Consciousness Explained
O'Brien, Dennis
BOOKS Out of sleight, out of mind aniel Dennett had the misfortune of reading Descartes as a freshman in college and has been "hooked," he says, on the mind-body problem ever since. The...
...Supersolid tables and super-reliable memories live only in a metaphysical nether world...
...These demons are still active, trying to do their various things and even succeeding on occasion, but they no longer can win out in certain competitions against better organized coalitions...
...it is the mechanism which makes seeing possible...
...But the notion of material explanation needs explanation...
...Virtual machine" is a computer term for a set of transformations that occur not by hard wire but by a set of rules...
...Dennett denies that any such transition from material to ethereal is possible...
...Computer memory is not only staggeringly large but it is, as Dennett says, "super-reliable...
...The failure to forget on the part of AI apparatus, is not some striking empirical feat, it is "metaphysical" in the bad sense...
...The chicken is just the egg in another guise or, as Dennett suggests in a revelatory joke: a scholar is just a library's way of making another library...
...Consciousness goes to the successful draft...
...Material explanations, says Aristotle, are sleight of hand: actualization (seeing) is slipped into the material possibilities which then produce the effect by magic...
...We certainly talk about computer "memories...
...Human consciousness, if it is to be "explained" at all, must exist in a world of change, freedom, and common sense...
...CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED Daniel C. Dennett Little Brown, $27.95, 511 pp...
...Dennett combines insights from psychology, philosophy, and most importantly—AI (Artificial Intelligence...
...In that sense my reliable table and rickety chair are equally "unsolid...
...Dennett describes an odd pathological condition, hemineglect, in which the individual fails to recognize events on one side of the sensory field: ...a loss of political clout by certain parties of demons in the brain, due, in many but not all cases, to the death or suppression of their Representative...
...The scientist strikes the table and says, "This table is not solid...
...This seems immediately obvious if one wonders how all those "demons" emerge from "pandemonium" with sufficient "political clout" to become consciousness...
...The mindbody problem is, supposedly, how do all those electrical-chemical pushes and pulls in the brain produce "consciousness" which is totally unconscious of all those pushes and pulls...
...If the rabbit comes out of the hat (mind Commonweal 24 April 1992: 27 emerges from mechanism), it is because the rabbit was hidden in the hat all along...
...In the middle of the algebraic transformations is a written interpolation: "Then a miracle occurs...
...It is difficult to know if Cnscss has been explained if one is not sure what Cnscss is...
...Human memory notes a performance which is contrasted with forgetting...
...For all its ingenuity, I believe that the AI approach to consciousness involves this simple sleight of hand: a term is taken from its human context (memory) given a superreliable gloss, pulled from the mechanism and then proclaimed to be what we were looking for (human consciousness...
...One scientist says to the other, "I think you should be more explicit here in step two...
...He is certainly correct in rejecting the utter mystery of mind bequeathed to the tradition by Descartes...
...The "mental" is simply the working of a "virtual machine"—no special "mental" property, it is machines all the way down...
...Descartes had hypothesized that the pineal gland converted the machine-like properties of the material body into ethereal spiritual contents of mind...
...More difficult, is that I am not sure what Dennett thinks an explanation of consciousness would be...
...Real machines are rigid because they are wired that way, virtual machines do their thing because they read—and perhaps revise— software rules...
...He expresses his intent to give an empirical, materialistic explanation...
...Dennett supposes that the mind-machine operates on "Pandemonium architecture...
...Lest one think that this is a superficial critique of lively metaphor, consider the sober concept of "memory...
...The problem, in my judgment, with Dennett's "solution" is that it replaces miracle with magic...
...Suddenly I worry that my furniture is unreliable...
...Dennett sets forth to "solve" the mind-body problem by presenting us with a thoroughly "empirical materialistic" theory of consciousness with no ghosts in the mental machine...
...Not at all...
...Aristotle, who happily avoided Descartes's problem by being born two thousand years too soon, says the following about mind (consciousness, soul): "if the eye were the whole body, then seeing would be the soul (psyche...
...The physical eye is the "material explanation" of seeing...
...Putting "pandemonium" in the brain seems to slip consciousness (persons panicking) into the neurons, and before one can say "megabyte...
...Slightly revising Dennett, the mind is not a set piece in the Cartesian Theater but a production of Pandemonium Studios...
...Dennis O'Brien Pandemonium Productions operates on a "multiple draft" principle in which the writers and editors fight it out in a semiDarwinian struggle for survival...
...Super-reliable "memory" never "forgets," which suggests strongly that whatever it is, it is not finally like human memory...
...The scientist has introduced the notion of super-solid (molecular density...
...The scientist means that the table is ultimately composed of molecules separated by vast spaces...
...consciousness emerges from the empty vessel...
...28: 24 April 1992...
...Consciousness Explained is a grand magical performance: entertaining, full of abracadabra (borrowed from AI lingo), and resting finally on sleight of hand...
...Descartes's pineal plug from body to mind is just such a miracle needing explanation...
...Consciousness Explained is a sprightly, intelligent, fascinating attack on a philosophical hardy perennial...
...A variety of script writers have been simultaneously alerted and all are clamoring to get their scenarios produced...
...The original meaning of "memory" is borrowed from the human performance...
...you may have purchased your last PC because of its kilobyte "memory...
...If actualizations are already fully explained in the materials, one produces a metaphysics that makes change illusory, freedom impossible, and philosophy depart from common sense...
...But that is the sleight of hand...
...Dennett refers frequently to a famous cartoon in which two scientists are examining a long complex equation...
...A blind scientist might understand the mechanism in the sense of appreciating the way all the gears, levers, synapses, rods, and cones connected, and yet not "understand" what the mechanism does when turned on...
...Given the baleful influence of Descartes on Dennett's subsequent philosophy about mind and body, much of Consciousness Explained is an attempt to escape from the Cartesian conundrum of how mind and body could ever be connected...
...Somehow, the pineal gland produces a grand mental show in what Dennett calls "the Cartesian Theater...
...A final comment: Dennett finally does not really give us a definition of "consciousness...
Vol. 119 • April 1992 • No. 8
