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Daniel Dennett: Daniel Dennett in Moscow, 2012

Portrait: Daniel Dennett in Moscow, 2012. Dmitry Rozhkov, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped, via Wikimedia Commons.

Philosopher1942–2024

Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett was an American philosopher who spent his career arguing that the mind is something science can explain. In Consciousness Explained he described consciousness as a kind of user illusion the brain builds for itself, and in Darwin's Dangerous Idea he called natural selection a universal acid that eats through every traditional idea it touches.

1 episode 8 books

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Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett

Consciousness Explained

by Daniel Dennett

Dennett's provocative argument that consciousness is not what we think it is, and that the hard problem is a conceptual confusion rather than a genuine mystery.

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AdvancedPhilosophy of Mind
The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose

The Emperor's New Mind

by Roger Penrose

A physicist's argument that consciousness involves non-computable quantum processes, challenging the assumption that artificial intelligence could ever be truly conscious.

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AdvancedPhilosophy of Mind

A neuroscientist's account of Integrated Information Theory, the most ambitious scientific attempt to measure consciousness mathematically.

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IntermediatePhilosophy of Mind
The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers

The Conscious Mind

by David Chalmers

The book that defined the hard problem of consciousness. Chalmers argues that no purely physical explanation can account for subjective experience.

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AdvancedPhilosophy of Mind
Conscious by Annaka Harris

Conscious

by Annaka Harris

A short, lucid introduction to the mystery of consciousness that makes the philosophical puzzles accessible to any reader.

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BeginnerPhilosophy of Mind
Galileo's Error by Philip Goff

Galileo's Error

by Philip Goff

A clear and accessible case for panpsychism: the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality, present even in the simplest forms of matter.

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BeginnerPhilosophy of Mind
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