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Notes on Dennett and Cartesian theater

cartesian-theiater Dennett consciousness

"Dennett has various targets in his book; they all seem to get lumped together, but in fact some seem distinct from others. Here are three that it might be useful to distinguish." Curtis Brown

Dennett cartesian-theater consciousness AZB

The cutaneous rabbit is a manifestation of the brain's curious and largely unrecognized ability to represent temporal illusions in the same way it does spatial ones - by responding to events in what one may assume is a more "ordered" fashion to its biology, even when that response is observably incorrect.

Dennett cutaneous-rabbit

"The central "Cartesian" claim Dennett targets is that there is a specific location in the brain "arrival at which is the necessary and sufficient condition for conscious experience" (p. 106). His argument consists mainly in denying that there's always a fact of the matter about when, exactly, an experience occurs, if one considers events at very small time scales (on the order of tenths of a second). He appears to draw from this argument what seems to be the fairly radical anti-"Cartesian" conclusion that there are, in general, no definitive facts of the matter about the flow of conscious experiences independent of the changing "narratives" we construct about them." The Splintered Mind

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philosophy Dennett cartesian-theater

"Dennett maintains that cognitive discriminations need only be made once. The information does not then need to travel to any special area of the brain in order to become conscious. Without the 'theatre', there is no need for such a 'presentation' to take place." - Philosophy, et cetera

Dennett multiple-drafts consciousness AZB

Response to Glicksohn and Salter in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 18, no. 4, 1995, pp. 810-11.

"We have learned that the issues we raised are very difficult to think about clearly, and what "works" for one thinker falls flat for another, and leads yet another astray. So it is particularly useful to get these re-expressions of points we have tried to make. Both commentaries help by proposing further details for the Multiple Drafts Model, and asking good questions. They either directly clarify, or force us to clarify, our own account. They also both demonstrate how hard it is for even sympathetic commentators always to avoid the very habits of thought the Multiple Drafts Model was designed to combat. While acknowledging and expanding on their positive contributions, we must sound a few relatively minor alarms. "

multiple-drafts Dennett consciousness AZB

Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us.

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dennett darwin

"Daniel Dennett presentation at UCLA symposium "How like us are they? Human and Non-human Primate Cognition" "

cognition intentionality folk-psychology Dennett MBN

dreyfus dennett AI MBN

Notes by Roos for PHL 470

dennett real-patterns

dennett freewill neuroethics brain responsibility

in list: Neuroethics

I've been reading a number of papers on the "science" of consciousness - I'll let the quotes express my skepticism - and I thought this clever metaphor from Francis Crick and Christof Koch, in their influential 2003 Nature review, was revealing. They compare the competition among our sensations to a democratic election, in which all those fleeting stimuli must fight for our limited attentional resources:

consciousness Dennett AZB

Dan Dennett and I have something in common: We both say that people often go grossly wrong about even their own ongoing conscious experience (for my view, see here). Of course Dennett is one of the world's most eminent philosophers and I'm, well, not. But another difference is this: Dennett also often says (as I don't) that subjects can no more go wrong about their experience than a fiction writer can go wrong about his fictions (e.g., 1991, p. 81, 94) and that their reports about their experience are "incorrigible" in the sense that no one could ever be justified in believing them mistaken (e.g., 2002, p. 13-14). - The Splintered Mind:

dennett introspection AZB

From the blog Brains

heterophenomenology Dennett AZB

Now Dennett is advancing on free will. In ''Freedom Evolves,'' he wants to show how evolution can get us ''all the way from senseless atoms to freely chosen actions.'' And he succeeds in his aim, given what he means by freedom. But he doesn't establish the kind of absolute free will and moral responsibility that most people want to believe in and do believe in. That can't be done, and he knows it.

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Daniel Dennett commentary on Fodor, “Against Darwinism” January 29, 2007

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in list: Evolution

Jeremy C. Ahouse | PhilPapers

Dawkins selectionism adaptationism Dennett Gould evoution