Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett - Book Review Example

Introduction

In the book, Daniel Dennett tries to solve in that he uses the heterophenomenological method where the report of self-examine of people is used as data to explain how they fell about things but not as direct evidence while explaining peoples feeling about their consciousness. (Dennett, 400). Moreover, he tries to answer questions about consciousness with a traditional methodology by focusing on how they were reached. He also argues that consciousness is not unitary thus, there is no central place in the mind and it involves a series of experiment and events.

Discussion

Dennett uses the example of the lack box to explain the evolution of consciousness. He believes that conscious of humans did not exist but after the previous process, it evolved. He argues it is very hard for an individual to examine what goes on in black box while it is easy for him or to envision the actions of an object he built from the outside (Dennett, 456). Dennett argues that reproduction did not exist but as a result of experience which enables people to be more innovative, powerful and complicated than their predecessor made people have a conscious mind about sex. To emphasis on the point, he gives an example of a hundred word summary of war and peace. According to him evolution of consciousness depends on Mother Nature and it is blind. He believes that the human consciousness is not only a product of natural selection but of the evolution of culture and language.

According to Dennett every creator spins its weband it just does it but it is not aware of why it is doing so. The web is essential because it protects and advances the opinion about sex. However, the web is used differently by the creators for example, humans it spins words and deeds. In snails it provides a living because a web is like a snail shell. The most unique thing about the humans web is that they uses it to collect materials and work hard so as to build a protective castle (Dennett, 416). Therefore, the reason why humans are more conscious than other creators on earth because they use their brain to be more innovative, productive and reproductive. He acknowledges humans as special creators with more advanced conscious than the ones animals have. Through the "web of discourses," Dennett tries to explain how humans are the same as animals but have an advanced conscious. That's why all the human biological product and other constructions are in other animals. A human being is like a bird without its feathers and turtle without its shell (Dennett, 416)." I agree with Dennett that animal and a human being have similar characteristics but what makes a human live a better, exciting, easy and productive life is their advanced conscious than that of animals. However, the advanced conscious is garnered through learning but not just to learn but to learn to learn better thus programming out mind. This is because human brains are built along the lines for rapid learning. To further explain on this Dennett compared the human mind to a practical machine where programs are installed for effective functioning of the device. Thus, through learning human mind gather information because the innovations in our brains can be programmed and are very flexible.

Work cited

Dennett, Daniel. Conscious Explained. New York. Penguin Adult. 1991.