While at Stanford I was a Symbolic Systems major. Most people balk at the title, so I usually have to follow it up with a brief description. My description changes based on my audience, but here’s the simplest one I can think of right now: It’s survey of the intersection of humans and computers. Obviously there are a lot of academic subjects at that intersection: Artificial Intelligence, Human Computer Interaction, Logic, Cognitive Science, Consciousness, Natural Language Processing, Neuroscience, Decision-Making and Rationality, and I could go on, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is that if this major sounds like it’s up your alley, then you have to read Sweet Dreams by Daniel Dennett. I just finished this book, and it’s my major in 216 pages. Dennett focuses specifically on the problem of consciousness, but he takes tidbit from almost every class I took in Symbolic Systems to prove his Physicalist argument. As a Physicalist myself, I really enjoyed the read, but people who do not agree with Dennett might be offended by his aggressive, condescending (towards his critics, not his readers) tone.

If you do decide to read this book, and your a complete novice to the philosophy of consciousness, you might want to consider reading a few key pieces of philosophy first: Frank Jackson’s “What Mary Didn’t Know”, Thomas Nagel’s “What it’s like to be a Bat”, Descartes “Meditations”, and the Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia entry on Functionalism. I know this sounds like an intimidating reading list, just to read a survey on consciousness, but to get the most out of Sweet Dreams these few pieces are must-reads.

Side Note: I tried writing this post from a thick client desktop blog authoring piece of software called BlogDesk. I can’t beleive it, but BlogDesk is actually less feature rich than my WYSIWYG thin client editing software in Wordpress. It’s so limiting… I don’t recommend it at all. The reason why I tried it was in response to the huge Windows Live Writer meme today.

Disclosure (or lack there of): I make no money from the Amazon link in this post, I promise. So buy this book wherever you want, but do buy it. It will open your mind.