Is Anyone Home?
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Is anyone home?
Drawing from the three pieces that we have read by Daniel Dennett an interesting idea of what the self is starts to emerge. In the first of three papers read, Dennett tackles the problem of where the self is and can lead a reader to believe he is implying that it is located in your brain. In the second paper, Dennett talks about viewing people from a third person perspective to predict a persons behavior based on intentional grounds. In addition, the final paper read by Dennett, tries to point out our natural but incorrect mistake of thinking the self as something non-fictitious. In totality, the picture drawn from these three papers of what the self is seems to become something of a fictitious thing that does have “purpose” in an intentional kind of way, and it is something that is constructed and located in the brain.
In the first paper, “Where am I”, Dennett formulates a somewhat improbable yet surprisingly helpful thought experiment to show where the self is located. During this adventure, Dennett is to go down a tunnel and disarm a nuclear warhead ( Dennett 1981). The catch is that not all of him can go down and get the job done; he will have to leave his brain behind (Dennett1981). Though he is not to worry because the science team working for the Pentagon and NASA got it covered or at very least convinced him they do (Dennett 1981). Dennett goes along with this and they wire his body and brain up with the appropriate technology and put his brain in a containment vat (Dennett 1981). Through the miracle of this new technology his brain and body still seem to function the same way they used to and Dennett is able to control his body with his brain from its location in the vat (Dennett 1981). After this, a series of events occur that lead Dennett to conclude that the “self” is where his brain is located (Dennett 1981). Dennett sees the natural feelings of the “self” being in the body as an elaborate illusion played out by feed perceptions to the mind (Dennett 1981). What could be argued against this viewpoint is that the “self” being located in the brain could also be an elaborate illusion. Simply a concoction of the functioning of a brain that intimately attaches to an immaterial mind, much like the way the body intimately connects to the brain. Dennett does not provide a convincing case to be able to point at the brain and with full confidence say that the self is located there.
In the second paper by Dennett “Intentional systems”, he proposes that we are intentional system(Cooney; Dennett 2000). This is a way of looking at ourselves in a more scientific third person perspective. If we were to apply this to humans, it would be ascribing to us robotic characteristics making humans nothing more then a complex machine. A machine with an optimal design set by natural selection with beliefs and goals that dictate our actions (Cooney; Dennett 2000). If we were to adopt this perspective towards our fellow humans according to Dennett we should be able to predict their behavior if their system is running as it should (Cooney; Dennett 2000). Not only should we be able to make correct prediction about behavior but according to Dennett, we should also be able to describe them in purely physical processes (Cooney; Dennett 2000). The problem that I see with this view is that certain intentions within the human system seem to be out of reach of a physical explanation. For instance, if my intentions are to take the dog for a walk later tonight, these intentions link up to a future time and to another place (the park across the street). The problem is that there is no way physically that my neurons can connect with this future time or to the park, which is a place that is outside of my head. The mental events that occur inside my head seem to be distinctly separate from the neural events that are occurring at the same time. This would lead one to believe that a purely physical and intentional explanation of humans will not fully capture the range of our mental behavior.
In the paper “Why Everyone Is a Novelist”, Dennett sets out to show us that the self is a fictional character (Cooney; Dennett). He gives the view that the self is nothing more then something similar to a complex version of the center of gravity in a chair (Cooney; Dennett 2000). The center of gravity is a very useful but a fictitious concept that is not tangible (Cooney; Dennett 2000). Its use is to explain happening in our world, but for instance if I took a chair and sawed off a leg then I would be changing