I am reading Daniel Dennett’s new book “Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking“. I think the main question in all of his writing, is: what is the “I” that is reading and how is it doing that and other things I’s usually do?

Reading is one of the most complex and problematic processes the I can be involved in. An excellent possibility to see what his answer is. Of course that’s only my interpretation of it.

The fundamentals of Dennett’s philosophical universe are:

1. Materialism. In this book also formulated as “there is no wondertissue”: Everything finally has to be explained as material processes. There is no place for god, souls, ghosts, funny “quantumleaps” or intelligence from outer space.
2. Determinism. This follows directly from (1). Nevertheless it should be noted as a separate and important point.
3. Evolution. Especially in the development of culture and memes and the development of thought and the subject.
4. The “I” is not a material part of the brain that can be isolated. It cannot be a theater somewhere in the center where a homunculus watches the inputs and sends out its responses. It is the systemic result or effect of deterministic processes running all over in the brain.
5. For each and every “I” there is some faculty called “free will” that produces decisions about what to do. For this “I” (and its social environment) the outcome could have been otherwise. The “I” is accountable for its decisions. The fact that all the known and unknown (as seen from the standpoint of “I”) factors that lead up to a choice are determined processes (as in (2)) and thus the decision itself is too, is called compatibilism. For an omniscient world there can be no free will. For an individual with restricted knowledge there can be. An omniscient world (or individual) is impossible by definition. Lees verder →