Daniel Dennett's brain gets removed!! Part 3

I have selected a section of clips from an old docudrama featuring Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter. I have only uploaded that portion with Dennett in it, for all the Dennett fans on YouTube. I am pretty sure Dennett did not allow neurosurgeons to remove his brain and connect it to his body by radio transmitters. It was just a good thought experiment. But if I ever get to ask him, this is the first thing I would like to clarify.

This set of clips is from the 1988 docudrama 'Victim of the Brain' that was uploaded to google video by VIRGIL.GRiffith, a graduate student in Computation and Neural Systems at Caltech. That is his website:
http://virgil.gr/49

You could watch the whole docudrama at ,
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8576072297424860224
It was made by Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos

You may also leave user comments at
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096382/

Plus there is an entry at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_of_the_Brain

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• Daniel
• Dennett
• Brain
• Philosophy
• Neuroscience
• Comedy

[dragonlorder]

Dennett is suggesting something beyond matter or energy which defines the uniqueness of consciousness

[82abhilash]

Hardly, he holds to the notion that consciousness is a brain activity.

[dragonlorder]

oh, but he was implying theres two different person controlling the same body at the end, thats why I thought he was suggesting that

[82abhilash]

Here is what Dennett himself said about this particular thought experiment, 'When philosophical fantasies become too outlandish -- involving time machines, say, or duplicate universes or infinitely powerful deceiving demons we may wisely decline to conclude anything from them. Our conviction that we understand the issues involved may be unreliable, an illusion produced by the vividness of the fantasy.' Perhaps he was doing this as some sort of warning to his peers.

[LogicSolver]

You were right, I did love this. Now they just need to create a part 2 where Daniel is cloned, memory and all, and then has his right hemisphere swapped with his clone's right hemisphere or something like that.

[82abhilash]

Don't get too excited, we still do not have the technology to do even this much.

[kohehd]

@dragonlorder

Yes but they became two different people only when the brains weren't in sync. It's like having twins with pretty much the exact same brains during birth but as they have different experiences throughout their lifetime, they mature differently. So no... it's not an advocation of anything supernatural.

[AlephNeil]

I've read The Mind's I, but I had no idea that this story had been 'dramatised' like this.

It's pretty hilarious. What a find!

[dragonlorder]

Oh, I wish we could verify this somedays

[LogicSolver]

:)

Acknowledged.