I find it very interesting and informative and in fact generally pleasurable to listen to philosopher, 'horseman of the apocalypse', and grand-fatherly gentleman Daniel C Dennett.
He has a new book to sell, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, so we might have the enjoyment of hearing a lot of interviews. This week I heard a good one, on the podacst Point of Inquiry.
It is a wide ranging discussion with host, Indre Viskontas, (direct link here) they mull over a wide range of interesting topics, including consciousness, the 'intentional stance' (which others call 'theory of mind'), the role of philosophy in today's world, and that old favourite, free-will. The book gets a few mentions, but not in any sense is the interview a hard-sell.
If you have 45 minutes to spare, or can load it onto your MP3 to enjoy while you are doing something that doesn't need concentration, I recommend it highly.
Will I buy the book? That is a different question entirely. I would love to have time to understand Dennett's writings and have read a couple of his earlier books. However, I have also failed to reach the end of a couple of others due to my own ability to concentrate and my preference for being active.
Maybe I should wait for the paperback - or maybe that is where I went wrong previously as the writing gets too small.
You could of course buy it on Kindle - presently cheaper than the hardback and I find it easier to dip into and out of a number of books.
ReplyDeleteI can also scale the font up to suit my deteriorating eyesight!