Rowan Tree and Red Thread

I finally finished Daniel Dennett's 1991 book, Consciousness Explained after over a month of slowly reading and absorbing it. I know that I'll probably have to re-read it at some point too, to have it really sink in. It demolishes the Cartesian Theatre (dualist) model of consciousness very effectively. In its place Dennett proposes a Multiple Drafts model of unconscious agents and mechanisms that produce consciousness as an emergent property of the whole. There's an intriguing section arguing for consciousness as a sort of virtual sequential machine running (inefficiently as it turns out) on the parallel structure of the brain. This sort of argument is bound to annoy some and appeal to others and is doubtless incomplete, but works for the purposes of a rough model.

Dennett stresses the self as a created "centre of narrative gravity" that allows the natural storytelling functions of the human brain (mind?) to flourish and work with a craeted "self" or "I" to hang the narratives on. This rings true to me. Far too often am I only aware of having made a choice after I've begun to act, and finding rationalizations or a narrative to explain it afterwards. An excellent and thought-provoking book.

I'm curious now to check up on the progress of the various experiments that Dennett prosposed in the appendices. More than a decade has passed since the book was written so things are likely to have changed significantly. I'm going to plough into Mind Hacks next, for a more up to date summary of brain models and tricks.

Thanks to Jonathan Tweet for his review and comments that directed me to the book in the first place.