Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
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.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm very critical of philosophy in general, but Dennett seems to be one of the few philosophers doing it (mostly) right. The book consists of a vast collection of small thinking tools for sousing out comprehension from complex concepts – most of them are silly, but it's likely beneficial to skim through the first half of the book to see if any of them work for you.
What I found most fascinating, however, were the last few chapters. One was on “what is it like to be a philosopher” (apparently very circle-jerky; no big surprises there), and the other on “use the [thinking] tools; try harder” which is a good call to action for finding a use for critical thinking in ways which turn out to actually be useful.
I'd recommend this book to people with philosophical inklings but who distrust the field, and then I'd tell them to head over to lesswrong.com and see if any of it sticks. The rest of you – those on-board with Dennett and those with no interest in philosophy – stay away and go read Kahneman; it'll be a better use of your time.
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