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“Daniel C. Dannett (1942-2024), “Consciousness Explained”, 1991.

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Here I present: “Daniel C. Dannett (1942-2024), “Consciousness Explained”, 1991.

INTRODUCTION.

Daniel C. Dannett, “Consciousness Explained”, 1991 is a book of fourteen (14) chapters, and the “table of contents” is listed BELOW.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

 Part 0. PRELUDE.

 Chapter 1. How Are Hallucinations’ Possible: 

  1. The Brain in the Vat.
  2. Pranksters in the Brain.
  3. A Party Game Called Psychoanalysis.
  4. Preview.

Part I. PROBLEMS AND METHODS.

Chapter 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.

Chapter 3.  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.

Chapter 4. A Method for Phenomenology: 

  1. First Person Plural.
  2. The Third-Person Perspective.
  3. The Method of Heterophenomenology.
  4. Fictional Worlds and Heterophenomenological Worlds.
  5. The Discreet Charm of the Anthropologist.
  6. Discovering What Someone Is Really Talking About.
  7. Shakey’s Mental Images.
  8. The Neutrality of Heterophenomenology.

Part II. AN EMPIRICAL THEORY OF THE MIND.

 Chapter 5. Multiple Drafts Versus the Cartesian Theater: 

  1. The Point of View of the Observer.
  2. Introducing the Multiple Drafts Model.
  3. Orwellian and Stalinesque Revisions.
  4. The Theater of Consciousness Revisited.
  5. The Multiple Drafts Model in Action.

Chapter 6. Time and Experience: 

  1. Fleeting Moments and Hopping Rabbits.
  2. How the Brain Represents Time.
  3. Libet’s Case of “Backwards Referral in Time”.
  4. Libet’s Claim of Subjective Delay of Consciousness of Intention.
  5. A Treat: Grey Walter’s Precognitive Carousel.
  6. Loose Ends.

Chapter 7. The Evolution of Consciousness: 

  1. Inside the Black Box of Consciousness.
  2. Early Days Scene One: The Birth of Boundaries and Reasons Scene Two: New and Better Ways of Producing Future.
  3. Evolution in Brains, and the Baldwin Effect.
  4. Plasticity in the Human Brain: Setting the Stage.
  5. The Invention of Good and Bad Habits of Autostimulation.
  6. The Third Evolutionary Process: Memes and Cultural Evolution.
  7. The Memes of Consciousness: The Virtual Machine to Be Installed.

Chapter 8. How Words Do Things with Us: 

  1. Review: E Pluribus Unum?
  2. Bureaucracy versus Pandemonium.
  3. When Words Want to Get Themselves Said.

Chapter 9.  The Architecture of the Human Mind: 

  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?

Part III THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Chapter 10.  Show and Tell: 

  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.

Chapter 11. Dismantling the Witness Protection Program:

  1. Review.
  2. Blindsight: Partial Zombiehood?
  3. Hide the Thimble: An Exercise in Consciousness-Raising.
  4. Prosthetic Vision: What, Aside from Information, Is Still Missing.
  5. “Filling In” versus Finding Out.
  6. Neglect as a Pathological Loss of Epistemic Appetite.
  7. Virtual Presence.
  8. Seeing Is Believing: A Dialogue’ with Otto.

Chapter 12. Qualia Disqualified:

  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.
  7. Chapter 13. The Reality of Selves: 
  1. How Human Beings Spin a Self.
  2. How Many Selves to a Customer?
  3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  Chapter 14. Consciousness Imagined: 
  1. Imagining a Conscious Robot.
  2. What It Is Like to Be a Bat.
  3. Minding and Mattering.
  4. Consciousness Explained, or Explained Away?

 

COMMENTS.

Daniel C. Dannett, “Consciousness Explained”, 1991 begins with “brain in a vat” (BIV), which is rooted in Rene Descartes (1641), “Meditations” . In philosophy, the “brain in a vat” (BIV) is a scenario used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of human conceptions of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, consciousness, and meaning. The usage of BIV at the start of the book prelude made the reading very easy. Daniel C. Dannett has a style of writing that is fluid, making the book a “page-turner” quick read.

 

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