IF THERE WERE A NOBEL FOR UNCLEAR THINKING...:

[W]e need a way of understanding consciousness that preserves our humanity, while being fully compatible with our best science. The philosopher Daniel Dennett--a prominent New Atheist whose best-known book is Breaking the Spell--has for decades been trying to deliver on both counts.

But his critics claim he has failed. His major work Consciousness Explained (1991) was mockingly referred to as "Consciousness Ignored" or "Consciousness Explained Away." Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Galen Strawson famously said that Dennett should be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act.

Dennett's latest book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, is unlikely to win over his critics. Their outrage is due to Dennett's failure to address what is known as the "Hard Problem" of consciousness: "Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?" as David Chalmers puts it. Dennett says his "refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate." He realises that--as in politics--if you debate on your opponents' terms, you have already lost. To win, you must set the agenda. His bet is that if you understand consciousness in the right way, the Hard Problem will be exposed as an artefact of an outmoded way of thinking--a pseudo-problem comparable to the fruitless quest in the early 20th century for the élan vital that animates matter.

This approach, however, leaves Dennett almost completely silent on the very thing that characterises consciousness: subjective feeling. This is partly why Dennett is often accused of effectively denying that consciousness exists, of claiming that we are no more aware than zombies.

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