Dennett Questions Daniel Dennett’s piece, “Where Am I?”, pre

Dennett Questions Daniel Dennett’s piece, “Where Am I?”, presents us with an interesting thought experiment that is intended to make us think about what kind of beings we are, and to suggest that some answers to this question are more likely or more plausible. After reading and thinking about Dennett’s article, please answer the following three questions. 1. What did you find most challenging, surprising, or astonishing to think about in light of your existing views about persons and what they are? (Pick one thing from the article and describe it. There may be more than one thing that you find very challenging, surprising, or astonishing, but just pick one thing that you can write about in a reasonably concise way.) 2. Describe your (prior) view or belief to which what you described in your answer to Question 1 poses a challenge or was surprising or astonishing. 3. Explain how or why what you described in your answer to Question 1 poses a challenge or presents itself as surprising or astonishing in light of the (prior) view or belief that you described in Question 2. You might think that the connection between your respective answers to Question 1 and Question 2 is obvious, but write it up anyway. Remember, you have to make your point obvious to the reader. Moreover, writing it out will force you to make sure that you are clear about the connection in your own mind. You MUST number your answer to each question. Do NOT rewrite the question as a part of your answer. Write as much as you need to in order to provide solid answers. In no event should your total writing length exceed 750 words. Note: It might be that you believe that we will never have the technology that Dennett describes because (a) our intelligence is too limited to create it, (b) no thinking beings—no matter how smart—could make such a technology because it would be physically impossible, ., the technology that Dennett imagines couldn’t exist because it would violate the laws of nature (., the laws of physics), or (c) the very idea of such technology is incoherent in that it presents what is called a “conceptual impossibility”���like two even numbers adding up to an odd number, or there being a spherical cube, or Tuesdays having a greater mass than Wednesdays. For philosophers, it is generally possibility and impossibility of type (c) that is most interesting in that they are often concerned about the essential nature of things in a way that goes beyond the laws of nature. However, I think that possibility and impossibility of type (b) is also relevant for us in this context—at least relative to views held by many philosophers. Possibilities and impossibilities of type (a) are generally not interesting for philosophy, and are not really interesting for us in this case, in particular. This is because if it turned out that it was only type-(a)-impossible this would tell us nothing about what, if anything, Dennett’s thought experiment shows us about the kind of being that we are (the latter being the point of the thought experiment). Please think about what, if anything, in Dennett’s tale you think is either type-(b)-impossible or type-(c)-impossible. These kinds of considerations are going to be important in this course. We are going to study the nature of these kinds of possibilities and impossibilities later on, and then use them to think about philosophical claims and arguments. For now, just think about these issues on your own. I suggest that you write your thought down and save them for latter. This is Page 2 of 2 Dennett Question the only way that you will be able to reliably decide, later on, how your views have changed (if they have) about the relevant concepts of possibility and impossibility and in what respects they have changed. This will be interesting in itself, and is bound to improve your overall understanding of those concepts and how to apply them in a philosophical context. For now, we do not need to reach any conclusions, nor even present any arguments, as to whether the events that Dennett describes are possible in the relevant senses. For purposes Questions 1, 2, and 3, respectively, you can just couch your answers in hypothetical terms. In other words, you could write in the following manner: “Supposing that what Dennett describes in this thought experiment is possible, then … .”