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Betteridge's Law holds, and the author misrepresents Dennett's thesis. Dennett doesn't deny the existence of consciousness, animals, etc. as claimed, but rather
by kerkeslager 10y ago
Betteridge's Law holds, and the author misrepresents Dennett's thesis. Dennett doesn't deny the existence of consciousness, animals, etc. as claimed, but rather says that our conceptions of consciousness, animals, etc. represent only the subset of existent phenomena that can be conceptualized with hardware that evolved via natural selection. Dennett posits that this effect favors conceptions that benefit the conceiver's chances of reproduction (either in a genetic or memetic sense) rather than conceptions that accurately represent the phenomena.
Dennett's work is much better than this review, and I recommend reading the book rather than the review.
- manyoso 10y agoThat's just a wordy way of saying that we evolved according to Darwin and our consciousness was selected. Not terribly original or deep. Yawn.
- simonh 10y agoIs that a critique of the few sentences in the post you're replying to, or a considered rebuttal of your reading of the content of the book?
- manyoso 10y agoIt is a critique of the criticism of the review. If the review is wrong and Dennett's point is really just the standard materialistic worldview plus the trivial observation that consciousness evolved according to Darwin's laws, then it is really trifling.
- rocqua 10y agoI'd expect the book to contain well thought-out non-obvious conclusions from those rather obvious assumptions. Perhaps expanded by giving examples of potential underlying mechanisms.
- kerkeslager 10y agoThe book isn't just that...