Dr Daniel Dennett Brainstorms Essay

The story in Brainstorms by Dr. Daniel Dennett is fiction. Dennett, the fictitious character identical to the real Dennett, is approached by Howard Hughes, nasa and government officials. They offer him to take part in a failed experiment involving a “Supersonic Tunneling Underground Device”. Dennett accepts to being the retriever for what is essentially an underground mobile atomic warhead, stuck deep underground. Because the bomb’s radiation is harmful to brain tissue, they place his brain (to which Dennett was quite apprehensive) into a chamber allowing it to retain full function, and replace it with a transmitter linked to Dennetts external brain. As another precaution, they copy its exact infrastructural function into a computer, so that

To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages” (Huxley 6). So if Dennett occupies a physical manifestation it is because it is in his nature. The flash to Houston happened fast enough that it took Dennetts point of awareness a little while to even realize that he was physically there. This lag is not to be noted as an absolute difference between consciousness and circumstance but rather as an indirect bearing of that point of view on its personal location. The connection to the outer world is made by that which is a medium to reveal it. This is an example of what Dr. Dennett describes as the “body identity theory”, which is the natural tendency to locate one’s personal identity with their body. For wherever resides the consciousness also resides the brain, which only acts as the link to perceive the external world. Inside of Yorick, Dennett’s elation at the philosophical discovery fades into panic as the reality of his situation became more

Also, Yorick was still inside of the brain chamber external from Dennetts body. He called his new body Fortinbras. Up until this point, Dennett was unaware of the extra precaution taken by the doctors of copying his brain’s functional capacity into a computer program, which they named Hubert. Though they had no way of proving that Hubert was identical to Yorick, their outputs had been shown to be completely synchronous, giving encouragement to Hubert’s legitimacy. At first, switching between Yorick and Hubert creates an imperceptible difference to Dennett. It is a seemingly seamless transition between the two. Fortinbras is given an unlabeled radio switch allowing the consciousness of Dennett to switch between Yorick and Hubert; which he only flips when in the presence of friends so that if the brain output of either was not functioning, those who have his best interests in mind would flip him back from the void. Dr. Dennett (the author) gives the idea that Dennett (the fabricated storyteller of this experience) is coming to the conclusion of the story, as though Dennett himself is telling the readers this story