Analysis Of Where Am I Daniel C. Dennett

In the essay “Where am I?” by Daniel C. Dennett there are connections being made and questions that arise in nature of a ‘self’ and the relation to ‘mind’ and ‘body’. The essay starts out with information about how Daniel was approached by Pentagon officials in which they asked him if he would be inclined to volunteer to take on a very dangerous and secret mission. This mission involved Daniel to go underground in Oklahoma to retrieve a warhead that was placed down there that has become extremely radioactive in a new way. The nature of the device produced radiation that could cause severe abnormalities in certain tissues of the brain. There was no way to shield and protect the brain from these deadly radiation rays that the device put off in

Daniel named his brain separately from the rest of his body. His brain in referred to as “Yorick” and his body is “Hamlet” and he himself is “Dennett”. Daniel was having a hard time grasping that if his brain, Yorick, was in the vat and his body, hamlet, was down the hall in the patient room, or wherever, then where was Dennett really at? He came up with some principles that could explain and possibly answer this question. The first principle was, “Where Hamlet goes there goes Dennett” in which he states that “it was clear enough, then, that my current body and I could part company, but not likely that I could be separated from my brain” (Dennett, 3). With this principle he then thought that maybe perhaps the truth was actually the second principle which was, “Where Yorick goes there goes Dennett”. The second principle states that in such an example if Dennett were to rob a bank in California and Yorick, his brain, was in Texas then where would the crime case take place and what kind of charge would come from it, “who” would go where for the punishment of the crime. If this principle were to be true then that leads to a third principle; “Dennett is wherever he thinks he is”. This third point of view states that “ at any given time a person has a point of view and the location of the point of view (which is determined internally by the content of the point of view) is also the location of the

In this theory, since it is based upon matter alone then this is a theory that does not correspond the best, in my opinion, with the essay. In the essay Daniel mentions many times where his mind, Dennett, feels like it is elsewhere from his brain and his body. He contemplates on whether or not Dennett resides in his brain that is out of his body in a life support vat or between his ears in his empty skull. He clearly distinguishes that his brain and body and mind are all separate from each other. In this materialism theory, I personally feel like this does not support Daniel Dennett in his understanding of this situation he was put