One of the Ten Best Books of the Year—New York Times CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED DANIEL C. DENNETT Author of Brainstorms and coauthor of The Mind's |What the critics have said about CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED by Daniel Dennett “His sophisticated discourse is as savvy and articulate about good beer or the Boston Celtics as it is about parallel processing, modern cognitive experimentation, neuropathology, echolocation by bats, or Ludwig Wittgenstein. ... A persuasive philosophical work, the best examined in this column for decades. . . . Skeptics, supporters, and the undecided should proceed at once to find and read this good-humored, imaginative, richly instructive book.” — Philip Morrison Scientific American “This extremely ambitious book is the payoff for many years of communing with neurobiologists, cognitive psychologists, and various artificial-intelligence types in a search to understand the mind-brain. The result is the best kind of philosophical writing: accessible, but not trivializing; witty, but serious; well-informed, but not drowning in the facts.” — K. Anthony Appiah Village Voice “How unfair for one man to be blessed with such a torrent of stimulating thoughts. Stimulating is an understatement. Every chapter unleashes so many startling new ideas that in the hands of an ordinary philosopher it would — and probably will — be spun out to fill a whole book.” — Richard Dawkins Author of The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene“He is a witty and gifted scientific raconteur, and the book is full of fascinating information about humans, animals, and machines. The result is highly digestible and a useful tour of the field.” — Thomas Nagel Wall Street Journal “A remarkable meditation on consciousness — in part deconstruction, in part construction — by one of our most outstanding synthesizers.” — Howard Gardner Author of The Mind’s New Science and The Shattered Mind “What turns a mere piece of matter from being mere matter into an animate being? What gives certain special physical patterns in the universe the mysterious privilege of feeling sensations and having experiences? “Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained is a masterful tapestry of deep insights into this eternal philosophical riddle. Deftly weaving together strands taken from philosophy, neurology, computer science, and philosophy itself, Dennett has written a profound and important book that is also clear, exciting, and witty; Consciousness Explained represents philosophy at its best. “While demolishing all sorts of simple-minded ‘commonsense’ views of consciousness, Dennett builds up a radical rival edifice of great beauty and subtlety. Dennett’s view of consciousness is counterintuitive but compelling; indeed, like any revolutionary theory, its power and its unexpectedness are deeply related. While Consciousness Explained is certainly not the ultimate explanation of consciousness, | believe it will long be remembered as a major step along the way to unraveling its mystery.” — Douglas R. Hofstadter Author of Gédel, Escher, BachCONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED SS DANIEL C. DENNETT Illustrated by Paul Weiner a BACK BAY BOOKS LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON LONDONCopyright © 1991 by Daniel C. Dennett All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no patt of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group USA 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Visit out Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com First Poperback Edition Permissions to use copyrighted material appear on page 492. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dennett, Daniel Clement, Consciousness explained / Daniel C. Dennett. — 1st ed. Pp. cm, Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-316-18065-8 (hc) ISBN 978-0-316-18066-5 (pb) 1. Consciousness. 2. Mind and body. I. Tite. B105.0477045 1991 126 — de20 91-15614 2019 18 17 16 QeMART Printed in the United Stotes of AmericaFor Nick, Marcel, and RayALSO BY DANIEL C. DENNETT Content and Consciousness Brainstorms The Mind’s | (with Douglas R. Hofstadter) Elbow Room The Intentional StanceCONTENTS Preface Prelude: How Are Hallucinations Possible? 1. The Brain in the Vat 2. Pranksters in the Brain 3. A Party Game Called Psychoanalysis 4. Preview Part! PROBLEMS AND METHODS 2 Explaining Consciousness 1. Pandora’s Box: Should Consciousness Be Demystified? 2. The Mystery of Consciousness 3, The Attractions of Mind Stuff 4. Why Dualism Is Forlorn 5. The Challenge A Visit to the Phenomenological Garden 1. Welcome to the Phenom 2. Our Experience of the External World 3. Our Experience of the Internal World 4. Affect A Method for Phenomenology . First Person Plural . The Third-Person Perspective . The Method of Heterophenomenology . Fictional Worlds and Heterophenomenological Worlds The Discreet Charm of the Anthropologist Discovering What Someone Is Really Talking About Shakey’s Mental Images The Neutrality of Heterophenomenology exouses xi 21 43 66vii. CONTENTS Part Il AN EMPIRICAL THEORY OF THE MIND. 5 Multiple Drafts Versus the Cartesian Theater 101 The Point of View of the Observer Introducing the Multiple Drafts Model Orwellian and Stalinesque Revisions The Theater of Consciousness Revisited ‘The Multiple Drafts Model in Action AkRewH Time and Experience 139 Fleeting Moments and Hopping Rabbits How the Brain Represents Time Libet’s Case of “Backwards Referral in Time” Libet’s Claim of Subjective Delay of Consciousness of Intention A Treat: Grey Walter's Precognitive Carousel Loose Ends eg ek eN pe The Evolution of Consciousness 171 . Inside the Black Box of Consciousness Early Days Scene One: The Birth of Boundaries and Reasons Scene Two: New and Better Ways of Producing Future Evolution in Brains, and the Baldwin Effect Plasticity in the Human Brain: Setting the Stage The Invention of Govd and Bad Habits of Autostimulation The Third Evolutionary Process: Memes and Cultural Evolution The Memes of Consciousness: The Virtual Machine to Be Installed Bg yegae How Words Do Things with Us 227 1. Review: E Pluribus Unum? 2, Bureaucracy versus Pandemonium 3. When Words Want to Get Themselves Said The Architecture of the Human Mind 253 1, Where Are We? 2. Orienting Ourselves with the Thumbnail Sketch 3. And Then What Happens? 4, The Powers of the Joycean Machine 5. But Is This a Theory of Consciousness?CONTENTS ix Part Ill_ THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 10 11 12 13 14 Show and Tell 285 1. Rotating Images in the Mind's Eye 2. Words, Pictures, and Thoughts 3. Reporting and Expressing 4. Zombies, Zimboes, and the User Illusion 5. Problems with Folk Psychology Dismantling the Witness Protection Program 321 1. Review Blindsight: Partial Zombiehood? Hide the Thimble: An Exercise in Consciousness-Raising Prosthetic Vision: What, Aside from Information, is Stil] Missing? “Pilling In” versus Finding Out Noglect as a Pathological Loss of Epistemic Appetite Virtual Presence Seeing Is Believing: A Dialogue with Otto s&h SnNan Qualia Disqualified 369 1. A New Kite String 2. Why Are There Colors? 3. Enjoying Our Experiences 4. A Philosophical Fantasy: Inverted Qualia 5. “Epiphenomenal” Qualia? 6. Getting Back on My Rocker The Reality of Selves 412 1. How Human Beings Spin a Self 2. How Many Selves to a Customer? 3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Consciousness Imagined 431 1. Imagining a Conscious Robot 2. What It Is Like to Be a Bat 3. Minding and Mattering 4. Consciousness Explained, or Explained Away?x CONTENTS Appendix A (for Philosophers) Appendix B (for Scientists) Bibliography Index 457 464 469 493PREFACE My first year in college, I read Descartes’s Meditations and was hooked on the mind-body problem, Now here was a mystery. How on earth could my thoughts and feelings fit in the same world with the nerve cells and molecules that made up my brain? Now, after thirty years of thinking, talking, and writing about this mystery, I think I've made some progress. I think I can sketch an outline of the solution, a theory of consciousness that gives answers (or shows how to find the answers) to the questions that have been just as baffling to philosophers and scientists as to laypeople. I’ve had a lot of help. It’s been my good fortune to be taught, informally, indefatigably, and imperturbably, by some wonderful thinkers, whom you will meet in these pages. For the story I have to tel] is not one of solitary cogitation but of an adyssey through many fields, and the solutions to the puzzles are inextricably woven into a fabric of dialogue and disagreement, where we often learn more from bold mistakes than from cautious equivocation. I'm sure there are still plenty of mistakes in the theory I will offer here, and I hope they are bold ones, for then they will provoke better answers by others. The ideas in this book have been hammered into shape over many years, but the writing was begun in January 1990 and finished just a year later, thanks to the generosity of several fine institutions and the help of many friends, students, and colleagues. The Zentrum fur In- terdisziplinare Forschung in Bielefeld, CREA at the Ecole Polytech- nique in Paris, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio provided ideal conditions for writing and conferring during xixii PREFACE the first five months. My home university, Tufts, has supported my work through the Center for Cognitive Studies, and enabled me to pre- sent the penultimate draft in the fall of 1990 in a seminar that drew on the faculties and students of Tufts and the other fine schools in the greater Boston area. I also want to thank the Kapor Foundation and the Harkness Foundation for supporting our research at the Center for Cog- nitive Studies. Several years ago, Nicholas Humphrey came to work with me at the Center for Cognitive Studies, and he, Ray Jackendoff, Marcel Kins- bourne, and I began meeting regularly to discuss various aspects and problems of consciousness. It would be hard to find four more different approaches to the mind, but our discussions were so fruitful, and so encouraging, that I dedicate this book to these fine friends, with thanks for all they have taught me. Two other longtime colleagues and friends have also played major roles in shaping my thinking, for which I am eternally grateful: Kathleen Akins and Bo Dahlbom. Lalso want to thank the ZIF group in Bielefeld, particularly Peter Bieri, Jaegwon Kim, David Rosenthal, Jay Rosenberg, Eckart Scherer, Bob van Gulick, Hans Flohr, and Lex van der Heiden; the CREA group in Paris, particularly Daniel Andler, Pierre Jacob, Francisco Varela, Dan Sperber, and Deirdre Wilson; and the ‘princes of consciousness” who joined Nick, Marcel, Ray, and me at the Villa Serbelloni for an intensely productive week in March: Edoardo Bisiach, Bill Calvin, Tony Marcel, and Aaron Sloman, Thanks also to Edoardo and the other participants of the workshop on neglect, in Parma in June. Pim Levelt, Odmar Neu- mann, Marvin Minsky, Oliver Selfridge, and Nils Nilsson also provided valuable advice on various chapters. I also want to express my gratitude to Nils for providing the photograph of Shakey, and to Paul Bach-y- Rita for his photographs and advice on prosthetic vision devices. Iam grateful for a bounty of constructive criticism to all the par- ticipants in the seminar last fall, a class I will never forget: David Hilbert, Krista Lawlor, David Joslin, Cynthia Schossberger, Luc Faucher, Steve Weinstein, Oakes Spalding, Mini Jaikumar, Leah Stei berg, Jane Anderson, Jim Beattie, Evan Thompson, Turhan Canli, Mi- chael Anthony, Martina Roepke, Beth Sangree, Ned Block, Jeff McConnell, Bjorn Ramberg, Phi] Holcomb, Steve White, Owen Flana- gan, and Andrew Woodfield. Week after week, this gang held my feet to the fire, in the most constructive way. During the final redrafting, Kathleen Akins, Bo Dahlbom, Doug Hofstadter, and Sue Stafford pro- vided many invaluable suggestions. Paul Weiner turned my crude sketches into the excellent figures and diagrams.PREFACE xiii Kathryn Wynes and later Anne Van Voorhis have done an ex- traordinary job of keeping me, and the Center, from flying apart during the last few hectic years, and without their efficiency and foresight this book would still be years from completion. Last and most important: love and thanks to Susan, Peter, Andrea, Marvin, and Brandon, my family. Tufts University January 1991CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINEDPRELUDE: HOW ARE HALLUCINATIONS POSSIBLE? —_——— en 1. THE BRAIN IN THE VAT Suppose evil scientists removed your brain from your body while you slept, and set it up in a life-support system in a vat. Suppose they then set out to trick you into believing that you were not just a brain ina vat, but still up and about, engaging in a normally embodied round of activities in the real world. This old saw, the brain in the vat, is a favorite thought experiment in the toolkit of many philosophers. It is a modern-day version of Descartes’s (1641) evil demon, an imagined illusionist bent on tricking Descartes about absolutely everything, in- cluding his own existence. But as Descartes observed, even an infinitely powerful evil demon couldn't trick him into thinking he himself existed if he didn’t exist: cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.” Philoso- phers today are less concerned with proving one's own existence as a thinking thing (perhaps because they have decided that Descartes set- tled that matter quite satisfactorily) and more concerned about what, in principle, we may conclude from our experience about our nature, and about the nature of the world in which we (apparently) live. Might you be nothing but a brain in a vat? Might you have always been just a brain in a vat? If so, could you even conceive of your predicament (let alone confirm it)? The idea of the brain in the vat is a vivid way of exploring these questions, but I want to put the old saw to another use. I want to use 1, Dates in parentheses refer to works listed in the Bibliography.4 PRELUDE: HOW ARE HALLUCINATIONS POSSIBLE? it to uncover some curious facts about hallucinations, which in turn will lead us to the beginnings of a theory — an empirical, scientifically respectable theory — of human consciousness. In the standard thought experiment, it is obvious that the scientists would have their hands full providing the nerve stumps from all your senses with just the right stimulations to carry off the trickery, but philosophers have assumed for the sake of argument that however technically difficult the task might be, it is “possible in principle.” One should be leery of these possibilities in principle. It is also possible in principle to build a stainless-steel ladder to the moon, and to write out, in alphabetical order, all intelligible English conversations consisting of less than a thousand words. But neither of these are remotely possible in fact and sometimes an impossibility in fact is theatetically more interesting than a possibility in principle, as we shall see. Let’s take a moment to consider, then, just how daunting the task facing the evil scientists would be. We can imagine them building up to the hard tasks from some easy beginnings. They begin with a conveniently comatose brain, kept alive but lacking all input from the optic nerves, the auditory nerves, the somatosensory nerves, and all the other afferent, or input, paths to the brain. It is sometimes assumed that such a ‘‘deafferented” brain would naturally stay in a comatose state forever, needing no morphine to keep it dormant, but there is some empirical evidence to suggest that spontaneous waking might still occur in these dire circumstances. | think we can suppose that were you to awake in such a state, you would find yourself in horrible straits: blind, deaf, completely numb, with no sense of your body’s orientation. Not wanting to horrify you, then, the scientists arrange to wake you up by piping stereo music (suitably encoded as nerve impulses) into your auditory nerves. They also arrange for the signals that would normally come from your vestibular system or inner ear to indicate that you are lying on your back, but otherwise paralyzed, numb, blind. This much should be within the limits of technical virtuosity in the near future — perhaps possible even today. They might then go on to stim- ulate the tracts that used to innervate your epidermis, providing it with the input that would normally have been produced by a gentle, even warmth over the ventral (belly) surface of your body, and (getting fan- cier) they might stimulate the dorsal (back) epidermal nerves in a way that simulated the tingly texture of grains of sand pressing into your back. “Great!” you say to yourself: “Here I am, lying on my back onPRELUDE: HOW ARE HALLUCINATIONS POSSIBLE? 5. the beach, paralyzed and blind, listening to rather nice music, but probably in danger of sunburn. How did I get here, and how can I call for help?” But now suppose the scientists, having accomplished ail this, tackle the more difficult problem of convincing you that you are not a mere beach potato, but an agent capable of engaging in some form of activity in the world. Starting with little steps, they decide to lift part of the “paralysis” of your phantom body and let you wiggle your right index finger in the sand. They permit the sensory experience of moving your finger to occur, which is accomplished by giving you the kines- thetic feedback associated with the relevant volitional or motor signals in the output or efferent part of your nervous system, but they must also arrange to remove the numbness from your phantom finger, and provide the stimulation for the feeling that the motion of the imaginary sand around your finger would provoke. Suddenly, they are faced with a problem that will quickly get out of hand, for just how the sand will feel depends on just how you decide to move your finger. The problem of calculating the proper feedback, generating or composing it, and then presenting it to you in real time is going to be computationally intractable on even the fastest computer, and if the evil scientists decide to solve the real-time problem by pre- calculating and “canning” all the possible responses for playback, they will just trade one insoluble problem for another; there are too many possibilities to store. In short, our evil scientists will be swamped by combinatorial explosion as soon as they give you any genuine explor- atory powers in this imaginary world? It is a familiar wall these scientists have hit; we see its shadow in the boring stereotypes in every video game. The alternatives open 2. The term combinatorial explosion comes from computer science, but the phe- nomenon was recognized long bafore computers, for instance in the fable of the emperor who agrees to reward the peasant who saved his lifo one grain of rice on the first square of the checkerboard, two grains on the second, four on the third, and so forth, doubling the amount for each of the sixty-four squares. He ends up owing the wily peasant millions of billions of grains of rice (2-1 to be exact). Closer to our example is the plight of the French “aleatoric” novelists who set out to write novels in which, after reading chapter 1, the reader flips a coin and then reads chapter 2a or 2b, depending on the outcome, and then reads chapter 3aa, 3ab, aba, or 3bb after that, and so on, flipping 2 coin at the end of every chapter. These novelists soon came to realize that they had better miniraize the number of choice points if they wanted to avoid an explosion of fiction that would prevent anyone from carrying the whole “book” home from the bookstore.