Saving the Baby: Dennett on Autobiography, Agency, and the Self

Abstract

Dennett argues that the decentralized view of human cognitive organization finding increasing support in parts of cognitive science undermines talk of an inner self. On his view, the causal underpinnings of behavior are distributed across a collection of autonomous subsystems operating without any centralized supervision. Selves are fictions contrived to simplify description and facilitate prediction of behavior with no real correlate inside the mind. Dennett often uses an analogy with termite colonies whose behavior looks organized and purposeful to the external eye, but which is actually the emergent product of uncoordinated activity of separate components marching to the beat of their individual drums. I examine the cognitive organization of a system steering by an internal model of self and environment, and argue that it provides a model that lies between the image of mind as termite colony and a naïve Cartesianism that views the self as inner substance.

Keywords:

• Dennett
• Autobiography
• Self
• Self-Models
• Navigation
• Self-Organization
• Unity Of Self

Notes

Notes

[1] One of his most important articles on the self is self-consciously titled “The Origins of Selves” (1989) to evoke Darwin's Origin of the Species.

[2] He uses a variety of evocative images for the target, which are not easy to integrate. Aside from the “Cartesian Theater,” there is the “Oval Office” in the brain, the “brain pearl,” “Central command,” and others.

[3] Much of Dennett's concern centers on the explicit records we keep of our psychological histories. We can recognize that those involve reconstruction and retrospective revision. The purposes for which we keep those records (like, e.g., the records that companies issue to their shareholders explaining corporate actions) may place a low premium on accuracy. Our interest may be less in the reasoning that led to those decisions than on whether we can endorse them and whether they should be repeated.

[4] The example has also been developed in the literature as an example of distributed cognition by Edwin Hutchins in his wonderful Cognition in the Wild (1995).

[5] A map, for these purposes, is any representation of the landscape rendered in a form that is not relativized to the ship's location.

[6] This is not to say that it couldn’t also represent those goings on: if things broke down, it would need to.

[7] As we let the time between cycles go to zero, we would have the map simultaneously monitoring and guiding the motions of the ship.

[8] Computations that transform instrument readings into self-locating coordinates and commands into action are external to the map and not part of the informational stream. They can be added if a need arises to regulate them.

[9] Dennett (1992) writes, for example:

• one of the fundamental tasks performed by the activities of the Joycean Machine is to adjudicate disputes, smooth out transitions between regimes, and prevent untimely coups d’état by marshalling the ‘right’ forces. Simple or overlearned tasks without serious competition can be routinely executed without the enlistment of extra forces, and hence unconsciously, but when a task is difficult … we accomplish it … [with self-manipulations].

•  These techniques of representing things to ourselves permit us to be self-governors or executives in ways no other creature approaches. We can work out policies well in advance, thanks to our capacity for hypothetical thinking and scenario-spinning; we can stiffen our own resolve to engage in unpleasant or long-term projects by habits of self-reminding, and by rehearsing the expected benefits and costs of the policies we have adopted. (pp. 277–278)

And later: “the broadcasting effect … creates an open forum of sorts, permitting any of the things one has learned to make a contribution to any current problem” (1992, p. 278).

[10] “The aspirant to a high order of self-control must have the capacity to represent his current beliefs, desires, intentions, and policies in a detached way, as objects for evaluation” (Dennett, 1984, p. 86).

[11] A map of space reifies structure along the spatial dimension by reproducing the structure of a region of space inside a much smaller part of that region.

[12] The point is a central theme in the literature on plans and practical reasoning. See, e.g., Bratman (1987).

[13] Individual members may share the opinions of the group, just as you and I may share opinions, but the opinion of the group is distinct from the opinion of any one or subset of its members.

[14] This leaves us with a vagueness that I’m happy to acknowledge. What exactly are the contributors to my voice? The informational streams that it unifies originate in the environment, and the distinction between body and environment is soft in ways emphasized in Dennett (1996) and Clark (1997, 2003). We can say the same thing about populations. Who, exactly, is included in the “we” of the people? The informational streams that get resolved into the collective voice are attenuated and there is no obvious terminus. There are the voters, of course, but also the people that voters talk to, and the news media and informal channels through which they get information, and so on. And then there is the question of the collection of parts that are controlled by the government; there are the citizens, of course, the polis, or body politic, but there is a much wider circle of influence affected by more attenuated links and only arbitrary or “legislative” boundaries. All of these sources of vagueness are present, though largely unacknowledged in the case of the self.

[15] We need to expand our vocabulary for the relations between parts and wholes to make room for collectives in addition to collections, and to interface with our criteria for individuating objects. There is no uniform usage here. Do we want to say you have new ‘objects’ at the higher level? Or new ‘agents’ but no new ‘objects’? Or is there some other way of describing these cases? These strike me mostly as matters of accounting.

[16] Of course that status can be revoked: entitlements are hostage to fulfillment of commitments, and nothing has been said about what it takes to acquire the status in the first place.