"Cartesian theater" is a derisive term coined by philosopher and cognitive scientist

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...

to refer pointedly to a defining aspect of what he calls

Cartesian materialism In philosophy of mind, Cartesian materialism is the idea that at some place (or places) in the brain, there is some set of information that directly corresponds to our conscious experience. Contrary to its name, Cartesian materialism is not a view ...

, which he considers to be the often unacknowledged remnants of

Cartesian dualism Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher René Descartes—from his Latinized name ''Cartesius''. It may refer to: Mathematics *Cartesian closed category, a closed category in category theory * Cartesian coordinate system, moder ...

in modern

materialist Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialis ...

theories of the

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

Overview

Descartes originally claimed that

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

requires an immaterial soul, which interacts with the body via the

pineal gland The pineal gland, conarium, or epiphysis cerebri, is a small endocrine gland in the brain of most vertebrates. The pineal gland produces melatonin, a serotonin-derived hormone which modulates sleep, sleep patterns in both circadian rhythm, circ ...

of the brain. Dennett says that, when the dualism is removed, what remains of Descartes' original model amounts to imagining a tiny theater in the brain where a

homunculus A homunculus ( , , ; "little person") is a representation of a small human being, originally depicted as small statues made out of clay. Popularized in sixteenth-century alchemy and nineteenth-century fiction, it has historically referred to the ...

(small person), now physical, performs the task of observing all the sensory data projected on a screen at a particular instant, making the decisions and sending out commands (cf. the

homunculus argument The homunculus argument is an informal fallacy whereby a concept is explained in terms of the concept itself, recursion, recursively, without first defining or explaining the original concept. This fallacy arises most commonly in the theory of ...

). The term "Cartesian theater" was brought up in the context of the

multiple drafts model Daniel Dennett's multiple drafts model of consciousness is a physicalist theory of consciousness based upon cognitivism, which views the mind in terms of information processing. The theory is described in depth in his book, ''Consciousness Explai ...

that Dennett posits in ''

Consciousness Explained ''Consciousness Explained'' is a 1991 book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett, in which the author offers an account of how consciousness arises from interaction of physical and cognitive processes in the brain. Dennett describes consciou ...

'' (1991):

Notes

References

* Dennett, D. and Kinsbourne, M. (1992)
Time and the Observer: the Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain
. (1992) ''Behavioral and Brain Sciences'', 15, 183-247, 1992. Reprinted in ''The Philosopher's Annual'', Grim, Mar and Williams, eds., vol. XV-1992, 1994, pp. 23–68; Noel Sheehy and Tony Chapman, eds., ''Cognitive Science'', Vol. I, Elgar, 1995, pp. 210–274.

External links

__NOTOC__ {{DEFAULTSORT:Cartesian Theater Arguments in philosophy of mind Consciousness studies Mental content

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External links