Daniel C. Dennett, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering the thorniest, most fundamental mysteries of the mind. Do we have free will? What is consciousness and how did it come about? What distinguishes human minds from the minds of animals? Dennett's answers have profoundly shaped our age of philosophical thought. In I've Been Thinking, he reflects on his amazing career and lifelong scientific fascinations....

A leading philosopher offers a major new account of the origins of the conscious mind that explores the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture, demonstrating the role of culture in installing memes, including language, in the mind.

"Do you shape the world or does the world shape you? Is freedom something we are born with or something we must work to attain? Offering a torrent of mind-expanding ideas and information THE LOTTERY OF BIRTH is going to make you think again about what it means to be free. Drawing on the best minds in philosophy, history, psychology, physics and economics, it employs decades of evidence to interrogate what we are, where we are and where we want to...