Content and Consciousness is the first book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett, originally published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1969 from his Oxford D.Phil. thesis written under Gilbert Ryle. Dennett distinguishes two questions about the mind that he argues had been routinely conflated — how a neural state acquires intentional content, and how some contents come to be conscious — and proposes that content is prior, with consciousness analysable as a special case of content rather than as a basic ontological category.
The book contains in nascent form most of the positions Dennett spent the next four decades developing, including the heterophenomenological method and the multiple-drafts model later expanded in Consciousness Explained (1991). Specialists in analytic philosophy of mind have long disputed its core eliminativist tendencies, with David Chalmers, Galen Strawson, and Thomas Nagel arguing that Dennett's reduction of consciousness to content quietly assumes the subjectivity it sets out to dissolve.
Contents
Part I: The Language of the Mind
I. The Ontological Problem of the Mind
II. Intentionality
III. Evolution of the Brain
IV. The Ascription of Content
Part II: Consciousness
V. Introspective Certainty
VI. Awareness and Consciousness
VII. Mental Imagery
VIII. Thinking and Reasoning
IX. Actions and Intentions
X. Language and Understanding
Reception
Content and Consciousness is the founding monograph of Dennett's project and is widely regarded as one of the most original contributions to philosophy of mind in the late 1960s — Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and the early generation of cognitive scientists named it as a serious early attempt to integrate Ryle's ordinary-language framework with a computational picture of the brain. Specialists working in the analytic tradition have long disputed its core eliminativist tendencies (David Chalmers, Galen Strawson, Thomas Nagel) and argued that Dennett's reduction of consciousness to content quietly assumes the very subjectivity it sets out to dissolve. Routledge Classics reissued the book in 1986 and again in 2010, and it remains routinely set as a primary source on the early development of the philosophical project that culminated in Consciousness Explained.
Frequently asked
What is Content and Consciousness about?
It is Dennett's 1969 debut, based on his Oxford D.Phil. thesis, in which he distinguishes two questions about the mind that he argues had been conflated: how a neural state acquires intentional content, and how some contents become conscious. He proposes that content is prior, with consciousness analysable as a special case.
How does Content and Consciousness relate to Dennett's later work?
The book contains the seeds of most positions Dennett developed over the following four decades, including the heterophenomenological method and the multiple-drafts model, which he expanded into Consciousness Explained (1991). He later described it as "a philosophical kitchen" from which he cooked all his subsequent work.
What is the personal/sub-personal distinction in the book?
Dennett draws a line between personal-level descriptions — beliefs, desires, experiences, the intentional vocabulary people use to describe each other — and sub-personal-level descriptions of brain processes and neurophysiology. The distinction became a lasting reference point in analytic philosophy of mind.