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This is of course a topic rich enough to supply interest independantly upon the light it could possible shed on consciousness. The empirically minded might even hope that in due time enough empirical understanding might have been amassed as to allow the emergence of an understanding of consciousness, or at least the illusion of such a thing. But there is a very long way to go, and books like Dennetts really makes very little progress in elucidating the issue to critical readers

Daniel C. Dennett, the director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, is one of a handful of philosophers who feel this quest is so important that they have become as conversant in psychology, neuroscience and computer science as they are in philosophy. "Consciousness Explained" is his attempt, as audacious as its title, to come up with a scientific explanation for that feeling, sometimes painful, sometimes exhilarating, of being alive and aware, the object of one's own deliberations.

Evolutionary psychology is the attempt to understand our mental faculties in light of the evolutionary processes that shaped them.

I hope to have given some impression of the range of topics, without pretending to have surveyed them. As I have made clear, there is much in this book that is disputable. And Dennett is at times aggravatingly smug and confident about the merits of his arguments (comparing his `revelations' about consciousness to a magician's revealing the operation of stage tricks, for example; p. 434). All in all Dennett's book is annoying, frustrating, insightful, provocative and above all annoying. Unfortunately---in this age of academic overproduction---I must conclude that for now Consciousness Explained is unavoidable reading for those who intend to think seriously about the problems of consciousness.