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"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 O Leggi tutto

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: evol Leggi tutto

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 Leggi tutto

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. و Leggi tutto

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

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

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 whe Leggi tutto

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 ju Leggi tutto

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 Leggi tutto