The Meme Machine

THE ULTIMATE MEMEPLEX 225
continuously with the complex demands of the task we are performing. If there
is a spotlight, it is one that switches on and off all over the place and can shine in
several places at once; if there is a global workspace it is not located in any
particular lace. It cannot tell us where ‘I’ am.
The theatre metaphor may do more harm than good to our thinking about self
and consciousness. Dennett (1991) argues that although most theorists now
reject Cartesian dualism, they still secretly believe in what he calls the
‘Cartesian Theatre’. They still imagine that somewhere inside our heads is a
place where ‘it all comes together’; where consciousness happens and we see
our mental images projected on a mental screen; where we make our decisions
and initiate actions; where we agonise about life, love, and meaning. The
Cartesian Theatre does not exist. When sensory information comes into the
brain it does not go to an inner screen where a little self is watching it. If it did,
the little self would have to have little eyes and another inner screen, and so on.
According to Dennett, the brain produces ‘multiple drafts’ of what is happening
as the information flows through its parallel networks. One of these drafts
comes to be the verbal story we tell ourselves, which includes the idea that there
is an author of the story, or a user of the brain’s virtual machine. Dennett calls
this the ‘benign user illusion’. So maybe this is all we are; a centre of narrative
gravity; a story about a persisting self who does things, feels things and makes
decisions; a benign user illusion. And illusions do not have locations.
What do I do?
Hold out your arm in front of you and then, whenever you feel like it,
spontaneously and of your own free will, flex your wrist. You might like to do
this a few times, making sure you do it as consciously and spontaneously as you
can. You will probably experience some kind of inner dialogue or decision
process in which you hold back from doing anything, and then decide to act.
Now ask yourself, what began the process that led to the action? Was it you?
This task formed the basis of some fascinating experiments carried out by the
neurosurgeon Benjamin Libet (1985). His subjects had electrodes on their
wrists to pick up the action, and electrodes on their scalps to measure brain
waves, and they watched a revolving spot on a clock face. As well as
spontaneously flexing their wrists they were asked to note exactly where the spot
was when they decided to act. Libet was therefore timing three things: the start