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These are notes about the book "Consiousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett. This page used to be about the poetry of Jim Harrison, but I repurposed it on 1/27/2024.
Consciousness Explained is a book by Daniel Dennett. A searchable only copy: https://archive.org/details/consciousnessexp00denn
What's He Up To?
[edit]He wants to develop “ an empirical, scientifically respectable theory of human consciousness.” Page 4
“I will explain the various phenomenon that compose consciousness, showing how they are all physical effects of the brains activities...” Page 16
The main task "is to sketch a theory of the biological mechanisms and a way of thinking about these mechanisms that will let you see how the traditional paradoxes and mysteries of consciousness can be resolved.” Page 17
Structure of the Book
[edit]Part I: problems of consciousness explained. Methods of in investigation explained.
Part II: Multiple Drafts Model (MDM) presented and explained.
Part III: problems and puzzles of Consciousness explained it terms of the MDM.
Dennett's Hypothesis or The Explanation in a Nutshell
[edit]The Multiple Drafts Model
page 210 The Hypothesis
[edit]Italics in the original.
"Human consciousness is itself a huge complex of memes ( or more exactly meme-effects in brains) that can best be understood as a the operation of a “Von Neumannesque” virtual machine implemented in the parallel architecture of a brain that was not designed for any such activities. The powers of this virtual machine vastly enhance the underlying powers of the organic hardware on which it runs, but at the same time many of its most curious features, and especially it’s limitations, can be explained as the byproducts of the kludges that make possible this curious but effective reuse of an existing organ for novel purposes."
Page 253 Thumbnail Sketch
[edit]There is no single, definitive “stream of consciousness,” because there is no central Headquarters, no Cartesian Theater where “it all comes together” for the perusal of a Central Meaner. Instead of such a single stream (however wide), there are multiple channels in which specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums to do their various things, creating Multiple Drafts as they go. Most of these fragmentary drafts of “narrative” play short-lived roles in the modulation of current activity but some get promoted to further functional roles, in swift succession, by the activity of a virtual machine in the brain. The seriality of this machine (its “von Neumannesque” character) is not a “hard-wired” design feature, but rather the upshot of a succession of coalitions of these specialists.
The basic specialists are part of our animal heritage. They were not developed to perform peculiarly human actions, such as reading and writing, but ducking, predator-avoiding, face-recognizing, grasping throwing, berry-picking, and other essential tasks. They are often opportunistically enlisted in new roles, for which their native talents more or less suit them. The result is not bedlam only because the trends that are imposed on all this activity are themselves the product of design. Some of this design is innate, and is shared with other animals. But it is augmented, and sometimes even overwhelmed in importance, by microhabits of thought that are developed in the individual, partly idiosyncratic results of self-exploration and partly the predesigned gifts of culture. Thousands of memes, mostly borne by language, but also by wordless “images” and other data structures, take up residence in an individual brain, shaping its tendencies and thereby turning it into a mind.
The Joycean Machine
[edit]"In our brains there is a cobbled-together collection of specialist brain circuits, which, thanks to a family of habits inculcated partly by culture and partly by individual self-exploration, conspire together to produce a more or less orderly, more or less effective, more or less welldesigned virtual machine, the Joycean machine. By yoking these independently evolved specialist organs together in common cause, and thereby giving their union vastly enhanced powers, this virtual machine, this software of the brain, performs a sort of internal political miracle: It creates a virtual captain of the crew, without elevating any one of them to long-term dictatorial power. Who's in charge? First one coalition and then another, shifting in ways that are not chaotic thanks to good meta-habits that tend to entrain coherent, purposeful sequences rather than an interminable helter-skelter power grab." Page 228
Dennett's Reasons or Why Believe MDM
[edit]Replaces Bogus Cartesian Theater
[edit]Explanatory Value
[edit]Fits with Evolutionary Theory
[edit]Supported by Experimental Evidence (Including Thought Experiments)
[edit]“What It Seems Like” Explained?
[edit]is it?
Commentary & Further Reading
[edit]Science of the Soul
[edit]New Yorker, By Joshua RothmanMarch 20, 2017
“ he described consciousness as something like the product of multiple, layered computer programs running on the hardware of the brain”[1]
” From the outside, it looks like neurons; from the inside, it feels like consciousness”[1]
LOOKS INTERESTING
"This Quintessence of Dust - Consciousness Explained, at Thirty" by Jared Warren
Reconstructing Dennett’s Multiple Drafts Theory of Consciousness
[edit]Akins, K. 1996. “Lost the plot? Reconstructing Dennett's multiple drafts theory of consciousness.” Mind and Language, 11: 1–43.
https://www.sfu.ca/~kathleea/docs/Lost%20the%20Plot.pdf
The theory itself seems to be a simple one. It has six central tenets, each one a largely empirical, speculative hypothesis about some aspect of neural function. These six tenets are as follows...
— KATHLEEN AKINS, Lost the Plot? Reconstructing Dennett’s Multiple Drafts Theory of Consciousness
An "Other Cognitive Theory"
[edit]From the Consciousness article on the The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy :
"Daniel Dennett (1991, 2005) has put forth what he calls the Multiple Drafts Model (MDM) of consciousness. Although similar in some ways to representationalism, Dennett is most concerned that materialists avoid falling prey to what he calls the “myth of the Cartesian theater"..."
Narrative Interpretative Theories
[edit]"Some theories of consciousness stress the interpretative nature of facts about consciousness. According to such views, what is or is not conscious is not always a determinate fact, or at least not so independent of a larger context of interpretative judgments. The most prominent philosophical example is the Multiple Drafts Model (MDM) of consciousness, advanced by Daniel Dennett (1991)."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#NarIntThe
NYT Book Review
[edit]NYT book review
" For want of a theory of consciousness, it is easy to fall back on the image of a little person -- a homunculus, the philosophers call it -- who sits in the cranial control room monitoring a console of gauges and pulling the right strings"
"At first I was a little disappointed when I realized that what I was reading was not so much a brand-new theory of consciousness as a synthesis and sharpening of ideas that have been around awhile -- Mr. Minsky and Mr. Papert's Society of Mind model, Julian Jaynes's theory of inner voices described in "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." But in illuminating these ideas and relentlessly putting them to the test, Mr. Dennett's exposition is nothing short of brilliant, the best example I've seen of a science book aimed at both professionals and general readers."
Chapter Summaries of D. Dennett's "Consciousness Explained"
[edit]by John Donovan and Brian Peterson
A parliament of the mind.
[edit]Roskies, A.L. and Wood, C.C. (1992) ‘A parliament of the mind. (Cover story)’, Sciences, 32(3), p. 44. doi:10.1002/j.2326-1951.1992.tb02390.x.
- Abstract:
- Discusses the book `Consciousness Explained,' by Daniel C. Dennett. Different opinions on the nature of consciousness; Philosophical analysis with summaries of experimental results and theory in cognitive psychology, the neurosciences, evolutionary biology and computer science provided; Book's ability to speak clearly to specialists and readers alike; Parallels with poststructuralist literary criticism; Descartes; Dennett's multiple-drafts model; More.
NOTE: You can click on a link on the page above and a bunch of review of CE come up
HEAD-SCRATCHER
[edit]Beha, Christopher. HEAD-SCRATCHER: Can Neuroscience Finally Explain Consciousness? Harper's Magazine, 05, 2017. 88, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/head-scratcher-can-neuroscience-finally-explain/docview/1930104256/se-2 (accessed February 4, 2024).
Quotes Dennett:
"I haven't replaced a metaphorical theory, the Cartesian Theater, with a nonmetaphorical ("literal, scientific") theory. All I have done, really, is to replace one family of metaphors and images with another."
- ^ a b Rothman, Joshua (2017-03-20). "Daniel Dennett's Science of the Soul". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2024-07-21.