PPIG: Philosophy, Psychology, and Informatics Group
16 Nov 2016: Phenomenology as Functionality: The Virtual Cartesian Theatre
16 Nov 2016 17:00 – 18:30
Room G16, 7 Bristo Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9AL
Presenter: Roly Perera
Title: "Phenomenology as Functionality: The Virtual Cartesian Theatre"
Abstract: Dennett presents his Multiple Drafts theory as a deconstruction of the Cartesian conception of the agent as the "observer" of an internal image, the so-called Cartesian Theatre. I argue that Multiple Drafts is instead best seen as an account of a Cartesian Theatre - a "virtual" Cartesian Theatre, implemented in wetware. Contra Dennett, who argues that an inner image would be redundant, I claim that inner presentations serve a perfectly respectable biological purpose. For example, we can not only use vision to identify mates, avoid predators, and other activities which are not inherently imagistic, but we can also behave deeply and systematically about the content of visual percepts themselves, such as when we engage in the linguistic behaviour of relating to another person how something looks to us. This extra layer of functionality allows _how things seem to us_ and _how we take the world to be_ to come apart, and is (I argue) the essence of phenomenal consciousness. I will illustrate with examples from the way we report visual illusions, entoptic phenomena like floaters, and optical effects like parallax. Once the functional role of an inner presentation is acknowledged, the various empirical findings from consciousness research that Dennett presents as evidence against the Cartesian Theatre can be seen instead as revealing the clever tricks the brain uses to implement a Cartesian Theatre.
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