I first read this book during high school, and it’s remained one of my favorites. It’s co-authored by my favorite philosopher of mind (yes, I have a favorite philosopher of mind), Daniel Dennett, and the author of my other favorite intellectual deep-dive book (Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid), Douglas Hofstadter.

It’s a fascinating collection of essays-with-commentary on the nature of consciousness and intelligence (which, by the way, are distinct), of which one of the best known is John R. Searle’s broadside against (what was then symbolic) AI, “Minds, Brains, and Programs”, the so-called “Chinese Room paper”.

(If you just want to read this paper and the above link doesn’t work, you can find it online easily since it’s part of the reading list for so many courses, but be sure you get the original article: the correct citation is John Searle, “Minds, brains, and programs”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3):417-57 (1980). However, I recommend reading the paper in the context of this book, because Dennett and Hofstadter include a set of responses to Searle’s argument from around the academic community. One of them, the so-called “systems reply” (representing the points of view of computer scientists at Berkeley and MIT), seems particularly relevant in the age of foundation models and LLMs.)

(And if you do read that version of the paper along with the various responses, don’t miss this fascinating exchange in the New York Times Review of Books in which Dennett and Hofstadter effectively double down on the “systems reply,” which to be candid was the one with which my own views were most aligned when I first read the paper, and remain so.)

As an intellectual journey in philosophy of mind, consciousness, and intelligence, this book is hard to beat. Find it in a library near you or in a local bookstore.

Updated: