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Article 5966 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (dave budd)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding: Virtual vs. Real
Message-ID: <zlsiida.396@fs1.mcc.ac.uk>
Date: 28 May 92 15:41:14 GMT
References: <1992May25.214006.29965@Princeton.EDU> <4799@sheol.UUCP> <BILL.92May27224605@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
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In article <BILL.92May27224605@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu> bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:

>Briefly (read "Consciousness Explained" for details), the Cartesian
>Theater is the place inside the brain (the pineal organ, for
>Descartes) where "I" reside, watching qualia flash up on the screen in
>front of me after they've been processed by the brain's sensory
>apparatus.  Put this way it sounds obviously wrong (I hope!), but
>Dennett argues quite convincingly that for almost all of us the
>Cartesian Theater is the image we use constantly, unconsciously, to
>think about the mind.  We have to strain very hard to avoid it, and
>sometimes it creeps in anyway.

Yup, this IS the model used by 'the man on the Clapham omnibus'[TM],
but I'd like to propose that the error is not that the model misplaces 'I' 
but that *there is no I*, Descartes' I being *just a watcher* which is more 
or less synonymous with the ego.  The mind contains a whole bunch of 
independently operating processes *with no overall controlling process*.

Well, it's something to think about anyway!

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