Category Archives: Content and Consciousness – Daniel Dennett
Content and Consciousness: Chapter 5
‘The most central feature of mind, the “phenomenon” that seem more than any other to be quintessentially “mental” and non-physical, in consciousness…consciousness is not one feature of phenomenon or aspect of mind, but several. Once…these feature are sorted out and … Continue reading
Content and Consciousness: Chapter 4
Dennett begins this chapter by again restating and clarifying how he sees his project, ‘…if there is to be a rapprochement between the…physical sciences and the “language of the mind”…we must find a rationale…for ascribing content to certain internal…events of … Continue reading
Content and Consciousness: Chapter 3
Herein, Dennett argues that the process of evolution by natural selection can be, theoretically, a sufficient mechanism by which to generate (or approximate) ‘content'(intentionality) within animal nervous systems. He asks, ‘What, if anything, permits us to endow neural events with … Continue reading
Content and Consciousness: Chapter 2
In a summary of the last chapter, Dennett sets up the next task, ‘We avoid all ontological presuppositions about mental entities by tentatively treating all sentences of the mental language as containing no referential terms. Thus…we absolve the scientist from … Continue reading
Content and Consciousness: Chapter 1
Dennett begins Content and Consciousness (CaC) with the briefest of overviews of the history of philosophy of mind, embedded in the analogy of the pendulum. He describes the ‘Cartesian dilemma’ as setting up the problem/pendulum as the dichotomy between the … Continue reading
Philogging 