Chapter 4

Question 1

Cartesian Theatre

Answer 1

at consciousness occurs in a place (ie. Inside your mind) and that you are the audience of this stream of consciousness

Question 2

Dan Dennett

Answer 2

• rejects Cartesian Dualism

- argues for Cartesian Materialism

Question 3

Cartesian Materialism

Answer 3

belief that consciousness is not separate from the brain

Question 4

Mental Screen (Roger Shepard)

Answer 4

(1971) mental imagery experiment where subjects were given pairs of diagrams and asked to press a button to indicate whether the two diagrams were different shapes or different views of the same shape

Question 5

What did the Mental Screen Experiment conclude on consciousness

Answer 5

• there is something measurable when people have private imaginings but it cannot be determined if consciousness does the imaging or if there is a mental screen that images are projected on in our mind
• mental images can occur subconsciously

Question 6

Global Workspace Theory (GWT) (Baar 1988)

Answer 6

• spotlight of attention directs focal consciousness
• spotlight of attention is also directed to different actors
• bright spot highlights other events that are vaguely conscious
• Spotlight directs information to the unconscious and there are numerous background unconscious systems that shape events happening in the bright spot

Question 7

How does Baar’s view consciousness?

Answer 7

consciousness is a working part of cognition (not a epiphenomenon)
-an event is made conscious because it is being processed in the global workspace and made available to the rest of the (unconscious) system

Question 8

Theory of Neuronal Adeuquacy (Libet)

Answer 8

-events become conscious only when the neurons involved have been firing for a sufficient length of time

Question 9

Astonishing Hypothesis(Reductionist Theories)

Answer 9

you; your joys/sorrows; memories and ambitions; sense of personal identity and free will are no more than an assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules

Question 10

Eliminative Materialism (Pat and Paul Churchland)

Answer 10

-conscious experience can be equated with physical brain activity; denies any special problem of subjectivity

** does not explain how we can overcome our intuitions and see how experience is brain activity

Question 11

Multiple Drafts (Dennett)

Answer 11

There is no central meaner; only multiple drafts being edited at once; some drafts are used in controlling actions or producing speech, some are laid down in memory while others fade away.

• Contents arise –> get revised –>affect behavior –> leave traces in memory which then get overlaid by other traces.
• There are no fixed facts about the stream of consciousness independent of particular probes; consciousness depends on the way the parallel stream was probed (as inner speech is produced, content becomes fixed)