[FrustratedMonky]

I actually got a little suckered in, and thought this might be Dennett opening up to being wrong and giving some new account of what he might now think is correct.

Especially after all the debates on free will with Sapolsky.

Instead it ended up being backhanded self complement, more like, "a lot of other great people agree with me, so maybe I'm wrong, but probably not".

"Descartes’s theory of everything is, even in hindsight, remarkably coherent and persuasive. It is hard to imagine a different equally coherent and equally false theory! He was wrong, and so of course I may well be wrong, but enough other thinkers I respect have come to see things my way that when I ask myself, “What if we are wrong?” I can keep this skeptical murmur safely simmering on a back burner."

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I had an interesting email exchange with Dennett in the 90s. He had just brought out his book "Consciousness Explained". I read it and emailed him a short note saying that I thought the book was mistitled - the contents were an explanation of what we were conscious of not how we could be conscious.

I expected him to write back with some eloquent or witty or pithy defense of the link between the title and the contents, but he just thanked me and said, "yes, now that you put it that way, it probably is the wrong title. Oops, too late."

[bbor]

The beauty and flexibility of radical skepticism :). Minsky, another noted skeptic of idealist claims (from the opposite angle?), had a quote that stuck with me from one of his YouTube lectures on Society of Mind. I can’t find it at the moment but it was along the lines of; “when you write your own cognitive theory, leave room in the edges for it to grow. You never know what parts will be proven wrong, and you shouldn’t let that stifle the overall exercise.”

In other words, any attempt to break down the mind into component parts is better than declaring it a lost cause and hypothesizing your favorite alternative instead (god, soul, one-ness, consciousness as an essential property, etc).

[nonameiguess]

This probably means I'm a bit younger than you, but I also had some e-mail conversations with Dennett about the same book, I think in 2001 or so. I always found him gracious and patient and he is still the only public intellectual I have ever carried on a meaningful conversation with and gained insight from in this way, and I was just a random college student, not even his student.

[jibalt]

Dan was toying with you ... his thesis was on the distinction between consciousness and the contents of consciousness, and he more than anyone was familiar with the point you were making (erroneously).

[PaulDavisThe1st]

You're welcome to your opinion. At that time. I had read pretty much everything Dennett had published (books, papers etc), and I didn't/don't share your position. But YMMV.

[bbor]

Yeah but he’s engaging seriously with self-doubt. Which I think is admirable. I also find his “explaining away” of the rest of the field tiresome, but I don’t think calling it self-complimentary is necessarily fair. After all, this is a retrospective/polemic, not a revelation of some new discovery

[FrustratedMonky]

Yeah, he is a huge figure in the field.

It's just from the title, I thought there was going to be some 'inciteful about face', like he had some new 'other way to think about things' that just couldn't wait for the next book. So had hopes up more.

[bbor]

He is very good at faking out his detractors with his choice of titles, apparently! It’s something of a pattern at this point…

[jibalt]

Have you considered the possibility that you're wrong? Because I for one think you're seriously misreading and mischaracterizing his piece, and failing to extract from it some valuable advice.