International Phenomenological Society

Review: Prcis of Consciousness Explained Author(s): Daniel C. Dennett Reviewed work(s): Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 889-892 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2108259 Accessed: 16/02/2010 06:00
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Philosophyand PhenomenologicalResearch

Vol. Lm, 4, December No. 1993

Pr6cis of ConsciousnessExplained*
DANIEL DENNEIT C.

Tufts University

Consciousnesshas always been a bafflingphenomenon,and some have seen it to be fundamentallymysterious, irretrievablybeyond humanunderstanding. I argue, on the contrary,that its mysteries are beginning to dissolve, thanks largely to the onslaught of empirical and conceptual advances in cognitive science. So entrenched,however, are the traditionalways of addressing the philosophical problems, that a frontal assault on them is doomed. One cannot hope to convince philosophersby straightforward argumentsto abandon the "obvious"assumptionswhose mutualacceptancehas defined the debates. A more indirect approachis called for ("Preview,"pp. 16-18), postponing a direct confrontation with the traditional categories until a new perspective has been created,and the readerfamiliarizedwith some of its powers. This is a three-stageoperation.In PartI, a surveyof phenomenaand putative difficulties sets the problem and establishes a method. The goal is to create a materialistic, scientifically supportedbut still deliberately sketchy, model that can actually explain all the puzzling phenomena.The method for achieving this goal requires a philosophically and scientifically neutralway of describing the data-a phenomenology in its original sense of a pre-theoretical catalogue of phenomena.In PartII, the sketch of the model, the Multiple Drafts Model, is developed and supported,and put throughsome of its paces. Finally, in Part III, the philosophical implications of the Multiple Drafts Model are examined. Only then do I confrontthe challenges invoking folk psychological categories, and such philosophical terms as qualia, epiphenomenalism,zombie, andfinctionalism, the staple diet of philosophical debatein recentyears. (This indirect approach does not work for all readers, I have learned. Some find the temporarysuspension of allegiance to traditionalcategories beyond them, or are unwilling to venture it. Those who insist on trying to impose their favorite philosophical distinctions on the book from the outset are almost bound to find the first two parts "exasperatinglyelusive, even
*

Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1991), pp. xiii, 511. SYMPOSIUM 889 DENNEIT

self-contradictory" (Block, 1993). This can prevent such a readerfrom ever entertainingseriously the possibility that the argumentsin Part In succeed in undercuttingthe traditionaldistinctions.) In Part I, the method of heterophenomenologyis presented, motivated, and analyzed. It capturesthe actual practice and backgroundassumptionsof cognitive scientists studying consciousness, providing a framework within which theoreticaldisagreementsregardingthe explanationof the data can be expressed, while permittingthe data to be acknowledgedby all sides. In Part II, the method is put to the test by considering some initially counterintuitive phenomena involving the timing of "events in consciousness." The paradoxical flavor of these phenomena is due, I argue, to the widespread but tacit assumption of a certain picture of how consciousness must be related to the brain, which I call the CartesianTheater. Contemporary theorists have abandonedDescartes' notoriously problem-riddendualism, with its miraculous trans-substanceinteractionat the pineal gland, but they have not discarded enough; they have clung to the Cartesianidea that consciousness of a stimulus (or other event) happens when and only when trains of neural events caused by the event in question get transducedinto some central medium (the Cartesian Theater). According to this doctrine, which I call Cartesianmaterialism,there is a cerebralseat of consciousness "where it all comes together."Exposing this bad idea is not very hard, and decrying it is fun for all, but finding an alternativevision is an uphill battle against intuitions that many persist in deeming innocent. The analysis and criticism of these intuitions, and a re-investigationof the phenomena,yields some constraintson models which are then elaboratedinto a sketch of an alternative model (or family of models), the Multiple Drafts Model. The initially curious and unfamiliarfeatures Qf the model are shown to have plausible evolutionary sources, and a chapter is devoted to how the model can deal with some of the most recalcitrantproblems of language production. of What emerges from all this is a cognitive "architecture" consciousness, summarizedin a ThumbnailSketch:
thereis no central HeadThereis no single,definitive "stream consciousness," of because Theaterwhere"it all comes together" the perusalof a Central for no quarters, Cartesian of channels which in Meaner. Instead sucha singlestream (however wide),therearemultiple circuitstry,in parallel to Multiple specialist pandemoniums, do theirvarious things,creating Draftsas theygo. Mostof thesefragmentary drafts "narrative" short-lived of rolesin the play modulation current of but activity someget promoted further to functional roles,in swift sucof machine thebrain. seriality thismachine "von in The of (its cession,by the activity a virtual is of Neumannesque" character) nota "hard-wired" designfeature, rather upshot a sucbut the cessionof coalitions thesespecialists. of Thebasicspecialists partof ouranimal are to heritage. Theywerenot developed perform human suchas reading writing, ducking, face-recpeculiarly actions, and but predator-avoiding, ognizing,grasping, throwing, berry-picking, otheressentialtasks.Theyareoftenopporand

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moreor less suitthem.There in tunistically enlisted new roles,forwhichtheirnativetalents only the that sultis notbedlam because trends areimposedon all this activityare themselves withotheranimals. it is But Someof thisdesignis innate,andis shared theproduct design. of in that of even by augmented, sometimes overwhelmed importance, microhabits thought are and and the in resultsof self-exploration partly prepartly idiosyncratic developed the individual, of borne language, also by wordless but Thousands memes, mostly by designed of culture. gifts in brain, shaping tenden its take data-structures, upresidence anindividual 'images" other and it cies andthereby turning intoa mind. 253-54) (pp.

This eclectic model draws heavily on the work of many researchers in cognitive science, and the final chapterof Part II orients the model with respect to that literature, acknowledging sources, adjudicating a few of the controversies, and elaboratingsome of the importantdetails in preparation for the philosophical work of Part III. Part III opens with a challenge regardingthe phenomena of mental imagery, and addresses, in turn, the philosophical literatureon the nature of mental representation,belief and thought, the status of folk psychology, the problematic (indeed incoherent) philosophical concept of zombies, the pathologies of blindsight and unilateralneglect, and the ubiquitous and beguiling concept of "filling in" by the brain. The idea that there is something like a "phenomenalfield" of "phenomenalproperties"in addition to the informational/functionalpropertiesaccommodatedby my theory is shown to be a multi-faceted illusion, an artifactof bad theorizing. Otto, a fictional interlocutor,occasionally interruptsthe proceedings in order to express under cover of anonymity the most persistent philosophical objections I encountered in presentations of early drafts of these chapters. (This turns out to have been a valuable expositorytactic, I think. Otto has been denounced as a stooge or strawman by some, but others have hailed him as my "philosophical conscience" and exp-ressedtheir allegiance to his doctrines and even endorsedhis expression of them. In fact, everything Otto says was drawn, with scant editorial amendment, from heated discussions with philosophers with impeccable credentials.) Chapter 12, on qualia, exemplifies the "end run" strategy of the whole book, eschewing the direct confrontation(for which, see Dennett, 1988) for an explanation of why the whole idea of qualia is forlorn to begin with. A substitute is provided: an account of some relevant phenomena-color and our attitudes towards colors-that does the work qualia-theorieswere supposed to do without ever entangling the theorist in the definitional and methodological problems that beset that literature. The last two chapters defend answers to the perennial problems about the nature of the self, the problem of other minds (especially the minds of other animals and robots), and the hidden agenda that drives so much theorizing by philosophers of mind: the dimly imagined moral implications of a materialisttheory of consciousness.

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References Block, N., 1993, review of ConsciousnessExplained,Journal of Philosophy, 90,pp.181-93. Dennett, D., 1988, "QuiningQualia,"in A. Marcel and E. Bisiach, eds., Consciousness in ContemporaryScience, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 42-77.

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