An End to Qualia? Dennett's Defense of Heterophenomenology

Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness
By Daniel C. Dennett. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 199 pp. Cloth, $28.00.

Forgoing recent excursions into the philosophical implications of neo-Darwinism and free will, Dennett returns to his roots, defending both his theory of consciousness (the multiple-drafts model) and his methodological approach (heterophenomenology) from recent critics. For those unfamiliar with Dennett's philosophy of mind, be prepared to incrementally agree with a persuasive, clear, and creative writer until reaching perhaps the most nonintuitive conclusion possible: There is no conscious entity that requires explanation. In Sweet Dreams, Dennett goes on the offensive against the "new mysterians," those who argue that the problem of consciousness is fundamentally unsolvable or requires an explanatory framework outside that used by observational science. Along the way, we encounter a gallery of philosophical troublemakers, circus performers who would make even Barnum hesitant, including a plethora of possible zombies, Martian scientists, cunning magicians, replicant impostors, emotionally inverted color perceivers, and a trio of imprisoned color scientists: the original Mary, the struck-by-lightning brain-reorganized Swamp-Mary, and the color-challenged Robotic Mark-19 Mary. Although Dennett is unmatched (save perhaps Dawkins in biology) in communicating complex ideas in ways that resonate with readers, the current work is less unified than most recent efforts, consisting of a series of reworked papers and addresses given over the past 7 years, focused on specific criticisms and elaborations of his approach. Each of the first five chapters is autonomous, and comments are presented sequentially. The remaining three chapters are re-presentations of this initial material, adding new slants to the discussion but little new content.