Like every philosophical problem that’s existed since antiquity, the literature on consciousness is enormous and intimidating. I’ve been aware (in whatever sense you like!) of the basic philosophy of mind problems for almost a year and I can’t say I’ve made super meaningful progress on any of them. Are we made of two kinds of things, or just one? If one, why do I feel like a “self” independent from my body? If two, how do they interact? The PEL podcast on the subject is a great introductory resource and it features a range of positions with fundamental disagreements even among the hosts. Another helpful video is hosted on YouTube by the CTN and features a talk given last year by Owen Flanagan, esteemed naturalist and author of The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized. Interestingly, other famous philosophers with whom I agree about one or two things seem to hold diametrically opposed positions on this issue (Nagel vs. Dennett, for example), so I’m hoping that today’s experience and a few accompanying blog posts can help clear things up for me.
I’ve only ever seen Prof. Dennett on the internet; in person he seemed a lot taller and had a small, unimposing face. Together with his glasses and long grey beard, he embodied his "atheist Santa Claus" moniker quite well. The room was abuzz prior to his talk and the convener commented that the audience had increased in size substantially since the preceding speaker. A nearby associate of my girlfriend replied with what we must all have been thinking: that Dennett’s talk was the real event of the day. The introduction was quick and painless (we learned that Dennett keeps a collection of miniature robotic dogs from France) as it seemed to be assumed that either we were already familiar with his writings or that we would be better off learning about them independently.
“As I tell my undergraduate students, whenever they encounter in their required reading a claim or argument that seems just plain stupid, they should probably double check to make sure they are not misreading the “preposterous” passage in question. It is possible that they have uncovered a howling error that has somehow gone unnoticed by the profession for generations, but not very likely.” – so writes Dennett near the beginning of his lengthy review of Sam Harris’ “Free Will”. His presentation on consciousness began on a similar note, except this time the doubt was his own. The solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness – or the question of how material neuronal networks give rise to subjective experience – seemed very obvious to him, and not so to everyone else, and this discrepancy gave him pause. Hence the goal of his very articulate and stepwise presentation was to see if we could uncover a howling error, or at least a basic misunderstanding, and the put the cursed Hard Problem to rest.
Dennett’s first slide featured an image representation of consciousness created by cartoonist Saul Steinberg for the cover of The New Yorker. The image, included above, represents the stream of consciousness triggered by the viewing of a painting, and introduced his key question: was the stream of consciousness from a normal-functioning human being, or a cultured philosophical zombie? For those unfamiliar with the concept, philosophical zombies are an invention of Australian philosopher David Chalmers, who has used them extensively in thought-experiments to support a specific kind of mind-body dualism. These zombies are like us, normally functioning human beings, but without the subjective experience of a mind. Instead they operate more like computer programs, purportedly unguided by consciousness yet behaviourally indistinguishable from everyone else. Wikipedia uses the following example: "a philosophical zombie could be poked with a sharp object, and not feel any pain sensation, but yet, behave exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain)." Dennett informed us that one of the tasks of his talk was to help us understand that the reason philosophical zombies are indistinguishable from everyone else is because there is no meaningful difference between them and us, and so the line of thought leading to dualism must be deeply flawed.
In working towards this goal, two truths were presented and claimed to be indisputable: first that there is no Cartesian Theatre and second that there is no second transduction. The Cartesian Theatre was a broad reference to what are otherwise known as homunculus theories of the mind. Such theories posit singular conscious entities seated inside the heads or brains of each of us, presumably viewing a sort of screen analogous with a that of a movie theatre. An amusing Men in Black clip illustrated the idea, showing the head of a robotic humanoid opening up to reveal a tiny alien at the controls. The second transduction Dennett referred to is the common intuition that once an environmental stimulus has been converted to a pattern of neural signals (transduced), it somehow has to undergo a second transduction in order to be reconfigured in a way that allows it to be perceived by a conscious mind.
The first exercise that he had prepared for us in his slideshow involved producing the afterimage of an American Flag. We stared for a while at a black cross located on the picture of a discoloured flag, and then saw the correctly coloured image on the subsequent blank slide. The exercise was meant to provoke the question: where in the world did the red of the afterimage exist? It clearly wasn’t on the screen, which was plain and white as anyone who hadn’t stared at the discoloured preceding slide could easily observe. It also couldn’t be on the retina, or in the brain, because colours qua colours simply didn’t exist on those substances. The conclusion was that it seemed as if the red colour existed only in our mind. Dennett followed this with an audio example of a similar type, interestingly explaining that the temptation to locate sound in the mind seemed slightly weaker than it did for colour.
So where was the red exactly, and what’s wrong with saying it’s in our minds? I’ll do my best to explain the answer and shed light on what new information Dr. Dennett had for us in Part II.
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