Book review: Consciousness Explained (Daniel C. Dennett) (part I: The brain in the vat)

Daniel C. Dennett is a proponent of consilience. He is trained as a philosopher and is the director of the center for cognitive studies at Tufts University. He is an interesting fellow because he is very knowledgable in sciences like biology or computer sciences and he applies his scientific knowledge and methods to the unraveling of the deepest mysteries such as ...in this book...consciouness. Not less!

I am only half through the book but I think that it can only do me good to summarize what I thought interesting so far.




Prelude: How are hallucinations possible?
1.The brain in the vat and 2. pranksters in the brain

If you have seen "The matrix", you know what is meant by "brain in the vat". Some philosophers have argued that it is not possible to tell whether we are really out there interacting with the real world or if we are just brains in a bocal filled with nutritive fluid and fed with inputs simulating a world.

Dennet expresses the view that we could be brains in a vat only if we were not given exploratory power. Give us exploratory power, even very limited, and the number of possible worlds that the vat master must generate for us to still believe in the illusion of a real life becomes enormous. Literally, it is a combinatorial explosion. In a nutshell, to get the feeling of the real world, you NEED the real world if you have exploratory power.

à we are not brains in vats

àstrong hallucinations are impossible (they are similar also simulations of a world we really believe in).

The credibility of an hallucination is inversely proportional to the strength of an hallucination.

Nevertheless, convincing, multimodal hallucinations are frequently experienced.

Dennet goes on to explain that triggering the optic nerve anywhere between the eyeball and the brain could produce an hallucination and that people having an hallucination are often very passive in the face of the hallucination.

To give the person the illusion of being active, the "illusionist" (e.g. the vat master) must know in advance the exploratory intentions and decisions of the victim or induce them.

Here stop my review of the beginning of Dennett's book. The following interesting guy seems to think that strong hallucinations are commonplace: