Two Counter‑Images
Two mental images to counter common misconceptions about consciousness: you are not the summit of the mountain but the whole mountain, and consciousness is like fame in the brain (cerebral celebrity), not a Cartesian Theater.
THE IDEA
When people start musing about consciousness, they have a way of inflating their notions of what consciousness must be, of bamboozling themselves. They tackle the hardest issues before they have had a chance to see how much of the work (and play) of the mind can be accounted for without first settling the perennial questions about conscious experience. Now that we have built a base camp, are we ready to tackle the summit? Yes, but if we think of it that way, we are already making a mistake of imagination! Our minds don’t have a single magnificent summit, consciousness. Contrary to a tradition going back at least to Descartes in the seventeenth century, conscious phenomena are neither the most “central” nor the “highest” phenomena in our minds (Jackendoff, 1987; Dennett, 1991a). A seductive bad image needs a counter-image to neutralize it, so here is a simple imagination-adjuster to start us off: recall Cole Porter’s wonderful song “You’re the Top” and reflect that maybe you’re not the top—not the summit of the mountain, but the whole mountain, and what you know and can tell about the mountain that is you is not the view from the summit, but various views from halfway up. You might like to think of the phenomena of consciousness as rather like the fringe of hair around a bald man’s pate. Bear that in mind.
And here is another: consciousness is not a medium, like television, into which information can get transduced or recorded, and there is no place in the brain where “it all comes together” for the appreciation of some Central Witness—I call this imaginary place the Cartesian Theater (Dennett, 1991a). Consciousness is more like fame than television: fame in the brain, cerebral celebrity, a way in which some contents come to be more influential and memorable than the competition. Instead of arguing for this (for the arguments, see Dennett, 1991a, 2005b), I am simply offering you this thinking tool, take it or leave it, with some friendly advice: whenever you find yourself thinking of entry into consciousness as Arrival at Headquarters or as Translation from unconscious neural spike-signals into Something Else, remind yourself of these counter-images and ask yourself if you might be mis-imagining the phenomena.
When to use it
When examining a model of artificial intelligence, ask whether it assumes a central witness and what work that assumption does.
In a discussion of neuroscience, use Dennett’s fame analogy to explore how competing processes might give some contents more influence.
During introspection, try the counter-images as alternatives to imagining a single place where all experience is presented to an observer.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
The Fringe of Hair
Instead of viewing consciousness as the central summit of the mind, picture it as the fringe of hair around a bald man's pate—less central, more peripheral, yet still part of the whole.
Fame in the Brain
When considering how a mental content becomes conscious, think of it as gaining influence and memorability through competition, like a celebrity, rather than being broadcast on a central television screen.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How might thinking of consciousness as fame in the brain change how you view your own inner experience?
Can you recall a time when you implicitly assumed a central 'witness' in your reasoning about mind?
In what ways does the 'mountain' counter-image help avoid the mistake of placing consciousness at the top?
References
- Consciousness and the Computational Mind — Jackendoff, R. (1987)
- Consciousness Explained — Dennett, D. (1991)
- Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness — Dennett, D. (2005)
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking