Author: Daniel C. Dennett File Type: pdf Minds are complex artifacts, partly biological and partly social only a unified, multidisciplinary approach will yield a realistic theory of how they came into existence and how they work. One of the foremost workers in this multidisciplinary field is Daniel Dennett. This book brings together his essays on the philosphy of mind, artificial intelligence, and cognitive ethology that appeared in inaccessible journals from 1984 to 1996. Highlights include Can Machines Think?, The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies, Artificial Life as Philosophy, and Animal Consciousness What Matters and Why. Collected in a single volume, the essays are now available to a wider audience.Amazon.com ReviewOne of the movers and shakers in the rapidly converging fields of cognitive science, philosophy of the mind, and cognitive ethology, Daniel C. Dennett is also one of the most popular and engaging expositors of science writing of the 1990s. The essays in Brainchildren will therefore be of interest not only to specialists but to the general reader as well. It is especially convenient to have these essays collected in one volume, as most of them appeared originally in relatively inaccessible publications.Much of Brainchildren defends and expands views that Dennett advanced elsewhere, particularly in his 1991 magnum opus, Consciousness Explained. The most noteworthy of these is the essay Real Patterns, in which he locates his mildly realistic view of the ontology of beliefs (and other mental items) in relation to the views of Jerry Fodor, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, and Paul Churchland. Dennett comments, quite correctly, that Real Patterns is utterly central to his thinking nobody interested in his work should neglect it. Less central but more controversial is Speaking for Our Selves, coauthored with the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, which argues that Dennetts view of the self neatly accommodates the possibility of the dubious phenomenon of multiple personality disorder. Also included is a handful of book reviews, forewords, commentaries, and other occasional pieces that will perhaps be of only limited interest to the nonspecialist. But Dennett provides enough philosophical and psychological excitement in Brainchildren to thrill even the casual reader. --Glenn BranchFrom Publishers WeeklyThe author of Darwins Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained here collects essays from conference volumes and specialized journals that have appeared from 1984 to 1996, with the idea of making them available for students and other readers. But any reader curious about the nuts and bolts of recent theories of mind and our attempts at modeling it will find even Dennetts technical side accessible enough, given a willingness to be occasionally thrown in medias res. The lead essay, Can Machines Think? is a clearly formulated reassessment of current contenders for passing the Turing test?the criterion by which thinking machines are judged. Speaking for Our Selves evaluates claims for the legitimacy of multiple personality disorder, and extends the discussion into questioning the notion of selfhood. Real Patterns, which Dennett calls utterly central to my thinking, is tougher going, as Dennett seems to be addressing an ongoing dispute among philosophers about what it might mean for a belief to be real, but the essay rewards repeated reading. A section on animal cognition and one on the philosophical possibility of zombies are further draws, but many of the other essays and reviews will hold interest only for the specialist. Throughout, however, Dennetts careful attention to word choice and definition helps the uninitiated along, and reveals one of our most celebrated?and controversial?philosophers of mind at work. 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: Adrian May File Type: pdf From Bataille to Badiou Lignes the preservation of Radical French Thought, 1987-2017 provides an exhaustive reading of the significant yet understudied intellectual review Lignes, from 1987 to 2017, to demonstrate how it has managed to preserve and develop the legacy of French radical thought often referred to as French Theory or la pensee 68. Whilst many studies on intellectual reviews from the 1930s to the 1980s exist, this book crucially illuminates the shifting intellectual and political culture of France since the 1980s, filling a major gap in contemporary debates on the continued relevance of French intellectuals. This book provides a strong counter-narrative to the received account that, after the anti-totalitarian liberal moment of the late 1970s, Marxism and structuralism were completely banished from the French intellectual sphere. It provides the historical context behind the rise of such internationally renowned thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Ranciere Jean-Luc Nancy, whilst placing them within an intellectual genealogy stretching back to Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot in the 1930s. The book also introduces the reader to lesser known but nonetheless significant thinkers, including Lignes editor Michel Surya, Dionys Mascolo, Daniel Bensaid, Fethi Benslama, Anselm Jappe and Robert Kurz. Through the reviews pages, a novel cultural history of France emerges as intellectuals respond to pressing contemporary issues, such as the fall of Communism, the European migrant crisis and rising nationalist tensions, the globalisation of financial capitalism and the 2008 economic crisis, scandals surrounding paedophilia and the return of religious thought to France, as well as debates on literature and the political value of art. **