Professor Dennett shared this paper with me and I think tomorrow I’m going to share this with him:
“Consciousness Explained, at Thirty” - By Jared Warren
Page 13
This ‘multiple drafts’ account is not yet a full theory of consciousness. Instead, it sets up Dennett’s theory. The most important parts of the set- up are those I have detailed:
- consciousness can be indeterminate in various ways; and
(ii) the consciousness-enabling architecture of the mind does not include anything like an inner observer, instead something becomes conscious when it reaches system-wide influence. (what about the physical body - isn’t that a constant inner observer who is providing constant feedback to the brain?)
Why is our physical body most always ignored by philosophers?
Isn’t your body your one companion through every moment of life that you experience?
Love it or hate it, your body is the vehicle through which you’ve experienced everything and learned everything. Show it some respect.
It deserves a bunch more credit, the brain in a vat doesn’t exist, the brain exists within a body, the two combined create a living creature and it’s the living that creates consciousness.
A thorough appreciation of Earth’s Evolution over deep-time indicates that awareness appeared with the first living cells on Earth, billions of years ago, then came the complex internally cooperative metropolis of the eukaryotic cells !
By and by some 600 millions years ago those cells created organisms that evolved into basically ever more complicated sensing, processing, and action creatures.
From the physical reality of Earth’s Evolution, a Theory of Consciousness would recognize that, “Consciousness” is in fact, a fundamental biologic imperative.
The knowledge needed for a Theory of Consciousness would need to begin with understanding the Ediacaran and Cambrian Periods and the birth of complex creatures and ecology and biomes and competition and so on. Day by day as time raced ever forward.
Human consciousness is the cherry upon Earth’s Consciousness Sundae.
I love this metaphor’s poetic coincidence, in that this human cherry of an introspective mind is nestled within a mountain of mammalian whipped cream.