I’m reminded of Dennett’s passage on the color red. Paraphrased:
To judge that you have seen red is to have a complicated visual discrimination process send a simple message to the rest of your brain. There is no movie theater inside the brain that receives this message and then obediently projects a red image on some inner movie screen, just so that your inner homunculus can see it and judge it all over again. Your brain only needs to make the judgment once!
Similarly, if I think I’m conscious, or feel emotion, it’s not like our brain notices and then passes this message “further inside,” to the “real us” (the homunculus). Your brain only has to go into the “angry state” once—it doesn’t have to then send an angry message to the homunculus so that you can really feel anger.
I’m reminded of Dennett’s passage on the color red. Paraphrased:
To judge that you have seen red is to have a complicated visual discrimination process send a simple message to the rest of your brain. There is no movie theater inside the brain that receives this message and then obediently projects a red image on some inner movie screen, just so that your inner homunculus can see it and judge it all over again. Your brain only needs to make the judgment once!
Similarly, if I think I’m conscious, or feel emotion, it’s not like our brain notices and then passes this message “further inside,” to the “real us” (the homunculus). Your brain only has to go into the “angry state” once—it doesn’t have to then send an angry message to the homunculus so that you can really feel anger.