Daniel Dennett gets credit (or, if you will, blame -- we'll come to that) for the expression "Cartesian Theatre" as a name for a flaw in many theories of the human mind. The idea behind the phrase is this: one intuitive way to think of perception is as the recreation of an outward reality within an inner space. Think of a little version of yourself watching a movie relating events that are happening outside the walls of the theatre. The movie is produced in something like real time due to sensors on the outer walls of the same building. Of course if we do think of perception that way, we are open to the question: can the little guy who is my real self be sure that the movie is accurate? Maybe an evil demon has tampered with the processes of production? The way to solve such puzzles, according to Dennett, is to abandon the idea of the Cartesian theatre altogether. Now comes Markus Gabriel, a philosopher I've been reading lately. You may remember that I menti...
Posts
My recent reading includes a book entitled I AM NOT A BRAIN by Markus Gabriel, a prominent German philosopher who sometimes calls himself a neo-existentialist. I mentioned Gabriel's unorthodox view of 19th century Germany idealism in a post here last week. Today I wish to add only that the title of I AM NOT A BRAIN makes transparent one of its theses: that it is impossible to reduce the mind to facts about the brain or nervous system in the Dennett manner. He also debelieves in a transcendental soul, which works somehow within the otherwise mechanical human body. He acknowledges of course that the activity of the brain is a necessary condition for the activity of the mind. But he thinks it never a sufficient condition for understanding consciousness, or self-consciousness, or the self, or freedom. So far so good. But he seems to argue for this in a roundabout and very 'continental' way that makes me suspect this is all supposed to unclog my overly burdened angl...
Immanuel Kant is a giant in the history of philosophy. He is remembered as the leading exponent of deontological ethics; as the inventor of a sort of transcendental idealism that breaks both with Plato's objective and Berkeley's subjective idealism; and a proponent of keeping Christianity within the realm of reason (a determination that really ticked off poor Kierkegaard, among others.) G.W.F. Hegel is another giant. He is remembered for sticking yet another modifier in front of "idealism." No objective, subjective, or transcendental -- it is Absolute Idealism that was his brand. The line from Kant to Hegel is contested terrain. The figures in between, especially Fichte and Schelling, are generally treated as exactly that, as in between figures, as transitions. Historians of 19th century German idealism debate how those intermediaries brought Kantianism to the point of becoming Hegelianism. Markus Gabriel has a different view. In his 2013 book, TRANSCENDENTAL ...