Reality: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Westerhoff Jan

Author:Westerhoff, Jan [Westerhoff, Jan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-11-23T23:00:00+00:00

11. Still from the film Where Am I?, featuring Daniel Dennett (Daniel Dennett, right) and Dennett’s Brain

Excerpt from Dennett’s Where Am I?

‘I gather the operation was a success,’ I said. ‘I want to go see my brain.’ They led me (I was a bit dizzy and unsteady) down a long corridor and into the life-support lab. A cheer went up from the assembled support team, and I responded with what I hoped was a jaunty salute. Still feeling lightheaded, I was helped over to the life-support vat. I peered through the glass. There, floating in what looked like ginger ale, was undeniably a human brain, though it was almost covered with printed circuit chips, plastic tubules, electrodes, and other paraphernalia. ‘Is that mine?’ I asked. ‘Hit the output transmitter switch there on the side of the vat and see for yourself,’ the project director replied. I moved the switch to OFF, and immediately slumped, groggy and nauseated, into the arms of the technicians, one of whom kindly restored the switch to its ON position. While I recovered my equilibrium and composure, I thought to myself: ‘Well, here I am sitting on a folding chair, staring through a piece of plate glass at my own brain… But wait,’ I said to myself, ‘shouldn’t I have thought, ‘Here I am, suspended in a bubbling fluid, being stared at by my own eyes’?’ I tried to think this latter thought. I tried to project it into the tank, offering it hopefully to my brain, but I failed to carry off the exercise with any conviction. I tried again. ‘Here am I, Daniel Dennett, suspended in a bubbling fluid, being stared at by my own eyes.’ No, it just didn’t work. Most puzzling and confusing. Being a philosopher of firm physicalist conviction, I believed unswervingly that the tokening of my thoughts was occurring somewhere in my brain: yet, when I thought ‘Here I am,’ where the thought occurred to me was here, outside the vat, where I, Dennett, was standing staring at my brain.

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