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Book Reviews |
A daring reconnaissance of red territory
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It used to be, not so long ago, that philosophers—and a few ‘humanistic’ psychologists—were the only academics who could bear to talk about consciousness in public. Then about the time the first President Bush declared the 1990s the Decade of the Brain—I doubt there is a causal connection—scientists who up till then would never have been caught dead writing about the mysteries of consciousness changed their minds and started holding forth with abandon. Somewhere in the collective psyche a dam broke, releasing a flood of books and articles by distinguished scientists as well as philosophers about how (or whether) the brain could be the seat of consciousness. Many of the literally hundreds of books that have appeared have a single idea about the key to solving the mystery, and perhaps the stampede was provoked by their authors' sense that we were entering the end game, and if they wanted to
Center for Cognitive Studies Tufts University Medford, MA 02155 USA E-mail: Daniel.Dennett@tufts.edu