harnad@psycho (Stevan Harnad) (04/24/91)
Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article to appear in
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary
journal that provides Open Peer Commentary on important and
controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive
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Time and the Observer:
the Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain
Daniel Dennett and Marcel Kinsbourne
Center for Cognitive Studies
Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155
DDENNETT@pearl.tufts.edu
KEYWORDS: consciousness, mental timing, localization, discrimination,
memory, perception, illusion, subjective experience
ABSTRACT: We compare the way two models of consciousness treat
subjective timing. According to the standard "Cartesian Theater" model,
there is a place in the brain where "it all comes together" and the
discriminations in all modalities are somehow put into registration and
"presented" for subjective judgment. The timing of the events in this
Theater determines subjective order. According to the alternative
"Multiple Drafts" model, discriminations are distributed in both space
and time in the brain. These events do have temporal properties, but
those properties do not determine subjective order, because there is no
single, definitive "stream of consciousness," only a parallel stream of
conflicting and continuously revised contents. Four puzzling phenomena
that resist explanation by the Cartesian model are analyzed: (1)
backwards referral in time and (2) subjective delay of consciousness of
intention (both reported in this journal by Libet), (3) a gradual
apparent motion phenomenon involving abrupt color change (Kolers and
von Grunau), and (4) an illusion of an evenly spaced series of "hops"
produced by two or more widely spaced series of taps delivered to the
skin (Geldard and Sherrick's "cutaneous rabbit"). The unexamined
assumptions that have always made the Cartesian Theater so attractive
are exposed and dismantled. The Multiple Drafts model provides a better
account of the puzzling phenomena, avoiding the scientific and
metaphysical extravagances of the Cartesian Theater: The temporal order
of subjective events is a product of the brain's interpretational
processes, not a direct reflection of events making up those
processes.
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