Page 27 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

24 Daniel C. Dennett

inch in your skull, that would not alter or impair your mind. We’re simply go-
ing to make the nerves indefinitely elastic by splicing radio links into them.’’
I was shown around the life-support lab in Houston and saw the sparkling
new vat in which my brain would be placed, were I to agree. I met the large
and brilliant support team of neurologists, hematologists, biophysicists, and
electrical engineers, and after several days of discussions and demonstrations, I
agreed to give it a try. I was subjected to an enormous array of blood tests,
brain scans, experiments, interviews, and the like. They took down my auto-
biography at great length, recorded tedious lists of my beliefs, hopes, fears,
and tastes. They even listed my favorite stereo recordings and gave me a crash
session of psychoanalysis.
The day for surgery arrived at last and of course I was anesthetized and re-
member nothing of the operation itself. When I came out of anesthesia, I
opened my eyes, looked around, and asked the inevitable, the traditional,
the lamentably hackneyed post-operative question: ‘‘Where am I?’’ The nurse
smiled down at me. ‘‘You’re in Houston,’’ she said, and I reflected that this still
had a good chance of being the truth one way or another. She handed me a
mirror. Sure enough, there were the tiny antennae poking up through their
titanium ports cemented into my skull.
‘‘I gather the operation was a success,’’ I said, ‘‘I want to go see my brain.’’
They led me (I was a bit dizzy and unsteady) down a long corridor and into the
life-support lab. A cheer went up from the assembled support team, and I
responded with what I hoped was a jaunty salute. Still feeling lightheaded, I
was helped over to the life-support vat. I peered through the glass. There,
floating in what looked like ginger-ale, was undeniably a human brain, though
it was almost covered with printed circuit chips, plastic tubules, electrodes, and
other paraphernalia. ‘‘Is that mine?’’ I asked. ‘‘Hit the output transmitter switch
there on the side of the vat and see for yourself,’’ the project director replied. I
moved the switch to off, and immediately slumped, groggy and nauseated, into
the arms of the technicians, one of whom kindly restored the switch to its on
position. While I recovered my equilibrium and composure, I thought to my-
self: ‘‘Well, here I am, sitting on a folding chair, staring through a piece of plate
glass at my own brain.... But wait,’’ I said to myself, ‘‘shouldn’t I have
thought, ‘Here I am, suspended in a bubbling fluid, being stared at by my own
eyes’?’’ I tried to think this latter thought. I tried to project it into the tank, of-
fering it hopefully to my brain, but I failed to carry off the exercise with any
conviction. I tried again. ‘‘Here am I, Daniel Dennett, suspended in a bubbling
fluid, being stared at by my own eyes.’’ No, it just didn’t work. Most puzzling
and confusing. Being a philosopher of firm physicalist conviction, I believed
unswervingly that thetokeningofmythoughts was occurringsomewhere in
my brain: yet, when I thought ‘‘Here I am,’’ where the thought occurred to me
was here, outside the vat, where I, Dennett, was standing staring at my brain.
I tried and tried to think myself into the vat, but to no avail. I tried to build
up to the task by doing mental exercises. I thought to myself, ‘‘The sun is shin-
ing over there,’’ five times in rapid succession, each time mentally ostending a
different place: in order, the sun-lit corner of the lab, the visible front lawn of
the hospital, Houston, Mars, and Jupiter. I found I had little difficulty in getting
my ‘‘there’s’’ to hop all over the celestial map with their proper references. I