Daniel C. Dennett (1991), Consciousness Explained, illustrated by Paul
Weiner, Boston: Little, Brown and Co. (1st ed., ISBN 0-316-18065-3; Library
of Congress 91015614, LC class B105.C477 D45 1991; xiii, 511 pp.;
bibliography pp. 469–491, index). The trade paperback (ISBN
978-0-316-18066-5) is now sold under Hachette Book Group’s Little, Brown
imprint. The catalogue records give only the year 1991, so published:
carries the year, as the first of January.
Key takeaways
Registered from the publisher’s description and the catalogue record, not a reading. What follows is what the book and its cataloguers say about it.
- The publisher’s description (Hachette Book Group, for the paperback): “Consciousness Explained is a full-scale exploration of human consciousness. In this landmark book, Daniel Dennett refutes the traditional, commonsense theory of consciousness and presents a new model, based on a wealth of information from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Our current theories about conscious life — of people, animal, even robots — are transformed by the new perspectives found in this book.”
- The catalogue summary (Open Library’s record of the first edition): “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.”
- The contents note, from the MARC record carried by the Internet Archive’s catalogue entries: “Prelude: how are hallucinations possible? — Explaining consciousness — A visit to the phenomenological garden — A method for phenomenology — Multiple drafts versus the Cartesian Theater — Time and experience — The evolution of consciousness — How words do things with us — The architecture of the human mind — Show and tell — Dismantling the witness protection program — Qualia disqualified — The reality of selves — Consciousness imagined”. (One of the two copies of the record reads “Explaining the consciousness” for the second entry; the other reads “Explaining consciousness”.)
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-02 at the owner’s request for Dennett, as the book his papers in this record point to. “Time and the Observer” (LIT-431, read in NOTE-367) defers the Multiple Drafts model’s wider implications to it (“Dennett 1991b”). “Facing Backwards” (LIT-397, read in NOTE-346) quotes its vitalism passage (pp. 281–282). Its “Qualia disqualified” is, by title, the book-length successor to “Quining Qualia” (LIT-433).
What a reading would add to the record’s threads. All of the following are leads from the contents and from the record’s other readings, not claims about the book:
- The society-of-mind bridge (THEORY-043). The contents’ “The architecture of the human mind” and “The reality of selves” are where a reader would find whether Dennett’s mind is a society of agents in Minsky’s sense, and what kind of whole his self is. Levin’s paper (LIT-439, read in NOTE-341) calls its own view “consistent with Dennett’s stack of homunculi” and cites a Dennett 1991; I have not checked that it means this book.
- Hofstadter. Hofstadter’s GEB (LIT-437) and I Am a Strange Loop (LIT-423) are filed unread; the record cannot yet compare their selves with this book’s.
- The hard problem. Chalmers’s “Facing Up” (LIT-406) treats the Multiple Drafts model as a theory of an easy problem; the book’s chapters “A method for phenomenology” and “Qualia disqualified” are where, by their titles, Dennett’s answer to that charge would be.
- AI consciousness (THEORY-023). The publisher’s description says the book bears on “conscious life — of people, animal, even robots”.
Access when registered. Hachette Book Group’s page for the paperback (description). Open Library’s edition record OL1537348M (publisher, place, pagination, ISBN, LCCN 91015614, OCLC 23648691, description). The Internet Archive’s catalogue metadata for its scans consciousnessexp00denn and consciousnessexp0000denn_z5c9 (contents note, ISBNs, LCCN; both access-restricted and in the printdisabled collection, so lending-only and not opened). The Library of Congress catalogue itself answered with a bot challenge, so the LoC record was read through these copies of its data. No draft chapters of the book are posted by the author in the Tufts Digital Library, whose Dennett collection I searched by title, “Multiple Drafts” and the first chapter’s title. Not held in the Anthology of the SOTA (grep of its literature.d for Dennett: none). No email address was sent to any service.
It carries no instruction for machine-learning practice, and it does not belong in the anthology.