I read Consciousness Explained at a good time, relative to my progression of thought regarding intelligence and AI. I'm not terribly interested in the holy wars that accompany this kind of thing, and I'm quite happy to side with Dennett's "explanation" of consciousness. I'm a little troubled by the sheer number of people who insist that there are ineffable qualities without which there would be no life, intelligence, consciousness, etc. It's too bad that most of those people will never pay attention to Dawkins, Minsky, and Dennett.