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Practice Reading: Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers ID: #32993 Dennett
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Read the text and answer the question by selecting all the correct responses. You will need to select more than one response.
Dennett recognizes that all human minds are shaped not only by natural selection but by enormous cultural influenced which effectively redesign our minds. He invites us to think of the conscious mind as consisting of those mental contents that win in competition against other mental contents in the battle for control of behavior. What we are is the “organization of all the competitive activity between a host of competences” that our bodies have developed. Consciousness is defined by what a mind can do – whether it can concentrate, be distracted, recall earlier events, keep track of a number of things at once etc.. Dennett urges us to resist the temptation to imagine animals as accompanying their clever activities with streams of reflective consciousness as we would. We may not know that they do not, but we certainly cannot assume that they do. He notes that the more we learn about clever activities in animals and how they are accomplished, the less the processes in their brains seem to resemble the thoughts we imagined were doing the work.

According to Dennett, the mind displays which of the following characteristics?

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Result:

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Option 1: "Our minds are shaped by natural selection."

Explanation: The text states that Dennett recognizes that all human minds are shaped by natural selection, confirming that this option accurately reflects a key point made in the text.

Option 2: "Our conscious mind tries to control our behaviors."

Explanation: Dennett describes the conscious mind as consisting of mental contents that compete for control of behavior, indicating that our conscious mind indeed plays a role in controlling our actions.

Option 3: "Our minds are not shaped by cultural influences."

Explanation: This option contradicts the text, which explicitly states that human minds are shaped by enormous cultural influences, making this statement incorrect.

Option 4: "Animals make decisions based on their conscious minds."

Explanation: The text suggests that we should not assume animals accompany their clever activities with reflective consciousness like humans do, indicating that this statement is misleading and incorrect.

Option 5: "A mind cannot concentrate or cannot be distracted."

Explanation: This option misrepresents the text, which states that consciousness is defined by what a mind can do, including the ability to concentrate and be distracted, thus making this statement incorrect.

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