• DOI:10.2307/2108261
• Corpus ID: 170207369

Appendix A (For Philosophers)

@article{Jackson1993AppendixA,
  title={Appendix A (For Philosophers)},
  author={Frank Cameron Jackson},
  journal={Philosophy and Phenomenological Research},
  year={1993},
  volume={53},
  pages={899},
  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:170207369}
}

• F. Jackson
• Published 1 December 1993
• Philosophy
• Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Dennett's book' is full of insightful remarks about the mind drawing on his intimidating breadth of knowledge in psychology, information science, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. He reminds us, yet again, of how issues in the philosophy of mind can be illuminated by ways of thinking characteristic of disciplines located outside Humanities' Faculties. There is no question but that Dennett casts a great deal of light on consciousness in particular and the mind in general in this book… 

Dennett's book' is full of insightful remarks about the mind drawing on his intimidating breadth of knowledge in psychology, information science, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. He reminds us, yet again, of how issues in the philosophy of mind can be illuminated by ways of thinking characteristic of disciplines located outside Humanities' Faculties. There is no question but that Dennett casts a great deal of light on consciousness in particular and the mind in general in this book. He does not, however, offer us a theory of consciousness in the sense of 'theory' that philosophers typically have in mind. He tells us a lot of what he believes about consciousness, and what he thinks consciousness is not (most notably, that it is not something that falls outside the materialist's view of the world, and that it is not something that happens in what he calls the Cartesian theatre), but he resists telling us precisely what he thinks makes it true that a being is conscious. This is deliberate. In Appendix A (For Philosophers) near the end of the book, he imagines (slightly peeved?) philosophers demanding to know whether he is a functionalist, an eliminativist, a behaviourist, an identity theorist, an instrumentalist, or whatever, about consciousness in particular and the mind in general, and he argues that this demand is misconceived. I'll try to sketch why I am unhappy with Dennett's coyness. I think that there is a compulsory question for materialists about consciousness and the mind, which Dennett does not address. Dennett has long resisted those who demand a definite answer to whether he is or is not a realist about mental states, and, correspondingly, to whether he is or is not an instrumentalist about the mind. He continues this resistance in this book. He thinks that the question is 'a poorly conceived question': 'Are pains real? They are as real as haircuts and dollars and opportunities and persons, and centers of gravity, but how real is that?' (460) Dennett is right that there is something poorly conceived about asking without the appropriate surrounding explanation whether pains, centers of