Daniel Dennett: Philosopher of the Mind

Daniel Dennett is a prominent modern philosopher and lecturer. He specialises in the study of consciousness, and seeks to explain it in mechanistic terms. Through his numerous well argued books Dennett puts forward a view that consciousness is a function of the physical brain...not a mysterious property of the 'lump of wonder-stuff' that so often gets termed a 'soul'!

More recently Dennett has become a prominent public figure due to his book 'Breaking the Spell', which seeks to study the phenomenon of religious belief both scientifically and critically. Dennett brings the same weight of intellect and keen observation to the field of organised religion as he has previously done to topics such as determinism, consciousness and free-will.

Dennett is a well respected, although not uncontroversial, philosopher. Liked by scientists for his acknowledgement and reliance on empirical evidence, and liked by his fellow philosophers for his reasoning skills, his greatest success has been to make philosophy accessible to the general reader. Witty, charming and thoughtful, Dennett's books bring philosophy, a discipline usually all too keen to hide behind overly complex terms and in-jokes, to the reader who asks 'why?' and really wants an intelligible answer!

The problem of the distinction between mind and brain has been troubling philosophers for millennia. From the early musings of ancient Greek philosophers to modern day science, no one can yet claim to have laid the subject to rest.

Most early attempts drew a distinct division between the physical world of the brain and, for want of a better term, the spiritual world of the mind. This separation is referred to in philosophy as 'dualism'. The dualist thinks that consciousness is somehow disembodied and cannot be successfully explained in the physical world.

Modern science has made dualism somewhat implausible through the law of conservation of energy. It's a tricky concept to grasp, but the implication of the law is that an interaction between the physical you and the spiritual you would break this fundamental law of science. Daniel Dennett's metaphor cuts straight to the issue: did you ever notice how Casper the friendly ghost could both fly through a wall and catch a ball? This is what people ask of a soul. They want it to be there...but not really be there.

It seems to me that postulating a non-physical soul is nothing more than a typical 'god of the gaps' argument. In a similar way to how primitive religions would use gods to 'explain' how and why rain and thunder occurs, and up until a hundred or so years ago, how all religions tried to 'explain' the diversity of life on earth. These arguments were of course deeply flawed and could be seen, even without understanding what really causes the weather, to be bad explanations. In fact they didn't actually explain anything at all. Saying 'science hasn't found the answer to the problem yet, therefore it needs a god (or mysterious soul) to explain it' is rather missing the point.

By postulating a 'soul', you haven't done any explaining at all, merely deferred the problem by maintaining the 'cartesian theatre'. If you've ever seen the film Men in Black, you'll know the problem. Do you remember the scene in the morgue where Will Smith presses a concealed button behind the big alien's ear, and then the alien's head opens up revealing a little green man sitting inside? The little green man is sat in front of a range of buttons and is actually controlling the outer body and making all the decisions. That is the 'cartesian theatre'. But it is obvious why it is not an explanation of consciousness at all; you've still got to explain what is going on inside the little green man's head (see picture below). The same applies to the soul. You haven't got a theory of consciousness at all; you've got a nice theory of puppetry though.

Any theory of consciousness has got to explain how consciousness can arise from a number of components, which themselves are not conscious. That is the key. Read 'Consciousness Explained' for detailed discussions on how consciousness may be explained mechanistically.

Determinism is the philosophical idea that all events are caused by an unbroken chain of prior events. The idea can be imagined as follows: given that all the 'stuff' in the universe has a set mass, position in space and direction of motion, and given that all this 'stuff' obeys the laws of physics, is there only one possible future?

No one knows the answer. Maybe no one can ever know the answer as to whether determinism or indeterminism (the other possibility) is true. But let's consider the implications on our lives IF determinism were true.

It is often said that determinism is incompatible with free-will. The logic goes that if there is only one possible future, how can any real 'choice' or freedom exist in the world. But I want to propose that this is built on a somewhat confused understanding of what free-will actually means.

I think the instinctive reaction of everyone upon comprehending determinism is to recoil in horror, "I don't want the world to be like that", they may say. The fear is that the universe is like the runaway mine-train rollercoaster; you're heading right for the rock, watch out you're going to hit the rock! But then you veer away at the last second. In reality you were never going to hit the rock as the train runs on a track that safely steers you round the danger every time. But what if the universe is like that?

Well I don't think the implications are quite what you initially suspect. Should we feel that everything is futile? I don't think so. We have to ask what we want from 'free will'. The people who want naive free will, for some reason want the ability to choose the choice that they didn't make. They want the ability to think about a dilemma, come to a decision, but be in the position where, with no change in the universe at all, they could just as likely have made the opposite decision. It seems quite strange to me.

If determinism were true, we would go through our reasoning processes and come to conclusions. You were always going to go through that process and reach that same conclusion given the specific circumstances, but so what? You still made the decision, and would have made the same decision if we wind the clock back and started again. But that's what we want isn't it? A coherent 'self', not one which just comes to random decisions with no tie to the world in which we live.

But this poses the interesting question, what is a 'self'? What are you? Come back for discussions on these questions soon...

If you accept the mechanistic view that our consciousness is solely the product of the functioning of the various parts of our brains, then where does that leave us as 'agents' in the world? It seems a scary thought doesn't it? Almost like walking into a large factory and observing all the complex machinery buzzing and whirring away...but then there's nobody home. Does this leave room for a 'self', or 'ego', as it is typically referred to in philosophy?

I think the answer is certainly yes; put simply, it is the sum of the parts. In 'Consciousness Explained' Dennett draws an apt comparison to centres of gravity.

A centre of gravity is the point in space upon which the force of gravity appears to act on an object. Do centres of gravity really exist? Yes, in a way. They are useful for performing calculations, and for anticipating how an object will behave under the pull of other objects. Is there a real point in space where all gravity acts? No, gravity pulls equally on all the atoms in the object...the idea of a centre of gravity is a useful abstraction. But we can still talk about them and, for most purposes, treat them as thought they were as real as anything else.

The 'self' can be seen, in many ways, as 'the centre of narrative gravity'. Is there a real point in space where the 'self' can be found? No, it's an abstraction of all the parts that come together to make you. You don't sit as a little green man behind your eyes...you are the product of all the many intricate systems that can be found in your head.