Daniel Clement Dennett

Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell

Richard Dawkins

Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science Richard Dawkins

In this influential and controversial book that has become a classic in popular science writing, Dawkins furthers his fascinating look at the evolution of life and natural selection.

The Long Reach of the Gene

The Extended Phenotype

Daniel C. Dennett

One of America's foremost philosophers offers a major new account of the origins of the conscious mind.

The Evolution of Minds

From Bacteria to Bach and Back

Matthew M. Hurley

Reginald B. Adams

Some things are funny -- jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed -- but why? Why does humor exist in the first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks, watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose, evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with open-ended thinking. Mother Nature -- aka natural selection -- cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor.

Using Humor to Reverse-engineer the Mind

Inside Jokes

This collection of 17 essays by the author offers a comprehensive theory of mind, encompassing traditional issues of consciousness and free will. Using careful arguments and ingenious thought-experiments, the author exposes familiar preconceptions and hobbling institutions. This collection of 17 essays by the author offers a comprehensive theory of mind, encompassing traditional issues of consciousness and free will. Using careful arguments and ingenious thought-experiments, the author exposes familiar preconceptions and hobbling institutions. The essays are grouped into four sections: Intentional Explanation and Attributions of Mentality; The Nature of Theory in Psychology; Objects of Consciousness and the Nature of Experience; and Free Will and Personhood.

Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology

Brainstorms

Through the use of such "folk" concepts as belief, desire, intention, and expectation, Daniel Dennett asserts in this first full scale presentation of a theory of intentionality that he has been developing for almost twenty years.

The Intentional Stance

Advances a new theory of consciousness based on insights gleaned from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence, and clears away obsolete myths about the process of thinking in conscious beings

Consciousness Explained

The author of Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea explains how ancient problems involving moral and political freedoms can be resolved by evolution and biology. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

Freedom Evolves

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Essays from some of the 20th century's greatest thinkers explore topics as diverse as artificial intelligence, evolution, science fiction, philosophy, reductionism, and consciousness, presenting a variety of conflicting visions of the self and the soul. Illustrations.

Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul

The Mind's I

Essays discuss reason, self-control, self-definition, time, cause and effect, accidents, and responsibility, and explain why people want free will

The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting

Elbow Room

M. R. Bennett

Daniel Dennett

Peter Hacker

John Searle

Three prominent philosophers and a leading neuroscientist engage in a lively, often contentious debate about cognitive neuroscience and philosophy and the relationships among brain, mind, and person.

Brain, Mind, and Language

Neuroscience and Philosophy

Thinking is hard - yet barely a waking moment passes when we're not labouring away at it. A few of us may be natural geniuses, able to work through the toughest tangles in an instant; others, blessed with reserves of willpower, stay the course in the dogged pursuit of truth. Then there's the rest of us. Not prodigies and a little bit lazy, but still aspiring to understand the world and our place in it. What can we do?In Intuition Pumps, Daniel Dennett, one of the world's most original and provocative thinkers, takes us on a profound, illuminating and highly entertaining philosophical journey. He reveals a collection of his favourite thinking tools, or 'intuition pumps', that he and others have developed for addressing life's most fundamental questions. Along with new discussions of familiar moves - Occam's Razor, reductio ad absurdum - Dennett offers cognitive tools built for the most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, consciousness and free will. In his genial style, Dennett guides readers around the pitfalls in arguments, and reveals easier ways to better understand the world around us and our place in it.An enlightening and practical store of knowledge, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking will teach you to think truly independently and creatively.[Praise for Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves]: 'This is a serious book with a brilliant message' Matt Ridley, Sunday Telegraph'Dennett has produced the most powerful and ingenious attempt at reconciling Darwinism with the belief in human freedom to date' John Gray, The Independent'An outstandingly good book. There is no better philosophical exponent of what evolutionary biology really means' The TimesDaniel Dennett is one of the most original and provocative thinkers in the world. A brilliant polemicist and philosopher, he is famous for challenging unexamined orthodoxies. His books include Brainstorms, Brainchildren, Elbow Room, Consciousness Explained, Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Freedom Evolves. He lives in North Andover, Massachusetts.

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

Essays on Designing Minds

Brainchildren

Dzwignie wyobrazni i inne narzedzia do myslenia

essays on designing minds

evrim ve hayatın anlamı

Darwin'in tehlikeli fikri

John R. Searle

David John Chalmers

In what began as a series of essays in the New York Review of Books, Searle discusses the arguments of such well-known thinkers as Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, Israel Rosenfield and David Chalmers. These appear here together with a new essay of his own.

The Mystery of Consciousness

The author of Consciousness Explained revises and renews his Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness in the light of recent research.

Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness

Sweet Dreams

According to some politicians and much of the mainstream media, immigrant populations only contribute crime to their communities. Seen as unmotivated and unemployed, these immigrants are thought to be a threat to society's moral fiber, and a burden to its justice system. Ramiro Martinez tells a very different story in Latino Homicide. Studying five major cities--Chicago, El Paso, Houston, Miami, and San Diego--Martinez reveals Latino homicide rates to be markedly lower than one would expect, given the economic deprivation of these urban areas. Far from dangerous or criminal, these communities often have exceptionally strong social networks precisely because of their shared immigrant experiences. With fascinating case studies drawn from police reports and actual cases, Latino Homicide refutes negative stereotypes in a coherent and critically rigorous analysis of the issues.

Content and Consciousness

Hilary Putnam

Ned Block

"Brainchildren" is a new collection of wide-ranging essays from one of cognitive science's most distinguished figures. This book brings together Dennett's essays on the philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and cognitive ethology that appeared in inaccessible journals from 1984 to 1996. Collected in a single volume, these compelling essays are now available to a wider audience.

Daniel Clement Dennett

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