates,” so that he didn’t get too carried away with concepts and terms reserved for more advanced philosophy. For someone who professes to be so concerned with broadening his audience, I feel he abandons this goal dozens of times, exploring extremely complex ideas in very advanced and nuanced ways that I could only follow as someone who minored in philosophy in college and supplemented my reading greatly since.
That is not the whole book though, and I still recommend this to novices with an interest in philosophy and a commitment to applying the effort and focus Dennett requests of his readers to understand his arguments. Even if parts fly past, enough should stick to make this a rewarding read.
The pumps include ways of considering the leading philosophical issues: meaning, evolution, consciousness and free will. A brief foray into explaining the ins and outs of computers, while at times enlightening, at others was so overly involved and technical it either went over my head or lost my interest. Which leads me to the weird problem of audience; Dennett states early on he went through all the pumps in this book with, as he describes, “bright undergraduates,” so that he didn’t get too carried away with concepts and terms reserved for more advanced philosophy. For someone who professes to be so concerned with broadening his audience, I feel he abandons this goal dozens of times, exploring extremely complex ideas in very advanced and nuanced ways that I could only follow as someone who minored in philosophy in college and supplemented my reading greatly since.
That is not the whole book though, and I still recommend this to novices with an interest in philosophy and a commitment to applying the effort and focus Dennett requests of his readers to understand his arguments. Even if parts fly past, enough should stick to make this a rewarding read.
December 3, 2013
Reading this book is basically like reading Daniel Dennett in blog format.
I read a lot of Dennett's work as an undergraduate and it had a fairly profound impact on me -- I think the collection "The Mind's I" that he edited with Douglas Hofstadter is essentially my atheist bible. I hadn't realized just how much of his work I had read -- almost nothing in this recent collection was new to me. I guess I hadn't realized (or had forgotten) that Dennett is a big fan of Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap; it's like he's a Redditor) and I was unfamiliar with his advice to would-be philosophers (in short, don't get sucked into pointless debates that don't matter just to score points; ditto on him being a Redditor).
Early in the book there is a section where he characterizes a number of mental tools and pitfalls. There are some oddly personal attacks on people like Stephen J Gould and Ned Block in this section. The whole enterprise of cataloging rhetorical moves and the like with cute names is pretty annoying, and the personal attacks actually undermine the project: "I am a master of the mind who knows all the moves and all the missteps, and I'm going to name the missteps after particular people who used them in particular debates with me." As a result of this Dennett comes across less as a brilliant guy who has thought deeply and successfully about some of the more challenging philosophical problems out there, and more as an asshole who takes things awfully personally for a guy who is always right.
I read a lot of Dennett's work as an undergraduate and it had a fairly profound impact on me -- I think the collection "The Mind's I" that he edited with Douglas Hofstadter is essentially my atheist bible. I hadn't realized just how much of his work I had read -- almost nothing in this recent collection was new to me. I guess I hadn't realized (or had forgotten) that Dennett is a big fan of Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap; it's like he's a Redditor) and I was unfamiliar with his advice to would-be philosophers (in short, don't get sucked into pointless debates that don't matter just to score points; ditto on him being a Redditor).
Early in the book there is a section where he characterizes a number of mental tools and pitfalls. There are some oddly personal attacks on people like Stephen J Gould and Ned Block in this section. The whole enterprise of cataloging rhetorical moves and the like with cute names is pretty annoying, and the personal attacks actually undermine the project: "I am a master of the mind who knows all the moves and all the missteps, and I'm going to name the missteps after particular people who used them in particular debates with me." As a result of this Dennett comes across less as a brilliant guy who has thought deeply and successfully about some of the more challenging philosophical problems out there, and more as an asshole who takes things awfully personally for a guy who is always right.
December 21, 2014
As clearly advertised on the front cover, this is a book about "tools for thinking"—and, yes, the first 12 chapters, out of 77, are devoted precisely to that.
In contrast, the remaining 65 chapters are summaries, in easy to consume bites, of most of the other books that Dennett has published during the last 20 or 30 years, on the topics of meaning and content, evolution, consciousness, and free will—each updated with relevant new results and references. As such, he presents, and effectively argues for, his own previously published ideas (with the updates). I don't think Dennett's motives here are selfish or disingenuous, rather, we have a major contemporary philosopher summing up his life's work, and pointing the way forward.
For deepest understanding, it's better to read the compete original works (Consciousness Explained, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, etc). Hence the middling, but not bad, rating: this is mostly not new material but would serve well for those interested in an overview of Dennett's work.
In contrast, the remaining 65 chapters are summaries, in easy to consume bites, of most of the other books that Dennett has published during the last 20 or 30 years, on the topics of meaning and content, evolution, consciousness, and free will—each updated with relevant new results and references. As such, he presents, and effectively argues for, his own previously published ideas (with the updates). I don't think Dennett's motives here are selfish or disingenuous, rather, we have a major contemporary philosopher summing up his life's work, and pointing the way forward.
For deepest understanding, it's better to read the compete original works (Consciousness Explained, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, etc). Hence the middling, but not bad, rating: this is mostly not new material but would serve well for those interested in an overview of Dennett's work.
October 16, 2015
A very interesting book, though Dennett could certainly have stood to tighten up the prose and organize it better. I think the title also doesn't reflect the contents of the book very well. The book describes Dennett's theories of the philosophy of mind, using what he calls "intuition pumps". An intuition pump is basically a thought experiment, designed to poke/pump your intuitions about a topic, like Einstein's clock thought experiments or Searle's Chinese Room argument. I sort of dislike the term (I think thought experiment is a better and more standard term), but it's still a good book.
I loved the parts involving the Chinese Room argument, an argument I've found unconvincing, but never quite been able to put my finger on why. Dennett "turns the knobs" on this experiment, pointing out a huge number of issues with it, notably that the description of the "Chinese Room" is deceptively simple. In order for a machine to succeed in passing the Turing test, it would require an enormous amount of code and an enormous number of instructions. Our intuitions fail on that scale: the argument is less convincing if it takes 20 years of laborious efforts to generate a single response. Simulating a brain or AI is a lot of *work*, and not work that humans are cut out for. His response to Searle's arguments against the "systems response" (that the human/room system is conscious, even if no individual part is) is also interesting. Imagine the Chinese room being taught differential equations by the interlocutor, and eventually it becomes proficient at them. Competence (if not consciousness) was created through the process, but it's clearly not in Searle's head. The competence has to be in the system.
The sections on free will were more tedious. Dennett presents a very interesting thought experiment about three chess programs, all of which make use of pseudo-random decision making processes. He then proceeds to show how it's "possible" for a given program to have "decided" whether to castle (i.e. some form of agency), while for another program the move was "impossible". It's an interesting and very clever argument. But I don't find free will as conceived in the Judeo-Christian tradition to be a particularly compelling idea in the first place, especially as it relates to moral culpability. Rationality necessarily boxes in non-determinism, and "free will" without rationality is facile: if we have "genuine agency" that's not based on anything then it loses the "will" part, it's merely random.
I think the most important lessons of the book are:
- Don't let hidden complexity force you to think things are simpler than they are. Most arguments against the possibility of computers being conscious boil down to "I can't conceive of a computer complex enough that it could be conscious. Look at these simple computers: they're clearly not conscious!" Changes in the scale and complexity of processes can break our intuitions.
- If an argument seems intuitively compelling, try to alter parts of it to see when causes it to become non-compelling or more compelling.
- Causal explanations need to occur at the right level to be meaningful. There's a sense in which everything derives from physics, but a molecule-by-molecule or a transistor-by-transistor history of Big Blue's execution during a chess match can't really explain why Big Blue beat Kasparov. You need to go to a different descriptive level for that.
From a religious/spiritual viewpoint, this was an important book to me. I have "Saganism" listed as my religion on Facebook, and it's only half joking. The discussion of agency and evolution clarifies why we exist: we are a designed solution to a problem (survival and reproduction), and our agency and intentions derive in a sense from the "designer" of natural selection. This matches well with my own intuitions about how my mind works. A lot of emotional drives clearly relate to survival and reproduction: sexual desire, the need to connect to other humans, enjoyment of food, etc. Without the supplier of our "utility functions", we'd be little more than dumb, inert intelligences with no problems to solve, nowhere to go. But with the "intentionality" imbued by evolution, we are goal-directed beings, built from smaller subsystems each of which has its own set of things it "wants", down to neurons which "want" to survive and connect, down to enzymes that "want" to build/repair, down to DNA that "wants" to reproduce.
Some would look on this view and find it cold and devoid of meaning; I side with Darwin and Dennett "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." I find the idea that I exist as part of this ongoing process inspiring: our ancestors have been the toughest, the smartest, the most able to love and care for their children, and down the line for billions of years. Forged by evolution, human life and human consciousness are an expression of a fundamental process of the universe. We've been elevated from inanimate matter into something capable of writing books about where meaning comes from.
I loved the parts involving the Chinese Room argument, an argument I've found unconvincing, but never quite been able to put my finger on why. Dennett "turns the knobs" on this experiment, pointing out a huge number of issues with it, notably that the description of the "Chinese Room" is deceptively simple. In order for a machine to succeed in passing the Turing test, it would require an enormous amount of code and an enormous number of instructions. Our intuitions fail on that scale: the argument is less convincing if it takes 20 years of laborious efforts to generate a single response. Simulating a brain or AI is a lot of *work*, and not work that humans are cut out for. His response to Searle's arguments against the "systems response" (that the human/room system is conscious, even if no individual part is) is also interesting. Imagine the Chinese room being taught differential equations by the interlocutor, and eventually it becomes proficient at them. Competence (if not consciousness) was created through the process, but it's clearly not in Searle's head. The competence has to be in the system.
The sections on free will were more tedious. Dennett presents a very interesting thought experiment about three chess programs, all of which make use of pseudo-random decision making processes. He then proceeds to show how it's "possible" for a given program to have "decided" whether to castle (i.e. some form of agency), while for another program the move was "impossible". It's an interesting and very clever argument. But I don't find free will as conceived in the Judeo-Christian tradition to be a particularly compelling idea in the first place, especially as it relates to moral culpability. Rationality necessarily boxes in non-determinism, and "free will" without rationality is facile: if we have "genuine agency" that's not based on anything then it loses the "will" part, it's merely random.
I think the most important lessons of the book are:
- Don't let hidden complexity force you to think things are simpler than they are. Most arguments against the possibility of computers being conscious boil down to "I can't conceive of a computer complex enough that it could be conscious. Look at these simple computers: they're clearly not conscious!" Changes in the scale and complexity of processes can break our intuitions.
- If an argument seems intuitively compelling, try to alter parts of it to see when causes it to become non-compelling or more compelling.
- Causal explanations need to occur at the right level to be meaningful. There's a sense in which everything derives from physics, but a molecule-by-molecule or a transistor-by-transistor history of Big Blue's execution during a chess match can't really explain why Big Blue beat Kasparov. You need to go to a different descriptive level for that.
From a religious/spiritual viewpoint, this was an important book to me. I have "Saganism" listed as my religion on Facebook, and it's only half joking. The discussion of agency and evolution clarifies why we exist: we are a designed solution to a problem (survival and reproduction), and our agency and intentions derive in a sense from the "designer" of natural selection. This matches well with my own intuitions about how my mind works. A lot of emotional drives clearly relate to survival and reproduction: sexual desire, the need to connect to other humans, enjoyment of food, etc. Without the supplier of our "utility functions", we'd be little more than dumb, inert intelligences with no problems to solve, nowhere to go. But with the "intentionality" imbued by evolution, we are goal-directed beings, built from smaller subsystems each of which has its own set of things it "wants", down to neurons which "want" to survive and connect, down to enzymes that "want" to build/repair, down to DNA that "wants" to reproduce.
Some would look on this view and find it cold and devoid of meaning; I side with Darwin and Dennett "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." I find the idea that I exist as part of this ongoing process inspiring: our ancestors have been the toughest, the smartest, the most able to love and care for their children, and down the line for billions of years. Forged by evolution, human life and human consciousness are an expression of a fundamental process of the universe. We've been elevated from inanimate matter into something capable of writing books about where meaning comes from.
July 19, 2016
This was a great primer to philosophy to the novice. Dennett uses some clever thinking tools to cut to the heart of some classic problems in philosophy. I especially liked his take-down of the idea that free will depends on non-determinism.
May 15, 2013
Daniel C. Dennett cites himself a lot. Just sayin'.
Right, so his thing is that free will and determinism are not incompatible. He's really big into non-incompatibles. the idea that you can predict the choice someone will make does not effect his ability to make that choice. So, its predictable that i would write this... but i still also made a choice to write it. i really hope he explains how this is so because i still don't get it.
I had no idea this book would be so much about rhetoric, linquistics, etc. a delightful surprise as I love that stuff (for example, every time I malapropriate I cover with the declaration that "I love malapropisms!" because 1) it makes me look clever when I was looking dumb and 2) its true - I love the fact that I can use the wrong word for something and my intentionality/meaning is still conveyed intact - at least much of the time). I can't wait to apply his nasty little tools, like "rathering" to my own writing b/c I also agree with him in that there is often nothing more fun than realize how wrong you are - mistakes are such a juicy opportunity for growth.
so far this book reminds me of Jonah Leher's "How we decide." (I still find myself wanting to champion him despite his unfortunate debacle - his writing was nice and clear and interesting and I still trust it in the main [self plagiarizing is nonsense, and I'm somehow not too bothered by the other stuff...])
I still don't really understand where Dennett falls in the dualist/materialist etc camp (I know most assume he's a strict materialist, but the way he complains about being misunderstood..and at times seems to discuss the reality of qualia confuses me).. need to read more of him.
I like this quote: "Let's stipulate at the outset that there is a great deal of deplorable, stupid, second-rate stuff out there, of all sorts. Now, in order not to waste your time and try our patience, make sure you concentrate on the best stuff you can find, the flagship exexamples, extolled by the leaders of the field, the prize-winning entries, not the dregs." I wonder if he'll discuss how people's tendency to do this is just 'cause they're insecure and it makes them feel good to tear apart weak scholarship or weak anything, really. probably he won't. speaking of , this is an angry statement. dennett is quite an angry man.
still judging dennett's ability to write/speak clearly about complex stuff, so far, he's doing pretty well. I was having a conversation with Ariel the other day about how it's so annoying how people will write really convolutedly with lots of big words (or worse a bunch of terminology specific to your field ["word-dropping"]) and stuff to sound intelligent, and it can be, like, a lot of quantity and stuff, but she said something like - the more words you're using and the longer your sentences, likely the less you're actually saying. i think she probably quoted someone who said it better. but anyway, this is true also of novelists, she was probably thinking about healy's "how i became a famous novelist"... everyone should just read and follow chicago's manual of style. k? thanks.
another thing i was thinking about along the line of phonies is, like, i know it's a fine line between original ideas and copying and nothing new under the sun and all, but you know it when you see it? in that, it seems that often a person instead of being inspired by an idol in the same field to create someone of their own or copying their style in a way to express their own stuff - the best they can do is just copy the obvious mannerisms or personaility quirks or things unrelated to the particular craft really, you know a caricature, like someone puffing on a pipe and reading a book by the sea who actually hates to read, or someone who is all angry like dennett and thinks that's his "persona" or something and it's his duty to set the score with his "philosopher" friends as if he were a big wig within a community or something, because really, he just likes dennett's persona and wants desperately to believe that he is just like that.....
Right, so his thing is that free will and determinism are not incompatible. He's really big into non-incompatibles. the idea that you can predict the choice someone will make does not effect his ability to make that choice. So, its predictable that i would write this... but i still also made a choice to write it. i really hope he explains how this is so because i still don't get it.
I had no idea this book would be so much about rhetoric, linquistics, etc. a delightful surprise as I love that stuff (for example, every time I malapropriate I cover with the declaration that "I love malapropisms!" because 1) it makes me look clever when I was looking dumb and 2) its true - I love the fact that I can use the wrong word for something and my intentionality/meaning is still conveyed intact - at least much of the time). I can't wait to apply his nasty little tools, like "rathering" to my own writing b/c I also agree with him in that there is often nothing more fun than realize how wrong you are - mistakes are such a juicy opportunity for growth.
so far this book reminds me of Jonah Leher's "How we decide." (I still find myself wanting to champion him despite his unfortunate debacle - his writing was nice and clear and interesting and I still trust it in the main [self plagiarizing is nonsense, and I'm somehow not too bothered by the other stuff...])
I still don't really understand where Dennett falls in the dualist/materialist etc camp (I know most assume he's a strict materialist, but the way he complains about being misunderstood..and at times seems to discuss the reality of qualia confuses me).. need to read more of him.
I like this quote: "Let's stipulate at the outset that there is a great deal of deplorable, stupid, second-rate stuff out there, of all sorts. Now, in order not to waste your time and try our patience, make sure you concentrate on the best stuff you can find, the flagship exexamples, extolled by the leaders of the field, the prize-winning entries, not the dregs." I wonder if he'll discuss how people's tendency to do this is just 'cause they're insecure and it makes them feel good to tear apart weak scholarship or weak anything, really. probably he won't. speaking of , this is an angry statement. dennett is quite an angry man.
still judging dennett's ability to write/speak clearly about complex stuff, so far, he's doing pretty well. I was having a conversation with Ariel the other day about how it's so annoying how people will write really convolutedly with lots of big words (or worse a bunch of terminology specific to your field ["word-dropping"]) and stuff to sound intelligent, and it can be, like, a lot of quantity and stuff, but she said something like - the more words you're using and the longer your sentences, likely the less you're actually saying. i think she probably quoted someone who said it better. but anyway, this is true also of novelists, she was probably thinking about healy's "how i became a famous novelist"... everyone should just read and follow chicago's manual of style. k? thanks.
another thing i was thinking about along the line of phonies is, like, i know it's a fine line between original ideas and copying and nothing new under the sun and all, but you know it when you see it? in that, it seems that often a person instead of being inspired by an idol in the same field to create someone of their own or copying their style in a way to express their own stuff - the best they can do is just copy the obvious mannerisms or personaility quirks or things unrelated to the particular craft really, you know a caricature, like someone puffing on a pipe and reading a book by the sea who actually hates to read, or someone who is all angry like dennett and thinks that's his "persona" or something and it's his duty to set the score with his "philosopher" friends as if he were a big wig within a community or something, because really, he just likes dennett's persona and wants desperately to believe that he is just like that.....
June 13, 2018
This is a very interesting and clever book. Critics will complain the author has an agenda. Others will recognize this agenda as narrative. The author does an excellent job choosing intuition pumps to make his point while providing a narrative to tie it all altogether in a readable package. You don't have to believe it, you can simply regard it as information. But you could also re-frame your current beliefs by devaluing their truth while regarding them simply as information too. Throughout this book, the author leads us to conclusions but sometimes leaves it up to the reader to make the relevant connections for ourselves. His take on freewill is different than I've read before and I enjoyed it.
So what is the narrative? When it comes to the complexities of human consciousness, Intelligent Design seems optional. We all are complex "AI" machines with billions of years of development and design behind us. All and all it's very interesting information.
So what is the narrative? When it comes to the complexities of human consciousness, Intelligent Design seems optional. We all are complex "AI" machines with billions of years of development and design behind us. All and all it's very interesting information.
February 7, 2017
Didn't finish bc tons of unnecessary acerbic ad hominem attacks on Gould started to get very annoying. Superficial otherwise too.
March 21, 2020
First off, the title is a misnomer -- a clickbait of sorts. The discussion on intuition pumps lasts 40 pages (more on that later). The rest of it is tearing apart often ridiculous (to me at least) philosophical positions other philosophers had such as insisting on consciousness and free will are a black and white thing (false dichotomy). For instance, here is one on "understanding", which is a center piece target of Dennett's criticism and is the so-called Chinese Room thought experiment.
Here's the rundown, if you haven't heard of this: Someone (a non-clear-thinker, let's call him NCT) insists a strong AI doesn't have a mind like a human does. The logic is this: NCT himself does not speak Chinese but can be locked inside a room equipped with the English-version of the said AI software (complete with databases and scratch paper) and can in principle answer questions written in Chinese and fed into the room thus faking comprehension. Since NCT doesn't understand Chinese, the AI system doesn't either and thus it doesn't have a mind as we do. The analogy is clearly wrong because while NCT doesn't speak Chinese, the Chinese room practically does (unless you define "speak" so narrowly that only human being can "speak" a language - by definition.) NCT can make the point that the *hardware alone* (the counterpart of NCT in the room) doesn't speak Chinese or have a mind.
Assuming my oversimplified argument here is clear, if you agree with NCT's position, then maybe reading this book can be helpful. If you agree that NCT is not a clear thinker then this book of Dennett's will be like preaching to the choir.
Even if such logic problems are worth clarifying, this book is extremely verbose and digressive in my opinion. If I'm allowed a career stereotying joke: A newly appointed university president was amazed at the difference in funding requirement of different departments: the physicists needed billions of dollars for an accelerator; the mathematicians only needed paper, pencils, and a waste basket; heck the philosophy department doesn’t even need a waste basket.
So back to the intuition pumps. What are they? They are a particular type of thought experiment: one that reduces the complexity to the bare minimum (which can be a good thing) and then, anybody can intuitively answer the question in an unambiguous manner (e.g., does NCT speak Chinese). Clearly, in the NCT example, the reason you can intuit is because important details get swept away. Other commonly misused intuition pumps include "surely" and "rathering". "Surely" is the act of prefacing a wrong statement with "surely" and pass it on as an obvious truism. (e.g., Surely only humans can have a mind). Rathering is to refute A because B is clearly the case (e.g., Donald Trump is not evil, rather he is stupid.)
These are simply logic fallacies. The latter is called false dichotomy. There are webpages discussing the common ones. The book discussed a grand total of 12 pumps, 6 positive, 6 negatives. So what about the positive intuition pumps. Well, I hate to disappoint, but there is really just one, which is try to use "reductio ad absurdum". Others are some wise remarks that do not IMO count as thought experiment let alone intuition pumps (remember the latter is a special case of the former). Here is one example called Sturgeon's law. Science fiction writer Sturgeon agrees 90% of science fiction is crud. But 90% of anything is crud. So don't waste time hooting at the crap.
Surely, I'm not hooting at the crap. Rather, I'm warning you of the relatively low density of intellectual wisdom.
Here's the rundown, if you haven't heard of this: Someone (a non-clear-thinker, let's call him NCT) insists a strong AI doesn't have a mind like a human does. The logic is this: NCT himself does not speak Chinese but can be locked inside a room equipped with the English-version of the said AI software (complete with databases and scratch paper) and can in principle answer questions written in Chinese and fed into the room thus faking comprehension. Since NCT doesn't understand Chinese, the AI system doesn't either and thus it doesn't have a mind as we do. The analogy is clearly wrong because while NCT doesn't speak Chinese, the Chinese room practically does (unless you define "speak" so narrowly that only human being can "speak" a language - by definition.) NCT can make the point that the *hardware alone* (the counterpart of NCT in the room) doesn't speak Chinese or have a mind.
Assuming my oversimplified argument here is clear, if you agree with NCT's position, then maybe reading this book can be helpful. If you agree that NCT is not a clear thinker then this book of Dennett's will be like preaching to the choir.
Even if such logic problems are worth clarifying, this book is extremely verbose and digressive in my opinion. If I'm allowed a career stereotying joke: A newly appointed university president was amazed at the difference in funding requirement of different departments: the physicists needed billions of dollars for an accelerator; the mathematicians only needed paper, pencils, and a waste basket; heck the philosophy department doesn’t even need a waste basket.
So back to the intuition pumps. What are they? They are a particular type of thought experiment: one that reduces the complexity to the bare minimum (which can be a good thing) and then, anybody can intuitively answer the question in an unambiguous manner (e.g., does NCT speak Chinese). Clearly, in the NCT example, the reason you can intuit is because important details get swept away. Other commonly misused intuition pumps include "surely" and "rathering". "Surely" is the act of prefacing a wrong statement with "surely" and pass it on as an obvious truism. (e.g., Surely only humans can have a mind). Rathering is to refute A because B is clearly the case (e.g., Donald Trump is not evil, rather he is stupid.)
These are simply logic fallacies. The latter is called false dichotomy. There are webpages discussing the common ones. The book discussed a grand total of 12 pumps, 6 positive, 6 negatives. So what about the positive intuition pumps. Well, I hate to disappoint, but there is really just one, which is try to use "reductio ad absurdum". Others are some wise remarks that do not IMO count as thought experiment let alone intuition pumps (remember the latter is a special case of the former). Here is one example called Sturgeon's law. Science fiction writer Sturgeon agrees 90% of science fiction is crud. But 90% of anything is crud. So don't waste time hooting at the crap.
Surely, I'm not hooting at the crap. Rather, I'm warning you of the relatively low density of intellectual wisdom.
May 20, 2024
Date first finished: 21 September 2013
Date second finished: 19 January 2014
This is an excellent book that gives a good introduction to some of the ways of doing philosophy. The first section has perhaps some of the most valuable advice for engaging with ideas and their proponents, and is something I will probably return to again and again to sharpen my tools for evaluating claims. The very first thing that Dennett encourages is for thinkers to make mistakes. It is important not to be afraid of making mistakes because it is by making mistakes that one is able learn more effectively. Another really interesting set of thinking tools are Rapoport's Rules and Sturgeon's Law. Rapoport's rules are as follows:
1.) Restate the opponents position so fairly and so accurately that the opponent says, "Thanks. I wish I had thought of putting it like that."
2.) Point out anywhere where you and the opponent are in agreement, especially if it is a point not widely held.
3.) Note anything that you have learned from your opponent.
4.) Only then can you offer anything by way of criticism.
Sturgeon's Law is also a very interesting concept that says that as a general rule, 90% of everything is garbage. Even if it is the case that 90% of everything produced by any field is garbage, that does not mean one can dismiss the 10% that is quality work. Instead, it is important engage with that 10%, and use that as the standard of quality.
The last thinking tool I will mention, which will hopefully make readers want to read the rest of the book, is something like a converse to Occam's razor, the law of parsimony that states that one should not multiple assumptions beyond necessity, that is, the simplest explanation is most often the best explanation. Converse to this idea is Occam's broom. Occam's broom is when someone making a claim sweeps inconvenient facts away as an attempt to make his/her case appear more sound than it actually is. As an example, Dennett brings up conspiracy theorists who are masters of wielding Occam's broom in order to make their claims of conspiracy fit the situation by either dismissing or overlooking important facts that would invalidate their cases.
These are just some of the very interesting topics that are brought up in this book. I highly recommend it to everyone who has ever expressed a desire to sharpen their thinking.
Date second finished: 19 January 2014
This is an excellent book that gives a good introduction to some of the ways of doing philosophy. The first section has perhaps some of the most valuable advice for engaging with ideas and their proponents, and is something I will probably return to again and again to sharpen my tools for evaluating claims. The very first thing that Dennett encourages is for thinkers to make mistakes. It is important not to be afraid of making mistakes because it is by making mistakes that one is able learn more effectively. Another really interesting set of thinking tools are Rapoport's Rules and Sturgeon's Law. Rapoport's rules are as follows:
1.) Restate the opponents position so fairly and so accurately that the opponent says, "Thanks. I wish I had thought of putting it like that."
2.) Point out anywhere where you and the opponent are in agreement, especially if it is a point not widely held.
3.) Note anything that you have learned from your opponent.
4.) Only then can you offer anything by way of criticism.
Sturgeon's Law is also a very interesting concept that says that as a general rule, 90% of everything is garbage. Even if it is the case that 90% of everything produced by any field is garbage, that does not mean one can dismiss the 10% that is quality work. Instead, it is important engage with that 10%, and use that as the standard of quality.
The last thinking tool I will mention, which will hopefully make readers want to read the rest of the book, is something like a converse to Occam's razor, the law of parsimony that states that one should not multiple assumptions beyond necessity, that is, the simplest explanation is most often the best explanation. Converse to this idea is Occam's broom. Occam's broom is when someone making a claim sweeps inconvenient facts away as an attempt to make his/her case appear more sound than it actually is. As an example, Dennett brings up conspiracy theorists who are masters of wielding Occam's broom in order to make their claims of conspiracy fit the situation by either dismissing or overlooking important facts that would invalidate their cases.
These are just some of the very interesting topics that are brought up in this book. I highly recommend it to everyone who has ever expressed a desire to sharpen their thinking.
May 7, 2018
Favorite sections include all/most of Section II: A Donzen General Thinking Tools - a clear set of tools to go out into the world with. "Rather"|"Surely" (ding!) And the following favorite chapters include: Murder in Trafalgar Square, Manifest Image and Scientific Image, The Intentional Stance, The Sorta Operator, The Library of Mendel: Vast and Vanishing, The Zombic Hunch, Zombies and Zimboes, and Heterophenomenology. Dennett is a writer that leads me to believe that I have some kind of adult/reading version of ADD. My ability to focus on what he's saying drops dramatically compared with other philosophy readings for some reason. This isn't to say that the writing is bad, I just know now to not read Dennett when I have a lot on my mind. The advice to philosophy students in the ending chapters is honest, and I think it is advice carefully given ..."[D]on't count on the validation of your fellow graduate students or your favorite professors to settle the issue [the issue about whether or not you're doing philosophy "right" or if it's the "career for you."] They all have vested interest in keeping the enterprise going. It's what they know how to do; it's what they are good at. This is a problem in other fields too, and it can be even harder to break out of. (...) My point is that you should not settle complacently into a seat on the bandwagon just because you have found some brilliant fellow travelers who find your work on the issue as unignorable as you find theirs. You may all be taking each other for a ride." (p.422 - 424.)
July 22, 2017
I stayed with it until Consciousness, where I lost mine several times before limping to the end. The title is a misnomer; it is not a handy guide to navigating your decisions in life, etc, or even a practical 80 steps to improving your mind. It is a series of short chapters of philosophical tidbits designed to introduce as much of Dennett's own nomenclature as possible to see what sticks (immortality!), and in the meantime showing how terribly misguided his fellow philosophers are, supported by lots of references to his own work. I've never read a book that references its own author so frequently. In general, it made my head hurt, and paralysed me from reading other things until I had stubbornly finished it. For which I hate it. Especially for taking advantage of my good nature and forcing me to slog through how computer programs work. Did I add I hated it? I've read other Dennett books, but I think I will stop now. He's clever, I get it.
May 10, 2016
What a mind... Dennett is that rarest of beings: a philosopher who presents his ideas undumbed down, and with crystal clarity, for a lay readership. Not only does he respect his untrained readers, he genuinely strives to educate them and to spur their own deeper learning and inquiry. The long and the short is this: every time I finish one of his books, I am (I think) smarter than I was when I began. It's amazing how much food for thought Dennett packs between the covers of each, and how artfully he composes them. In addition to being a first-rate thinker, Dennett is a superb stylist. And so I say, of yet another Dennett title: I loved it! Here's hoping Dennett has many years of writing still to come.
January 7, 2015
Summary: There's a lot of interesting stuff here if you can struggle through it and are prepared to put in some hard thinking time over it (which you should be, if you're reading a book on philosophy). It's like taking a journey which you have heard is arduous but rewarding. However in this case the journey is also uneven and sometimes tedious, and your companion won't stop playing a Spice Girls medley on the kazoo.
In a bit more detail:
First off, this is a hard book. It wants you to think and it wants you to do the exercises, in fact it needs you to do so to really understand what it's talking about. But what IS it talking about? What ARE intuition pumps? I've finished it but I'm still not sure I could tell you.
The book is broken into lots of short chapters, and the first third of the book is a bit of a trudge, containing lots of common/familiar philosophical problems, and seemingly wandering about over them with little direction. There are some gems in there but nothing really new to me. The middle third turns largely to modelling computation and derives pretty much from first principles an almost-Turing-machine, which is is actually quite nicely done and was interesting to me but flatout stopped my wife reading as it descended into some very technical descriptions. A pity because (as someone already familiar with the field) I actually quite enjoyed this bit. The final third starts to talk about some more interesting and complex philosophical problems such as the theory of mind, and determinism and whether it is compatible with free will. This is occasionally heavy stuff but contains enough to keep me going through it, with some genuinely cute ideas and turns of phrase. Then it all ends a bit abruptly.
All of the above would be worth three stars if it weren't for the author's style of writing. He writes as someone who is extremely condescending and convinced of their own brilliance, explaining it to the pitiful mortals while trying to pretend that he might be a bit like "one of us", despite not actually believing that of himself. It's trying, and annoying. He's clearly very smart and sometimes writes engaging prose, but after a few pages you just feel like you want to slap him. I don't think his communication style is particularly clear either, but that might be fine since the book seems to be aimed at a level a few steps above the usual pop-science type book.
I wouldn't recommend it.
In a bit more detail:
First off, this is a hard book. It wants you to think and it wants you to do the exercises, in fact it needs you to do so to really understand what it's talking about. But what IS it talking about? What ARE intuition pumps? I've finished it but I'm still not sure I could tell you.
The book is broken into lots of short chapters, and the first third of the book is a bit of a trudge, containing lots of common/familiar philosophical problems, and seemingly wandering about over them with little direction. There are some gems in there but nothing really new to me. The middle third turns largely to modelling computation and derives pretty much from first principles an almost-Turing-machine, which is is actually quite nicely done and was interesting to me but flatout stopped my wife reading as it descended into some very technical descriptions. A pity because (as someone already familiar with the field) I actually quite enjoyed this bit. The final third starts to talk about some more interesting and complex philosophical problems such as the theory of mind, and determinism and whether it is compatible with free will. This is occasionally heavy stuff but contains enough to keep me going through it, with some genuinely cute ideas and turns of phrase. Then it all ends a bit abruptly.
All of the above would be worth three stars if it weren't for the author's style of writing. He writes as someone who is extremely condescending and convinced of their own brilliance, explaining it to the pitiful mortals while trying to pretend that he might be a bit like "one of us", despite not actually believing that of himself. It's trying, and annoying. He's clearly very smart and sometimes writes engaging prose, but after a few pages you just feel like you want to slap him. I don't think his communication style is particularly clear either, but that might be fine since the book seems to be aimed at a level a few steps above the usual pop-science type book.
I wouldn't recommend it.
July 31, 2013
I won't plagiarize another reviewer by pointing any prospective reader of Dennett's book to Sturgeon's Law, but for those listening: consult Sturgeon's Law.
10% of this book is extremely interesting - which for a 500 page book can seem reasonable and tiring on the same plane. Cf. every book Dennett has ever written on consciousness if you want to avoid the hassle (it's the topic he has theorized on tenaciously during his 30-year career as a mainstream philosopher). You'll notice he conveniently cites himself far too often (even a forthcoming book at one point) or just lops chunks of his older writings into neat little paragraphs for you to digest. Therefore, this book is a summary mostly.
His objectives seemed vague to me for a few reasons. First, there were often chapters that felt like narrative interludes where Dennett could discuss pure philosophical praxis. What was the point of these sporadic divisions?
Second, the unceasing referrals to parts later in the book that build on earlier topics shows cohesion in the subject matter - an interconnectivity that Dennett himself seems to value. However, this does not lend itself to the most concise structuring of this particular philosophical monograph.
Third, spending time debasing other philosophers, science, science AND philosophy, religion, religion and science, computers, argument-logic, and other intuition pumps (that, by the way, are not meant to be intuition pumps since most are OPTION B: "Name Preservers" [last chapter]) is tiresome and feels wayward from giving us thinking tools about thinking (meta-).
Finally, Dennett gets by on giving us footnotes to arguments and tangible evidence that we need to go and access outside the text. Otherwise, I feel Dennett's own views are obfuscated and each new topic is introduced with critical reviewal and no apparent philosophical "attempt" at an aporetic stance by the end.
Don't look down on me or other philosophy students, Dan. Don't throw us all under the bus too quickly or else you may find you'll have thrown out the proverbial baby with the bath-water, Dan. Don't talk cute to me, Dan, I deserve some formal prose in my philosophy reading. It hurts my feelings and I wasn't expecting a literal coup on my love of philosophy by reading your book, I just wanted to learn something new.
10% of this book is extremely interesting - which for a 500 page book can seem reasonable and tiring on the same plane. Cf. every book Dennett has ever written on consciousness if you want to avoid the hassle (it's the topic he has theorized on tenaciously during his 30-year career as a mainstream philosopher). You'll notice he conveniently cites himself far too often (even a forthcoming book at one point) or just lops chunks of his older writings into neat little paragraphs for you to digest. Therefore, this book is a summary mostly.
His objectives seemed vague to me for a few reasons. First, there were often chapters that felt like narrative interludes where Dennett could discuss pure philosophical praxis. What was the point of these sporadic divisions?
Second, the unceasing referrals to parts later in the book that build on earlier topics shows cohesion in the subject matter - an interconnectivity that Dennett himself seems to value. However, this does not lend itself to the most concise structuring of this particular philosophical monograph.
Third, spending time debasing other philosophers, science, science AND philosophy, religion, religion and science, computers, argument-logic, and other intuition pumps (that, by the way, are not meant to be intuition pumps since most are OPTION B: "Name Preservers" [last chapter]) is tiresome and feels wayward from giving us thinking tools about thinking (meta-).
Finally, Dennett gets by on giving us footnotes to arguments and tangible evidence that we need to go and access outside the text. Otherwise, I feel Dennett's own views are obfuscated and each new topic is introduced with critical reviewal and no apparent philosophical "attempt" at an aporetic stance by the end.
Don't look down on me or other philosophy students, Dan. Don't throw us all under the bus too quickly or else you may find you'll have thrown out the proverbial baby with the bath-water, Dan. Don't talk cute to me, Dan, I deserve some formal prose in my philosophy reading. It hurts my feelings and I wasn't expecting a literal coup on my love of philosophy by reading your book, I just wanted to learn something new.
May 31, 2013
(NOTE: I received my copy of the book from the GoodReads giveaways.)
Let me begin by saying that this is the first book that I have read by Mr Dennett. I hear him referenced from time to time in books, articles, or lectures (mostly in the area of the philosophy of religion). I wanted to read some of his work, and GoodReads was kind enough to help me with that.
However, I am not sure that this would be the best book for someone to "try out" Mr Dennett's writing. The book is great, to be sure (the parts I understood anyhow). The thing is, from my point of view, this book seemed to fit somewhere in Mr Dennett's literary world. The work seemed to carry on a conversation that he may have started somewhere else, in another work. Not being familiar with his work, I may have misread it or I may have come in halfway. The book is nice though.
Mr Dennett begins the book talking about how we think about things, some presuppositions and some basic cognitive tools. He then begins to get into some interesting thought experiments. There is a brief interlude on computers that lost me entirely, as I am computer illiterate. Then he gets into some more thought experiments and thinking tools/prods.
Another thing that should be noted is that this is a work of academic philosophy. There are some technical terms and a certain kind of academic garb that Mr Dennett dresses his ideas in. I am not an academic philosopher, so some of it was lost on me I am sure. Reading this book is not like picking up Plato or some other literary kind of philosopher. There is some heavy lifting involved in reading the book. I had to re-read a thing or two.
There are lots of interesting citations and interactions with other philosophers, living and dead, that give the book a very practical/useful feel to it. Mr Dennett give good examples and illustrations of how things can be put into practice.
It was a challenging read for me. So, if you like academic philosophy or books about the theory of the mind then the book is worth your time. It was an interesting overview of the way Mr Dennett approaches the thinking process and (may?) serve one as a guide to how he conducts his scholarly writing.
May 21, 2013
This introduces itself as a collection of tricks and tips for philosophical reasoning. What is an essay papering over a gap? What makes a good thought experiment? When faced with one of the classic philosopher's parables (the Chinese Room, the Duplicating Teleporter) how do you figure out whether it's leading your intuition in a useful direction or only distracting you from the point?
(Some of these tips are nifty examples of "turning the knobs" on thought experiments, creating variants with different intuitive consequences. Others are simple rules of thumb: if a philosopher uses "surely" or "arguably" in a sentence, watch out!)
After the introductory bits, Dennett starts applying these arguments to his standard topics: evolution, free will, and consciousness. He's still exercising arguments to see how well they stand up, but he's doing it as part of a pocket tour of these pet topics. Which is fine; there's been a lot of back-and-forth in the field since I read _Godel Escher Bach_ and it's good to keep up to date.
Inevitably, there's a lot of "my thought experiments are interesting and my opponents' are broken". Dennett tries not to be a jerk about this -- he prefers to poke holes in his critics' certainties without claiming to be certain about his own beliefs -- but these *are* his topics, and he's opinionated. (Interest: I agree with Dennett's opinions about all this stuff.) For what it's worth, he's also assiduous about referencing both sides of each debate.
I found the thing extremely readable. The book is organized in lots of tiny chapters, each focussing on one point or example of argument. If Dennett's previous books on consciousness and evolution seemed like unscalable walls of text, I'd recommend trying this one. If you're already a Dennett fan, this book will be a quick read with a few interesting updates on the familiar arguments.
(Some of these tips are nifty examples of "turning the knobs" on thought experiments, creating variants with different intuitive consequences. Others are simple rules of thumb: if a philosopher uses "surely" or "arguably" in a sentence, watch out!)
After the introductory bits, Dennett starts applying these arguments to his standard topics: evolution, free will, and consciousness. He's still exercising arguments to see how well they stand up, but he's doing it as part of a pocket tour of these pet topics. Which is fine; there's been a lot of back-and-forth in the field since I read _Godel Escher Bach_ and it's good to keep up to date.
Inevitably, there's a lot of "my thought experiments are interesting and my opponents' are broken". Dennett tries not to be a jerk about this -- he prefers to poke holes in his critics' certainties without claiming to be certain about his own beliefs -- but these *are* his topics, and he's opinionated. (Interest: I agree with Dennett's opinions about all this stuff.) For what it's worth, he's also assiduous about referencing both sides of each debate.
I found the thing extremely readable. The book is organized in lots of tiny chapters, each focussing on one point or example of argument. If Dennett's previous books on consciousness and evolution seemed like unscalable walls of text, I'd recommend trying this one. If you're already a Dennett fan, this book will be a quick read with a few interesting updates on the familiar arguments.
May 15, 2018
Dennett collects in this book an interesting inventory of special thought experiments defined by him as intuition pumps. The definition he proposes goes along with what they really do to you: pump your intuition up. They kind guide your thinking towards the core of the subject matter dealt with.
However, as there are some badly designed thought experiments, this is also true for intuition pumps. Dennets explores the bad ones brilliantly. In some very famous cases, the bad ones hold such strong appeal to our intuition that you really need a professional and careful philosopher, such as Dennett, to show you the way out of it.
How Dennett manages to create good intuition pumps as well as spot the failures on the bad ones? I noticed Dennett's approach is very science-oriented making his work likely to belong to the Scientific Realism school of thinking, which is highly recommended if you are to do some thinking without fooling yourself with most of the world’s shenanigans.
So if you care about topics such as Evolution, Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence and Free Will this book falls into the category. It’s not such a heavy reading, as the author's writing is not loaded with jargon and he gets very entertainment at some points. No need to worry about getting bored to death.
However, as there are some badly designed thought experiments, this is also true for intuition pumps. Dennets explores the bad ones brilliantly. In some very famous cases, the bad ones hold such strong appeal to our intuition that you really need a professional and careful philosopher, such as Dennett, to show you the way out of it.
How Dennett manages to create good intuition pumps as well as spot the failures on the bad ones? I noticed Dennett's approach is very science-oriented making his work likely to belong to the Scientific Realism school of thinking, which is highly recommended if you are to do some thinking without fooling yourself with most of the world’s shenanigans.
So if you care about topics such as Evolution, Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence and Free Will this book falls into the category. It’s not such a heavy reading, as the author's writing is not loaded with jargon and he gets very entertainment at some points. No need to worry about getting bored to death.
February 12, 2016
Somehow I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I was expecting to. What was I expecting? I dunno... a textbook on critical thinking written from the perspective of a philosopher? A list of important human mental techniques that an ideal AI should contain?
Something was just too folksy-abstract for me to really get into it.
I liked Dennett's books Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness and Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind much better.
But on my library's 2016 adult reading challenge I'm now down 2, 6 to go!
Something was just too folksy-abstract for me to really get into it.
I liked Dennett's books Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness and Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind much better.
But on my library's 2016 adult reading challenge I'm now down 2, 6 to go!
June 8, 2017
As usual Daniel Dennett has written another good book. There's a lot to think about in this one. He covers various ways philosophers use to sharpen their thinking--a very admirable collection. He seemed to use the tools for thought, “intuition pumps” he calls them to make points about some of his favorite topics, such as, consciousness, artificial intelligence, evolution, and free will. I have to say that I disagreed with or had questions about some of what he wrote, which is a good thing to have, especially when reading philosophy. Unfortunately, I can't recall any at the time of writing this review. For the most part, the book was thought provoking and was enjoyable to read.
February 9, 2017
Interessant, maar die filosofen kunnen soms toch wel heel lang stilstaan en blijven tobben over een probleem dat veel sneller en korter kan beredeneerd worden.
Ik hoopte dat dat bij Dennett anders ging zijn. Maar nee...
Ik hoopte dat dat bij Dennett anders ging zijn. Maar nee...
December 11, 2014
A wonderful little book about how to think. The "turning the knobs" idea is something I've already begun to use.
It's actually a surprisingly nice introduction to computer science if you need it.
It's actually a surprisingly nice introduction to computer science if you need it.
February 8, 2014
Dennett, Daniel C. (2013). Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. London: Allen Lane. 2013. ISBN 9780141970127. Pagine 458. 14,03 €
images-amazon.com
Ho incontrato Dan più di 30 anni fa, e da allora ci siamo sempre frequentati, anche se a volte ci siamo persi di vista per lunghi periodi. Me l'aveva presentato Doug Hofstadter, ma poi siamo diventati amici indipendentemente da lui …
Mi piacerebbe poterlo scrivere non soltanto metaforicamente, ma la realtà letterale è che – dopo avere letto Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (non riesco a ricordare in quale anno, ma la mia copia è molto consunta ed è datata 1983) di Douglas R. Hofstadter, ed esserne rimasto folgorato (è certamente uno di quei libri che hanno contribuito più profondamente a cambiare il mio modo di pensare) – mi sono imbattuto in The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, di cui Hofstadter era autore insieme a Daniel C. Dennett, all'epoca a me del tutto sconosciuto. Anzi, se devo essere sincero (sì, lo so che sono liberissimo di non esserlo, è soltanto un modo di dire), dall'alto della mia spocchia eurocentrica ero molto diffidente rispetto alla possibilità che potessero esistere dei filosofi americani. Per Hofstadter era stato amore a prima vista, cresciuto libro dopo libro (Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern del 1985, anche se io ho l'edizione Penguin del 1986; Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought del 1995) fino allo struggente Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language del 1997. Paradossalmente, questo amore prima incondizionato ha mostrato qualche incrinatura proprio da quando ho avuto occasione di conoscere Doug Hofstadter personalmente nel 2004: ma forse quella di nutrire dubbi è una caratteristica dell'amore maturo. Resta il fatto che I Am a Strange Loop del 2007 mi è piaciuto meno degli altri libri (ne ho scritto una recensione su questo blog, che trovate qui).
Per Dennett le cose sono state molto diverse. A differenza di Hofstadter, Dennett non è un seduttore. Si concede con estrema riluttanza (sì, come il San Bernardo di cui scrive Snoopy).
linkiesta.it
Per anni, pur trovando interessanti i temi e le argomentazioni di Dennett, ho fatto molta fatica a leggerlo. Scriveva – se posso esprimermi così – da filosofo. Non pretendo mi crediate sulla parola. Facciamo così: riporto qui sotto l'inizio del primo capitolo di Brainstorms. Saggi filosofici sulla mente e la psicologia nella traduzione italiana edita da Adelphi, e voi giudicate da soli:
In questo capitolo esaminerò il concetto di un sistema il cui comportamento può, almeno occasionalmente, essere spiegato e previsto attribuendogli credenze e desideri (e speranze, paure, intenzioni, impressioni, ecc.). Chiamerò tali sistemi sistemi intenzionali, e tali spiegazioni e previsioni spiegazioni e previsioni intenzionali, in virtù dell'intenzionalità delle espressioni tipiche usate per designare le credenze e i desideri (e le speranze, le paure, le intenzioni, le impressioni, ecc.).
In passato, mi ostinavo a scrivere «intenzionale» con la I maiuscola ogni volta che intendevo usare la nozione di intenzionalità di Brentano, per distinguere questo termine tecnico da quello comune, per esempio, nell'espressione «una spinta intenzionale»; ma ora il termine tecnico è molto più usato, e poiché quasi tutti quelli che lo usano non sembrano preoccuparsi del rischio di confusione, ho deciso, con qualche trepidazione, di abbandonare questa eccentricità tipografica. Ma il lettore non iniziato si ritenga avvertito: «intenzionale» nel senso in cui appare qui non è il termine consueto della lingua ordinaria. Per me, come per molti autori contemporanei, l'intenzionalità è in primo luogo una caratteristica delle entità linguistiche – idiotismi, contesti – e per gli scopi che qui mi prefiggo basterà dire che un'espressione è intenzionale se la sostituzione di termini codesignativi non ne conserva la verità o se gli «oggetti» di queste espressioni non possono essere trattati nel modo usuale con i quantificatori. [pp. 37-38]
Si potrebbe usare questo testo in un corso di scrittura per illustrare come non si scrive un testo per non addetti ai lavori: frasi lunghe, vocaboli inconsueti introdotti senza spiegarli (che cosa diavolo sono i termini codesignativi?), gergo specifico della disciplina. E, soprattutto, il malcelato disprezzo per il lettore non iniziato che deve essere avvertito; disprezzo rivelatore della circostanza che il lettore ideale sarebbe invece il lettore iniziato.
Poi sono successe due cose che hanno del miracoloso. La prima è che, tutto d'un tratto, Dennett ha imparato a scrivere per un pubblico di non filosofi, per un pubblico cioè di persone di media cultura e con una bella voglia di imparare delle cose nuove: non dev'essere stato facile per lui e immagino abbia richiesto uno sforzo di volontà e l'acquisizione di tecniche e strumenti specifici. La seconda è che ha scritto anche lui un libro fondamentale, un altro di quei libri che hanno cambiato in modo permanente il mio modo di pensare: Consciousness Explained. Prima di leggerlo – durante le vacanze di natale del 1993-1994 a Roccamare, direi, dal momento che ho la seconda ristampa, 1993, dell'edizione Penguin, anche se il libro è del 1991 – ero pigramente convinto che quello della consciousness fosse un problema intrattabile, da lasciare alle elucubrazioni dei metafisici. Ricordo ancora l'emozione, la gioia, la sensazione di avere fatto una scoperta importante che quella lettura mi aveva lasciato. Ancora più delle argomentazioni di Dennett, che nel tempo si sono per lo più arricchite di significato e di elementi a sostegno, ma qualche volta si sono anche dimostrate sbagliate, è stato fare la scoperta, e raggiungere la convinzione, che non vi fosse nessun tema, nessuno, che non potesse e dovesse essere affrontato, e fruttuosamente, con i metodi e gli strumenti della scienza. Questa sensazione mi è rimasta dopo tutti questi anni, inseparabile da quelle vacanze di natale, dalle passeggiate in pineta con i miei figli (8 e 10 anni) e dagli esperimenti sulla tastiera (Bach, certamente; Wachet auf?).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHhuyh...]
* * *
Quanto alle intuition pumps, penso di averle incontrate la prima volta – o, almeno, di essere stato per la prima volta consapevole del loro potenziale come strumento del pensiero – in un intervento di Daniel Dennett su Edge, il sito/blog (ante litteram) di John Brockman. Da allora le ho sempre usate nella mia prima lezione all'università, per cercare di stabilire un percorso intuitivo prima di procedere alle tradizionali (e pallose) spiegazioni deduttive, o come diavolo si chiamano. Ecco il testo che usavo:
If you look at the history of philosophy, you see that all the great and influential stuff has been technically full of holes but utterly memorable and vivid. They are what I call “intuition pumps” — lovely thought experiments. Like Plato's cave, and Descartes's evil demon, and Hobbes' vision of the state of nature and the social contract, and even Kant's
idea of the categorical imperative. I don't know of any philosopher who thinks any one of those is a logically sound argument for anything. But they're wonderful imagination grabbers, jungle gyms for the imagination. They structure the way you think about a problem. These are the real legacy of the history of philosophy. A lot of philosophers have
forgotten that, but I like to make intuition pumps.
[…]
I coined the term "intuition pump," and its first use was derogatory. […] I went on to say that intuition pumps are fine if they're used correctly, but they can also be misused. They're not arguments, they're stories. Instead of having a conclusion, they pump an intuition. They get you to say “Aha! Oh, I get it!”
The idea of consciousness as a virtual machine is a nice intuition pump. It takes a while to set up, because a lot of the jargon of artificial intelligence and computer science is unfamiliar to philosophers or other people. But if you have the patience to set some of these ideas up, then you can say, “Hey! Try thinking about the idea that what we have in
our heads is software. It's a virtual machine, in the same way that a word processor is a virtual machine.” Suddenly, bells start ringing, and people start seeing things from a slightly different perspective.
[Dennett, Daniel C. “Intuition Pumps”. In: Brockman, John (ed.). The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1995]
* * *
Quando la scorsa primavera ho saputo dell'uscita del nuovo libro di Dennett e ne ho letto il titolo mi sono detto: «Bene, questa volta Dennett ci propone la cassetta degli attrezzi del pensatore, o del filosofo che dir si voglia». Non mi sbagliavo. In effetti, proprio nel primo capitolo, Dennett spiega i suoi intenti in modo particolarmente chiaro (già che ci siete, per favore, notate quanta distanza ci sia tra il chiaro e godibile Dennett di adesso e quello che cercava un lettore iniziato!). Lasciamo a lui la parola (abbiate pazienza, ma questa lunga citazione e sintesi del capitolo introduttivo è necessaria; soprattutto per voi che non avete ancora letto il libro, se posso essere un po' paternalistico):
Thinking is hard. Thinking about some problems is so hard it can make your head ache just thinking about thinking about them. My colleague the neuropsychologist Marcel Kinsbourne suggests that whenever we find thinking hard, it is because the stony path to truth is competing with seductive, easier paths that turn out to be dead ends. Most of the effort in thinking is a matter of resisting these temptations. [pos. Kindle 161]
[…]
Some people, like von Neumann, are such natural geniuses that they can breeze through the toughest tangles; others are more plodding but are blessed with a heroic supply of “willpower” that helps them stay the course in their dogged pursuit of truth. Then there are the rest of us, not calculating prodigies and a little bit lazy, but still aspiring to understand whatever confronts us. What can we do? We can use thinking tools, by the dozens. These handy prosthetic imagination-extenders and focus-holders permit us to think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions. This book is a collection of my favorite thinking tools. I will not just describe them; I intend to use them to move your mind gently through uncomfortable territory all the way to a quite radical vision of meaning, mind, and free will. We will begin with some tools that are simple and general, having applications to all sorts of topics. Some of these are familiar, but others have not been much noticed or discussed. Then I will introduce you to some tools that are for very special purposes indeed, designed to explode one specific seductive idea or another, clearing a way out of a deep rut that still traps and flummoxes experts. We will also encounter and dismantle a variety of bad thinking tools, misbegotten persuasion-devices that can lead you astray if you aren’t careful. Whether or not you arrive comfortably at my proposed destination – and decide to stay there with me – the journey will equip you with new ways of thinking about the topics, and thinking about thinking. [174-184]
[…]
Like all artisans, a blacksmith needs tools, but – according to an old (indeed almost extinct) observation – blacksmiths are unique in that they make their own tools. Carpenters don’t make their saws and hammers, tailors don’t make their scissors and needles, and plumbers don’t make their wrenches, but blacksmiths can make their hammers, tongs, anvils, and chisels out of their raw material, iron. What about thinking tools? Who makes them? And what are they made of? Philosophers have made some of the best of them – out of nothing but ideas, useful structures of information. René Descartes gave us Cartesian coordinates, the x- and y-axes without which calculus – a thinking tool par excellence simultaneously invented by Isaac Newton and the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – would be almost unthinkable. Blaise Pascal gave us probability theory so we can easily calculate the odds of various wagers. The Reverend Thomas Bayes was also a talented mathematician, and he gave us Bayes’s theorem¸ the backbone of Bayesian statistical thinking. But most of the tools that feature in this book are simpler ones, not the precise, systematic machines of mathematics and science but the hand tools of the mind. Among them are
Labels. Sometimes just creating a vivid name for something helps you keep track of it while you turn it around in your mind trying to understand it. Among the most useful labels, as we shall see, are warning labels or alarms, which alert us to likely sources of error.
Examples. Some philosophers think that using examples in their work is, if not quite cheating, at least uncalled for –rather the way novelists shun illustrations in their novels. The novelists take pride in doing it all with words, and the philosophers take pride in doing it all with carefully crafted abstract generalizations presented in rigorous order, as close to mathematical proofs as they can muster. Good for them, but they can’t expect me to recommend their work to any but a few remarkable students. It’s just more difficult than it has to be.
Analogies and metaphors. Mapping the features of one complex thing onto the features of another complex thing that you already (think you) understand is a famously powerful thinking tool, but it is so powerful that it often leads thinkers astray when their imaginations get captured by a treacherous analogy.
Staging. You can shingle a roof, paint a house, or fix a chimney with the help of just a ladder, moving it and climbing, moving it and climbing, getting access to only a small part of the job at a time, but it’s often a lot easier in the end to take the time at the beginning to erect some sturdy staging that will allow you to move swiftly and safely around the whole project. Several of the most valuable thinking tools in this book are examples of staging that take some time to put in place but then permit a variety of problems to be tackled together – without all the ladder-moving.
And, finally, the sort of thought experiments I have dubbed intuition pumps. [193-216]
[…]
Other thought experiments are less rigorous but often just as effective: little stories designed to provoke a heartfelt, table-thumping intuition – “Yes, of course, it has to be so!” – about whatever thesis is being defended. I have called these intuition pumps. I coined the term in the first of my public critiques of philosopher John Searle’s famous Chinese Room thought experiment (Searle, 1980; Dennett, 1980), and some thinkers concluded I meant the term to be disparaging or dismissive. On the contrary, I love intuition pumps! That is, some intuition pumps are excellent, some are dubious, and only a few are downright deceptive. Intuition pumps have been a dominant force in philosophy for centuries. They are the philosophers’ version of Aesop’s fables, which have been recognized as wonderful thinking tools since before there were philosophers. If you ever studied philosophy in college, you were probably exposed to such classics as Plato’s cave, in The Republic, in which people are chained and can see only the shadows of real things cast on the cave wall; or his example, in Meno, of teaching geometry to the slave boy. Then there is Descartes’s evil demon, deceiving Descartes into believing in a world that was entirely illusory – the original Virtual Reality thought experiment – and Hobbes’s state of nature, in which life is nasty, brutish, and short. [227-235]
[…]
This self-conscious wariness with which we should approach any intuition pump is itself an important tool for thinking, the philosophers’ favorite tactic: “going meta” – thinking about thinking, talking about talking, reasoning about reasoning. Meta-language is the language we use to talk about another language, and meta-ethics is a bird’s-eye view examination of ethical theories. [276]
[…]
Some of the most powerful thinking tools are mathematical, but aside from mentioning them, I will not devote much space to them because this is a book celebrating the power of non-mathematical tools, informal tools, the tools of prose and poetry, if you like, a power that scientists often underestimate. [304]
[…]
I have always figured that if I can’t explain something I’m doing to a group of bright undergraduates, I don’t really understand it myself, and that challenge has shaped everything I have written. [322: non proprio sempre e non proprio tutto quello che ha scritto, come abbiamo toccato con mano; ma perdoniamogliela, questa piccola innocente bugia]
[…]
In the first section that follows, I present a dozen general, all-purpose tools, and then in subsequent sections I group the rest of the entries not by the type of tool but by the topic where the tool works best, turning first to the most fundamental philosophical topic – meaning, or content – followed by evolution, consciousness, and free will. A few of the tools I present are actual software, friendly devices that can do for your naked imagination what telescopes and microscopes can do for your naked eye.
Along the way, I will also introduce some false friends, tools that blow smoke instead of shining light. [354]
Ecco, il problema secondo me è tutto qui. Ho trovato la sezione dedicata agli all-purpose tools particolarmente azzeccata, e fedele al titolo del libro e al suo programma (è in effetti la seconda, A dozen general thinking tools, perché la prima Introduction: what is an intuition pump? è quella che ho appena riassunto). Poi è un progressivo calando, via via che l'attenzione si sposta dal tipo di strumento all'argomento al quale (secondo Dennett) quello strumento meglio si attaglia. Se sentite un po' di puzza di bruciato, è perché il trucco c'è: poiché si tratta di argomenti di cui Dennett ha già scritto a lungo in passato, si resta con il dubbio che ci sia un po' di riciclaggio e che alla fin fine a Dennett interessi soprattutto tornare sulle sue concezioni dell'evoluzione, della consciousness e del libero arbitrio.
Giusto per la cronaca: personalmente ho trovato nel libro un gradiente negativo. Le sezioni sono (dopo la prima e la seconda, di cui abbiamo già citato il titolo):
Tools for thinking about meaning or content
An interlude about computers
More tools about meaning
Tools for thinking about evolution
Tools for thinking about consciousness
Tools for thinking about free will
What is it like to be a philosopher? (questa sezione è proprio appiccicata lì e non c'entra nulla con tutto quello che viene detto prima; forse Dennett è pagato a righe come Dumas?)
Use the tools. Try Harder
What got left out.
images-amazon.com
Ho incontrato Dan più di 30 anni fa, e da allora ci siamo sempre frequentati, anche se a volte ci siamo persi di vista per lunghi periodi. Me l'aveva presentato Doug Hofstadter, ma poi siamo diventati amici indipendentemente da lui …
Mi piacerebbe poterlo scrivere non soltanto metaforicamente, ma la realtà letterale è che – dopo avere letto Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (non riesco a ricordare in quale anno, ma la mia copia è molto consunta ed è datata 1983) di Douglas R. Hofstadter, ed esserne rimasto folgorato (è certamente uno di quei libri che hanno contribuito più profondamente a cambiare il mio modo di pensare) – mi sono imbattuto in The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, di cui Hofstadter era autore insieme a Daniel C. Dennett, all'epoca a me del tutto sconosciuto. Anzi, se devo essere sincero (sì, lo so che sono liberissimo di non esserlo, è soltanto un modo di dire), dall'alto della mia spocchia eurocentrica ero molto diffidente rispetto alla possibilità che potessero esistere dei filosofi americani. Per Hofstadter era stato amore a prima vista, cresciuto libro dopo libro (Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern del 1985, anche se io ho l'edizione Penguin del 1986; Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought del 1995) fino allo struggente Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language del 1997. Paradossalmente, questo amore prima incondizionato ha mostrato qualche incrinatura proprio da quando ho avuto occasione di conoscere Doug Hofstadter personalmente nel 2004: ma forse quella di nutrire dubbi è una caratteristica dell'amore maturo. Resta il fatto che I Am a Strange Loop del 2007 mi è piaciuto meno degli altri libri (ne ho scritto una recensione su questo blog, che trovate qui).
Per Dennett le cose sono state molto diverse. A differenza di Hofstadter, Dennett non è un seduttore. Si concede con estrema riluttanza (sì, come il San Bernardo di cui scrive Snoopy).
linkiesta.it
Per anni, pur trovando interessanti i temi e le argomentazioni di Dennett, ho fatto molta fatica a leggerlo. Scriveva – se posso esprimermi così – da filosofo. Non pretendo mi crediate sulla parola. Facciamo così: riporto qui sotto l'inizio del primo capitolo di Brainstorms. Saggi filosofici sulla mente e la psicologia nella traduzione italiana edita da Adelphi, e voi giudicate da soli:
In questo capitolo esaminerò il concetto di un sistema il cui comportamento può, almeno occasionalmente, essere spiegato e previsto attribuendogli credenze e desideri (e speranze, paure, intenzioni, impressioni, ecc.). Chiamerò tali sistemi sistemi intenzionali, e tali spiegazioni e previsioni spiegazioni e previsioni intenzionali, in virtù dell'intenzionalità delle espressioni tipiche usate per designare le credenze e i desideri (e le speranze, le paure, le intenzioni, le impressioni, ecc.).
In passato, mi ostinavo a scrivere «intenzionale» con la I maiuscola ogni volta che intendevo usare la nozione di intenzionalità di Brentano, per distinguere questo termine tecnico da quello comune, per esempio, nell'espressione «una spinta intenzionale»; ma ora il termine tecnico è molto più usato, e poiché quasi tutti quelli che lo usano non sembrano preoccuparsi del rischio di confusione, ho deciso, con qualche trepidazione, di abbandonare questa eccentricità tipografica. Ma il lettore non iniziato si ritenga avvertito: «intenzionale» nel senso in cui appare qui non è il termine consueto della lingua ordinaria. Per me, come per molti autori contemporanei, l'intenzionalità è in primo luogo una caratteristica delle entità linguistiche – idiotismi, contesti – e per gli scopi che qui mi prefiggo basterà dire che un'espressione è intenzionale se la sostituzione di termini codesignativi non ne conserva la verità o se gli «oggetti» di queste espressioni non possono essere trattati nel modo usuale con i quantificatori. [pp. 37-38]
Si potrebbe usare questo testo in un corso di scrittura per illustrare come non si scrive un testo per non addetti ai lavori: frasi lunghe, vocaboli inconsueti introdotti senza spiegarli (che cosa diavolo sono i termini codesignativi?), gergo specifico della disciplina. E, soprattutto, il malcelato disprezzo per il lettore non iniziato che deve essere avvertito; disprezzo rivelatore della circostanza che il lettore ideale sarebbe invece il lettore iniziato.
Poi sono successe due cose che hanno del miracoloso. La prima è che, tutto d'un tratto, Dennett ha imparato a scrivere per un pubblico di non filosofi, per un pubblico cioè di persone di media cultura e con una bella voglia di imparare delle cose nuove: non dev'essere stato facile per lui e immagino abbia richiesto uno sforzo di volontà e l'acquisizione di tecniche e strumenti specifici. La seconda è che ha scritto anche lui un libro fondamentale, un altro di quei libri che hanno cambiato in modo permanente il mio modo di pensare: Consciousness Explained. Prima di leggerlo – durante le vacanze di natale del 1993-1994 a Roccamare, direi, dal momento che ho la seconda ristampa, 1993, dell'edizione Penguin, anche se il libro è del 1991 – ero pigramente convinto che quello della consciousness fosse un problema intrattabile, da lasciare alle elucubrazioni dei metafisici. Ricordo ancora l'emozione, la gioia, la sensazione di avere fatto una scoperta importante che quella lettura mi aveva lasciato. Ancora più delle argomentazioni di Dennett, che nel tempo si sono per lo più arricchite di significato e di elementi a sostegno, ma qualche volta si sono anche dimostrate sbagliate, è stato fare la scoperta, e raggiungere la convinzione, che non vi fosse nessun tema, nessuno, che non potesse e dovesse essere affrontato, e fruttuosamente, con i metodi e gli strumenti della scienza. Questa sensazione mi è rimasta dopo tutti questi anni, inseparabile da quelle vacanze di natale, dalle passeggiate in pineta con i miei figli (8 e 10 anni) e dagli esperimenti sulla tastiera (Bach, certamente; Wachet auf?).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHhuyh...]
* * *
Quanto alle intuition pumps, penso di averle incontrate la prima volta – o, almeno, di essere stato per la prima volta consapevole del loro potenziale come strumento del pensiero – in un intervento di Daniel Dennett su Edge, il sito/blog (ante litteram) di John Brockman. Da allora le ho sempre usate nella mia prima lezione all'università, per cercare di stabilire un percorso intuitivo prima di procedere alle tradizionali (e pallose) spiegazioni deduttive, o come diavolo si chiamano. Ecco il testo che usavo:
If you look at the history of philosophy, you see that all the great and influential stuff has been technically full of holes but utterly memorable and vivid. They are what I call “intuition pumps” — lovely thought experiments. Like Plato's cave, and Descartes's evil demon, and Hobbes' vision of the state of nature and the social contract, and even Kant's
idea of the categorical imperative. I don't know of any philosopher who thinks any one of those is a logically sound argument for anything. But they're wonderful imagination grabbers, jungle gyms for the imagination. They structure the way you think about a problem. These are the real legacy of the history of philosophy. A lot of philosophers have
forgotten that, but I like to make intuition pumps.
[…]
I coined the term "intuition pump," and its first use was derogatory. […] I went on to say that intuition pumps are fine if they're used correctly, but they can also be misused. They're not arguments, they're stories. Instead of having a conclusion, they pump an intuition. They get you to say “Aha! Oh, I get it!”
The idea of consciousness as a virtual machine is a nice intuition pump. It takes a while to set up, because a lot of the jargon of artificial intelligence and computer science is unfamiliar to philosophers or other people. But if you have the patience to set some of these ideas up, then you can say, “Hey! Try thinking about the idea that what we have in
our heads is software. It's a virtual machine, in the same way that a word processor is a virtual machine.” Suddenly, bells start ringing, and people start seeing things from a slightly different perspective.
[Dennett, Daniel C. “Intuition Pumps”. In: Brockman, John (ed.). The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1995]
* * *
Quando la scorsa primavera ho saputo dell'uscita del nuovo libro di Dennett e ne ho letto il titolo mi sono detto: «Bene, questa volta Dennett ci propone la cassetta degli attrezzi del pensatore, o del filosofo che dir si voglia». Non mi sbagliavo. In effetti, proprio nel primo capitolo, Dennett spiega i suoi intenti in modo particolarmente chiaro (già che ci siete, per favore, notate quanta distanza ci sia tra il chiaro e godibile Dennett di adesso e quello che cercava un lettore iniziato!). Lasciamo a lui la parola (abbiate pazienza, ma questa lunga citazione e sintesi del capitolo introduttivo è necessaria; soprattutto per voi che non avete ancora letto il libro, se posso essere un po' paternalistico):
Thinking is hard. Thinking about some problems is so hard it can make your head ache just thinking about thinking about them. My colleague the neuropsychologist Marcel Kinsbourne suggests that whenever we find thinking hard, it is because the stony path to truth is competing with seductive, easier paths that turn out to be dead ends. Most of the effort in thinking is a matter of resisting these temptations. [pos. Kindle 161]
[…]
Some people, like von Neumann, are such natural geniuses that they can breeze through the toughest tangles; others are more plodding but are blessed with a heroic supply of “willpower” that helps them stay the course in their dogged pursuit of truth. Then there are the rest of us, not calculating prodigies and a little bit lazy, but still aspiring to understand whatever confronts us. What can we do? We can use thinking tools, by the dozens. These handy prosthetic imagination-extenders and focus-holders permit us to think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions. This book is a collection of my favorite thinking tools. I will not just describe them; I intend to use them to move your mind gently through uncomfortable territory all the way to a quite radical vision of meaning, mind, and free will. We will begin with some tools that are simple and general, having applications to all sorts of topics. Some of these are familiar, but others have not been much noticed or discussed. Then I will introduce you to some tools that are for very special purposes indeed, designed to explode one specific seductive idea or another, clearing a way out of a deep rut that still traps and flummoxes experts. We will also encounter and dismantle a variety of bad thinking tools, misbegotten persuasion-devices that can lead you astray if you aren’t careful. Whether or not you arrive comfortably at my proposed destination – and decide to stay there with me – the journey will equip you with new ways of thinking about the topics, and thinking about thinking. [174-184]
[…]
Like all artisans, a blacksmith needs tools, but – according to an old (indeed almost extinct) observation – blacksmiths are unique in that they make their own tools. Carpenters don’t make their saws and hammers, tailors don’t make their scissors and needles, and plumbers don’t make their wrenches, but blacksmiths can make their hammers, tongs, anvils, and chisels out of their raw material, iron. What about thinking tools? Who makes them? And what are they made of? Philosophers have made some of the best of them – out of nothing but ideas, useful structures of information. René Descartes gave us Cartesian coordinates, the x- and y-axes without which calculus – a thinking tool par excellence simultaneously invented by Isaac Newton and the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – would be almost unthinkable. Blaise Pascal gave us probability theory so we can easily calculate the odds of various wagers. The Reverend Thomas Bayes was also a talented mathematician, and he gave us Bayes’s theorem¸ the backbone of Bayesian statistical thinking. But most of the tools that feature in this book are simpler ones, not the precise, systematic machines of mathematics and science but the hand tools of the mind. Among them are
Labels. Sometimes just creating a vivid name for something helps you keep track of it while you turn it around in your mind trying to understand it. Among the most useful labels, as we shall see, are warning labels or alarms, which alert us to likely sources of error.
Examples. Some philosophers think that using examples in their work is, if not quite cheating, at least uncalled for –rather the way novelists shun illustrations in their novels. The novelists take pride in doing it all with words, and the philosophers take pride in doing it all with carefully crafted abstract generalizations presented in rigorous order, as close to mathematical proofs as they can muster. Good for them, but they can’t expect me to recommend their work to any but a few remarkable students. It’s just more difficult than it has to be.
Analogies and metaphors. Mapping the features of one complex thing onto the features of another complex thing that you already (think you) understand is a famously powerful thinking tool, but it is so powerful that it often leads thinkers astray when their imaginations get captured by a treacherous analogy.
Staging. You can shingle a roof, paint a house, or fix a chimney with the help of just a ladder, moving it and climbing, moving it and climbing, getting access to only a small part of the job at a time, but it’s often a lot easier in the end to take the time at the beginning to erect some sturdy staging that will allow you to move swiftly and safely around the whole project. Several of the most valuable thinking tools in this book are examples of staging that take some time to put in place but then permit a variety of problems to be tackled together – without all the ladder-moving.
And, finally, the sort of thought experiments I have dubbed intuition pumps. [193-216]
[…]
Other thought experiments are less rigorous but often just as effective: little stories designed to provoke a heartfelt, table-thumping intuition – “Yes, of course, it has to be so!” – about whatever thesis is being defended. I have called these intuition pumps. I coined the term in the first of my public critiques of philosopher John Searle’s famous Chinese Room thought experiment (Searle, 1980; Dennett, 1980), and some thinkers concluded I meant the term to be disparaging or dismissive. On the contrary, I love intuition pumps! That is, some intuition pumps are excellent, some are dubious, and only a few are downright deceptive. Intuition pumps have been a dominant force in philosophy for centuries. They are the philosophers’ version of Aesop’s fables, which have been recognized as wonderful thinking tools since before there were philosophers. If you ever studied philosophy in college, you were probably exposed to such classics as Plato’s cave, in The Republic, in which people are chained and can see only the shadows of real things cast on the cave wall; or his example, in Meno, of teaching geometry to the slave boy. Then there is Descartes’s evil demon, deceiving Descartes into believing in a world that was entirely illusory – the original Virtual Reality thought experiment – and Hobbes’s state of nature, in which life is nasty, brutish, and short. [227-235]
[…]
This self-conscious wariness with which we should approach any intuition pump is itself an important tool for thinking, the philosophers’ favorite tactic: “going meta” – thinking about thinking, talking about talking, reasoning about reasoning. Meta-language is the language we use to talk about another language, and meta-ethics is a bird’s-eye view examination of ethical theories. [276]
[…]
Some of the most powerful thinking tools are mathematical, but aside from mentioning them, I will not devote much space to them because this is a book celebrating the power of non-mathematical tools, informal tools, the tools of prose and poetry, if you like, a power that scientists often underestimate. [304]
[…]
I have always figured that if I can’t explain something I’m doing to a group of bright undergraduates, I don’t really understand it myself, and that challenge has shaped everything I have written. [322: non proprio sempre e non proprio tutto quello che ha scritto, come abbiamo toccato con mano; ma perdoniamogliela, questa piccola innocente bugia]
[…]
In the first section that follows, I present a dozen general, all-purpose tools, and then in subsequent sections I group the rest of the entries not by the type of tool but by the topic where the tool works best, turning first to the most fundamental philosophical topic – meaning, or content – followed by evolution, consciousness, and free will. A few of the tools I present are actual software, friendly devices that can do for your naked imagination what telescopes and microscopes can do for your naked eye.
Along the way, I will also introduce some false friends, tools that blow smoke instead of shining light. [354]
Ecco, il problema secondo me è tutto qui. Ho trovato la sezione dedicata agli all-purpose tools particolarmente azzeccata, e fedele al titolo del libro e al suo programma (è in effetti la seconda, A dozen general thinking tools, perché la prima Introduction: what is an intuition pump? è quella che ho appena riassunto). Poi è un progressivo calando, via via che l'attenzione si sposta dal tipo di strumento all'argomento al quale (secondo Dennett) quello strumento meglio si attaglia. Se sentite un po' di puzza di bruciato, è perché il trucco c'è: poiché si tratta di argomenti di cui Dennett ha già scritto a lungo in passato, si resta con il dubbio che ci sia un po' di riciclaggio e che alla fin fine a Dennett interessi soprattutto tornare sulle sue concezioni dell'evoluzione, della consciousness e del libero arbitrio.
Giusto per la cronaca: personalmente ho trovato nel libro un gradiente negativo. Le sezioni sono (dopo la prima e la seconda, di cui abbiamo già citato il titolo):
Tools for thinking about meaning or content
An interlude about computers
More tools about meaning
Tools for thinking about evolution
Tools for thinking about consciousness
Tools for thinking about free will
What is it like to be a philosopher? (questa sezione è proprio appiccicata lì e non c'entra nulla con tutto quello che viene detto prima; forse Dennett è pagato a righe come Dumas?)
Use the tools. Try Harder
What got left out.
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