Book Review: Consciousness Explained

Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett is a book from the early 90s about the nature of consciousness. I wanted to read it because I think consciousness is a fascinating idea that is important to the nature of faith.

In my opinion the three most mysterious questions in science are how life began (or can begin), how consciousness works, and how the universe began. I have a high degree of confidence that we will figure out the first question within 100 years. I am not sure about the second question, and the third question I am confident we will never figure out. With the second question (consciousness), I often suspect that it will take some radical changes in the understanding of science and our universe before we make serious progress.

There is one single immutable fact in life: You exist, and are experiencing life. Everything else can be taken with a grain of salt. How can the phenomena of experience be explained scientifically? I understand how the human mind could have evolved through evolution and cultural evolution. I understand that our behavior and beliefs could have evolved, but what is the explanation for me actually feeling/thinking/experiencing all of this?

I am a firm believer in naturalistic methodology, and am not satisfied with the idea that there's a separate, supernatural entity experiencing everything, and that consciousness will never be explained because we are separate from our bodies, merely undetectable observers and/or controllers. I'm not alone; Dennett absolutely abhors the idea.

Dennett claims to have a solution to the problem, a scientific "theory of consciousness." Unfortunately, he takes far too many rabbit trails and uses far too many words to say such puny little things.

What I was looking for in this book was a scientific hypothesis on consciousness that is fully explained and defended. Too much to ask for, I guess.

Instead, Dennett distracts readers with cool little experiments that demonstrate how our minds process data very differently from how we often assume. These are neat concepts to be aware of. But they don't get to the heart of the consciousness problem: Why am I experiencing this?

Dennett barely ever gets around to explaining why. He goes on for hundreds and hundreds of pages about how we see red dots turn green at the wrong time and how people who are blind can still see things subconsciously, etc.

Between droning on about this topic for virtually the entire book, Dennett reveals his thoughts on consciousness in a few sentences distributed evenly in the text: There is no explanation of consciousness necessary; if we can explain all the various FUNCTIONS of the brain, we have explained consciousness.

Dennett believes that since, outside of scientifically observable functions of our brains, we cannot scientifically observe "consciousness," it is all a farce and we need not worry about it.

Now, this is an interesting idea and for all I know very well may be correct. But why did I just read a 600-page book when all I needed were those couple sentences? It's a frustrating realization that I spent 30 hours reading a book when I could have just looked up "functionalism" on Wikipedia and been done in 10 minutes.

The reason for Dennett's long-windedness is that of a magician: Distract the audience with lights and sounds long enough and you can slip a fast one by them.

Dennett "entertains" us with stories of how weird our brains are and how our senses don't work like we think, and expands it all into a 600 page marathon so that he can slip in a couple sentences that translate to "I'm a functionalist" without us noticing.

Dennett further adds to the trickery by refusing to use standard definitions and terms for philosophy of the mind. He does this out of arrogance and succeeds at making it so hard to understand what he's saying that you assume it's an original idea (far from it). Unfortunately for me, I took the time to understand every sentence, and as a result wasted a lot of time.

Functionalism may or may not be correct, but Dennett did not argue for it. He pulled a bait-and-switch: He distracted us with lots of naturalistic explanations for functions of the brain, and while we weren't looking, he slipped in the idea that function is all that matters, hoping we wouldn't notice. For someone who read his whole long egotistical book, this is infuriating.

Whether functionalism is right or not, though, this book has helped me confirm a suspicion I had: There is nothing we can say/do to detract from the specialness of consciousness. No matter what explanation we come up with, including functionalism, it is still incredible that I am experiencing looking at this monitor and feeling the keyboard under my fingertips and reflecting on the whole process. It should blow your mind no matter your opinion/theory. And it should make you marvel at the mystery we experience as human beings, wondering about our true nature and purpose. Having a scientific explanation doesn't change this.

One last warning to those reading the book: Dennett relies heavily on the idea of memes, which is a pseudoscience first proposed by Richard Dawkins, up there with astrology, alternative medicine, six-day creationism and bigfoot. It is a theory followed by those who prefer their ideas to be right rather than be either analyzed or scientifically useful. When you hear someone talking about memes as if they're real, you can be sure they've chosen to stunt their intellectual growth by clinging onto this pseudoscience without actually caring to investigate the field of the evolution of ideas, where it is laughed at. For more info on memes, visit the Metaverse.

Speaking of Richard Dawkins, one of my next two posts will confront his anti-intellectualism. Stay tuned!