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    Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness
    Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness
    Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness
    Audiobook6 hours

    Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness

    Written by Daniel C. Dennett

    Narrated by Daniel Henning

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Combining ideas from philosophy, artificial intelligence, and neurobiology, Daniel Dennett leads the reader on a fascinating journey of inquiry, exploring such intriguing possibilities as: Can any of us really know what is going on in someone else's mind? What distinguishes the human mind from the minds of animals, especially those capable of complex behavior? If such animals, for instance, were magically given the power of language, would their communities evolve an intelligence as subtly discriminating as ours? Will robots, once they have been endowed with sensory systems like those that provide us with experience, ever exhibit the particular traits long thought to distinguish the human mind, including the ability to think about thinking? Dennett addresses these questions from an evolutionary perspective. Beginning with the macromolecules of DNA and RNA, the author shows how, step-by-step, animal life moved from the simple ability to respond to frequently recurring environmental conditions to much more powerful ways of beating the odds, ways of using patterns of past experience to predict the future in never-before-encountered situations. Whether talking about robots whose video-camera "eyes" give us the powerful illusion that "there is somebody in there" or asking us to consider whether spiders are just tiny robots mindlessly spinning their webs of elegant design, Dennett is a master at finding and posing questions sure to stimulate and even disturb.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 3, 2019
    ISBN9781501996108
    Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness
    Author

    Daniel C. Dennett

    Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor Codirector of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds; Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness; Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting; Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (all published by the MIT Press), From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Mind, and other books.

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    Reviews for Kinds of Minds

    3.5/5

    127 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Another fantastic and thought-provoking read from one of the great philosophers of our time. This rather short book tackles consciousness from the perspective of other minds and what makes human minds different. Good stuff.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Old book ? It seems very dated. Not very interesting now.
    • 3/5
      Dennett wasn't exactly young when he wrote this but the energy is palpable. As the introduction states the book is about questions, but they're very good questions, even if by now they've been repeated often.
    • 4/5
       Combining ideas from philosophy, artificial intelligence, and neurobiology, Daniel Dennett leads the reader on a fascinating journey of inquiry, exploring such intriguing possibilities as: Can any of us really know what is going on in someone else’s mind? What distinguishes the human mind from the minds of animals, especially those capable of complex behavior? If such animals, for instance, were magically given the power of language, would their communities evolve an intelligence as subtly discriminating as ours? Will robots, once they have been endowed with sensory systems like those that provide us with experience, ever exhibit the particular traits long thought to distinguish the human mind, including the ability to think about thinking? Dennett addresses these questions from an evolutionary perspective. Beginning with the macromolecules of DNA and RNA, the author shows how, step-by-step, animal life moved from the simple ability to respond to frequently recurring environmental conditions to much more powerful ways of beating the odds, ways of using patterns of past experience to predict the future in never-before-encountered situations. Whether talking about robots whose video-camera ”eyes” give us the powerful illusion that ”there is somebody in there” or asking us to consider whether spiders are just tiny robots mindlessly spinning their webs of elegant design, Dennett is a master at finding and posing questions sure to stimulate and even disturb.
    • 3/5
      Definitely able and interesting, and a better place than most for someone to begin to explore the problem of what makes a creature a "thinking," and thus a morally cognizable entity. I did think he ended rather abruptly, right as he picks up momentum on the question of pain and suffering in animals. For myself, the most intriguing discovery was his disagreement with Nagel and his classic essay, "What Is It Like To Be a Bat," which I rather enjoyed.
    • 4/5
      Nice job by Dennett. This was my first book by him and I very much enjoyed his analysis of mind. His ideas are fascinating and well developed. I'm looking forward to reading some of his other work.