| Description |
xxv, 434 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [399]-407) and index. |
| Contents |
Prologue. Lucky Dan -- Part one. Off to a fast start : Childhood -- Music: an important digression -- Wesleyan, then on to Harvard (1959-63) -- Oxford, 1963-65 -- Discovering naturalism: a different way of being a philosopher? -- Part two. Other minds : UC Irvine, 1965-71 -- Moving back east -- A year at Harvard, meeting Jerry Fodor -- Academic politics at Tufts -- Where am I? -- Meanwhile, back at the farm -- Finding Xanthippe, leaving the farm -- Honorary family members, Behavioral and Brain Sciences -- Part three. My odyssey : Bristol and All Souls, 1978-79 -- CASBS, 1979-80, and meeting Douglas Hofstadter -- Rubik's cube, Prague, and Dahlem -- "Are rabbits birds?" and other memorable phone calls - Ruth Millikan, who broke through the unsound barrier -- Big George and the curricular software studio -- The Locke lectures and the Vervet monkeys in Amboseli -- The Center for Cognitive Studies; adventures with Nicholas Humphrey -- Italian connections and their aftermaths -- Consciousness Explained -- The Turing test as more than a thought experiment -- Adventures with robots: the whole iguana, cog, and tati -- Seymour Papert and Marvin Minsky -- Breaking the Spell -- Finding the funny bone with Jonathan Miller and Matthew Hurley -- A troika of Russian adventures -- TED -- Why, oh why, do I love... -- One more Eden: the Santa Fe Institute -- Part four. Academic battles : The history of philosophy, Richard Rorty -- Academic bullies and iconoclasts -- Reverse engineering one's thinking tools -- What if I'm wrong? |
| Summary |
"A memoir by one of the greatest minds of our age, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel C. Dennett. Daniel C. Dennett, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering the thorniest, most fundamental mysteries of the mind. Do we have free will? What is consciousness and how did it come about? What distinguishes human minds from the minds of animals? Dennett’s answers have profoundly shaped our age of philosophical thought. In I’ve Been Thinking, he reflects on his amazing career and lifelong scientific fascinations. Dennett’s relentless curiosity has taken him from a childhood in Beirut and the classrooms of Harvard, Oxford, and Tufts, to “Cognitive Cruises” on sailboats and the fields and orchards of Maine, and to laboratories and think tanks around the world. Along the way, I’ve Been Thinking provides a master class in the dominant themes of twentieth-century philosophy and cognitive science -- including language, evolution, logic, religion, and AI -- and reveals both the mistakes and breakthroughs that shaped Dennett’s theories. Key to this journey are Dennett’s interlocutors -- Douglas Hofstadter, Marvin Minsky, Willard Van Orman Quine, Gilbert Ryle, Richard Rorty, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, Gerald Edelman, Stephen Jay Gould, Jerry Fodor, Rodney Brooks, and more -- whose ideas, even when he disagreed with them, helped to form his convictions about the mind and consciousness. Studded with photographs and told with characteristic warmth, I’ve Been Thinking also instills the value of life beyond the university, one enriched by sculpture, music, farming, and deep connection to family. Dennett compels us to consider: What do I really think? And what if I’m wrong? This memoir by one of the greatest minds of our time will speak to anyone who seeks to balance a life of the mind with adventure and creativity"-- Publisher. |
| Subject |
Dennett, D. C. (Daniel Clement)
|
|
Philosophers -- Biography.
|
|
Philosophy, Modern -- 20th century.
|
|
Philosophy, Modern -- 21st century.
|
|
Cognitive science.
|
|
Thought and thinking.
|
| Genre |
Autobiographies.
|
| Added Title |
I have been thinking |
| ISBN |
9780393868050 (hc.) |
|
0393868052 (hc.) |
|
More Resources