Work · Analytic Philosophy
Consciousness Explained
No Cartesian theater – multiple drafts.
Introduction
A book of 1991 written for general readers as well as specialists. Dennett rejects the “Cartesian theatre”, the idea of a place in the brain where everything comes together for an inner observer. In its place he puts the “multiple drafts” model: many processes in the brain edit contents in parallel, and there is no fact about exactly when something becomes conscious. His method is “heterophenomenology”: taking people’s reports of their experience seriously as data without assuming that they are infallible. Qualia, in the sense philosophers usually give the term, do not exist. Critics joked that the book should have been called “Consciousness Explained Away”.
Connections
Criticizes
- Meditations on First Philosophy1641 · René Descartes
- What Is It Like to Be a Bat?1974 · Thomas Nagel
- Minds, Brains, and Programs (The Chinese Room)1980 · John Searle
Criticized in
- The Conscious Mind1996 · David Chalmers
More works by Daniel Dennett
Appears in
- Journey ‘The Riddle of Consciousness’ · Stop 9 of 10
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