Heart Sutra

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A reproduction of the palm-leaf manuscript in Siddham script, originally held at Hōryū-ji Temple, Japan; now located in the Tokyo National Museum at the Gallery of Hōryū—ji Treasure. The original copy may be the earliest extant Sanskrit manuscript dated to the 7th–8th century CE.

 

The Heart Sūtra (Sanskrit: प्रज्ञापारमिताहृदय Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya or Chinese: 心經 Xīnjīng) is a popular sutra in Mahāyāna Buddhism. Its Sanskrit title, Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, can be translated as "The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom".

The sutra famously states, "Form is empty" (śūnyatā). It is a condensed exposé on the Buddhist Mahayana teaching of the Two Truths doctrine, which says that ultimately all phenomena are sunyata, empty of an unchanging essence. This emptiness is a 'characteristic' of all phenomena, and not a transcendent reality, but also "empty" of an essence of its own. Specifically, it is a response to Sarvastivada teachings that "phenomena" or its constituents are real.

The text has been translated into English dozens of times from Chinese, Sanskrit and Tibetan as well as other source languages.

Summary of the sutra

In the sutra, Avalokiteśvara addresses Śariputra, explaining the fundamental emptiness (śūnyatā) of all phenomena, known through and as the five aggregates of human existence (skandhas): form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), volitions (saṅkhāra), perceptions (saṃjñā), and consciousness (vijñāna). Avalokiteśvara famously states, "Form is empty (śūnyatā). Emptiness is form", and declares the other skandhas to be equally empty—that is, dependently originated.

Avalokiteśvara then goes through some of the most fundamental Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths, and explains that in emptiness none of these notions apply. This is interpreted according to the two truths doctrine as saying that teachings, while accurate descriptions of conventional truth, are mere statements about reality—they are not reality itself—and that they are therefore not applicable to the ultimate truth that is by definition beyond mental understanding. Thus the bodhisattva, as the archetypal Mahayana Buddhist, relies on the perfection of wisdom, defined in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra to be the wisdom that perceives reality directly without conceptual attachment thereby achieving nirvana.

The sutra concludes with the mantra gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā, meaning "gone, gone, everyone gone to the other shore, awakening, svaha."

Popularity and stature

The Heart Sutra is "the single most commonly recited, copied and studied scripture in East Asian Buddhism." It is recited by adherents of Mahayana schools of Buddhism regardless of sectarian affiliation.

While the origin of the sutra is disputed by some modern scholars, it was widely known in Bengal and Bihar during the Pala Empire period (c. 750–1200 CE) in India, where it played a role in Vajrayana Buddhism. The stature of the Heart Sutra throughout early medieval India can be seen from its title ‘Holy Mother of all Buddhas Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom’ dating from at least the 8th century CE (see Philological explanation of the text).

The long version of the Heart Sutra is extensively studied by the various Tibetan Buddhist schools, where the Heart Sutra is chanted, but also treated as a tantric text, with a tantric ceremony associated with it. It is also viewed as one of the daughter sutras of the Prajnaparamita genre in the Vajrayana tradition as passed down from Tibet.

The text has been translated into many languages, and dozens of English translations and commentaries have been published, along with an unknown number of informal versions on the internet.

Versions

There are two main versions of the Heart Sutra : a short version and a long version.

The short version as translated by Xuanzang is the most popular version of adherents practicing East Asian schools of Buddhism. Xuanzang's canonical text (T. 251) has a total of 260 Chinese characters. Some Japanese versions have an additional 2 characters. The short version has also been translated into Tibetan but it is not part of the current Tibetan Buddhist Canon (Kangyur). 

The long version differs from the short version by including both an introductory and concluding section; features that most Buddhist sutras have. The introduction introduces the sutra to the listener with the traditional Buddhist opening phrase "Thus have I heard". It then describes the venue in which the Buddha (or sometimes bodhisattvas, etc.,) promulgate the teaching and the audience to whom the teaching is given. The concluding section ends the sutra with thanks and praises to the Buddha. 

Both versions are chanted on a daily basis by adherents of practically all schools of East Asian Buddhism and by some adherents of Tibetan and Newar Buddhism.

Dating and origins

The third oldest dated copy of the Heart Sutra, part of the stele of Emperor Tang Taizong's Foreword to the Holy Teaching written on behalf of Xuanzang in 648 CE. The Stele was erected by his son, Emperor Tang Gaozong in 672 CE and is known for its exquisite calligraphy written in the style of Wang Xizhi (303–361 CE). It is now located in Xian's Beilin Museum.

Earliest extant versions

The earliest extant dated text of the Heart Sutra is located at Yunju Temple's Fangshan Stone Sutra. It is Fangshan Stone Sutra no. 28 which engraved Xuanzang's 649 CE translation of the Heart Sutra (T. 221) and is dated to 661 CE;engraved three years before Xuanzang passed away.

A palm-leaf manuscript found at the Hōryū-ji Temple is the earliest undated extant Sanskrit manuscript of the Heart Sutra. It is dated to c. 7th–8th century CE by the Tokyo National Museum where it is currently kept.

Source of the Heart Sutra - Nattier controversy

Nattier (1992) theorizes based on her cross-philological study of Chinese and Sanskrit texts of the Heart Sutra that the Heart Sutra may have initially been composed in China.

Fukui, Harada, Ishii and Siu based on their cross-philological study of Chinese and Sanskrit texts of the Heart Sutra and other medieval period Sanskrit Mahayana sutras theorizes that the Heart Sutra could not have been composed in China but was composed in India.

Nattier's theory is also refuted by Kuiji and Woncheuk's 7th century CE commentaries on the Heart Sutra;they are the earliest extant commentaries.

Philological explanation of the text

Title

Historical titles

Gridhakuta (also known as Vulture's Peak) located in Rajgir Bihar India (in ancient times known as Rājagṛha or Rājagaha (Pali) - Site where Buddha taught the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya (Heart Sutra) and other Prajñāpāramitā sutras.

 

The titles of the earliest extant manuscripts of the Heart Sutra all includes the words “hṛdaya” or “heart” and “prajñāpāramitā” or "perfection of wisdom". Beginning from the 8th century and continuing at least until the 13th century, the titles of the Indic manuscripts of the Heart Sutra contained the words “bhagavatī” or "mother of all buddhas" and “prajñāpāramitā”.

Later Indic manuscripts have more varied titles.

Titles in use today

In the western world, this sutra is known as the Heart Sutra (a translation derive from its most common name in East Asian countries). But it is also sometimes called the Heart of Wisdom Sutra. In Tibet, Mongolia and other regions influenced by Vajrayana, it is known as The [Holy] Mother of all Buddhas Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom.

In the Tibetan text the title is given first in Sanskrit and then in Tibetan: Sanskrit: भगवतीप्रज्ञापारमिताहृदय (Bhagavatīprajñāpāramitāhṛdaya), Tibetan: བཅོམ་ལྡན་འདས་མ་ཤེས་རབ་ཀྱི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པའི་སྙིང་པོ, Wylie: bcom ldan 'das ma shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i snying po English translation: Mother of All Buddhas Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom. 

In other languages, the commonly used title is an abbreviation of Prajñāpāramitāhṛdayasūtraṃ : i.e. The Prajñāhṛdaya Sūtra ) (The Heart of Wisdom Sutra). They are as follows: e.g. Korean: Banya Shimgyeong (반야심경 / 般若心經); Japanese: Hannya Shingyō (はんにゃしんぎょう / 般若心経); Vietnamese: Bát-nhã tâm kinh (chữ Nho: 般若心經).

Content

Sanskrit manuscript of the Heart Sūtra, written in the Siddhaṃ script. Bibliothèque nationale de France

 

Various commentators divide this text into different numbers of sections. In the long version, we have the traditional opening "Thus have I heard" and Buddha along with a community of bodhisattvas and monks gathered with Avalokiteśvara and Sariputra at Gridhakuta (a mountain peak located at Rajgir, the traditional site where the majority of the Perfection of Wisdom teachings were given) , when through the power of Buddha, Sariputra asks Avalokiteśvara for advice on the practice of the Perfection of Wisdom. The sutra then describes the experience of liberation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteśvara, as a result of vipassanā gained while engaged in deep meditation to awaken the faculty of prajña (wisdom). The insight refers to apprehension of the fundamental emptiness (śūnyatā) of all phenomena, known through and as the five aggregates of human existence (skandhas): form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), volitions (saṅkhāra), perceptions (saṃjñā), and consciousness (vijñāna). 

The specific sequence of concepts listed in lines 12–20 ("...in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, ... no attainment and no non-attainment") is the same sequence used in the Sarvastivadin Samyukta Agama; this sequence differs in comparable texts of other sects. On this basis, Red Pine has argued that the Heart Sūtra is specifically a response to Sarvastivada teachings that, in the sense "phenomena" or its constituents, are real. Lines 12–13 enumerate the five skandhas. Lines 14–15 list the twelve ayatanas or abodes. Line 16 makes a reference to the 18 dhatus or elements of consciousness, using a conventional shorthand of naming only the first (eye) and last (conceptual consciousness) of the elements. Lines 17–18 assert the emptiness of the Twelve Nidānas, the traditional twelve links of dependent origination. Line 19 refers to the Four Noble Truths. 

Avalokiteśvara addresses Śariputra, who was the promulgator of abhidharma according to the scriptures and texts of the Sarvastivada and other early Buddhist schools, having been singled out by the Buddha to receive those teachings. Avalokiteśvara famously states, "Form is empty (śūnyatā). Emptiness is form", and declares the other skandhas to be equally empty of the most fundamental Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths and explains that in emptiness none of these notions apply. This is interpreted according to the two truths doctrine as saying that teachings, while accurate descriptions of conventional truth, are mere statements about reality—they are not reality itself—and that they are therefore not applicable to the ultimate truth that is by definition beyond mental understanding. Thus the bodhisattva, as the archetypal Mahayana Buddhist, relies on the perfection of wisdom, defined in the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra to be the wisdom that perceives reality directly without conceptual attachment thereby achieving nirvana.

All Buddhas of the three ages (past, present and future) rely on the Perfection of Wisdom to reach unexcelled complete Enlightenment. The Perfection of Wisdom is the all powerful Mantra, the great enlightening mantra, the unexcelled mantra, the unequalled mantra, able to dispel all suffering. This is true and not false. The Perfection of Wisdom is then condensed in the mantra with which the sutra concludes: "Gate Gate Pāragate Pārasamgate Bodhi Svāhā" (literally "Gone gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond, Enlightenment hail!"). In the long version, Buddha praises Avalokiteśvara for giving the exposition of the Perfection of Wisdom and all gathered rejoice in its teaching. Many schools traditionally have also praised the sutra by uttering three times the equivalent of "Mahāprajñāpāramitā" after the end of the recitation of the short version.

Mantra

The Heart Sūtra mantra in Sanskrit IAST is gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā, Devanagari: गते गते पारगते पारसंगते बोधि स्वाहा, IPA: ɡəteː ɡəteː paːɾəɡəteː paːɾəsəŋɡəte boːdʱɪ sʋaːɦaː, meaning "gone, gone, everyone gone to the other shore, awakening, svaha."

Buddhist exegetical works

Chinese text of the Heart Sūtra by Yuan dynasty artist and calligrapher Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322 CE)

China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam

Two commentaries of the Heart Sutra were composed by pupils of Xuanzang, Woncheuk and Kuiji, in the 7th century. These appear to be the earliest extant commentaries on the text. Both have been translated into English. Both Kuījī and Woncheuk's commentaries approach the Heart Sutra from both a Yogachara and Madhyamaka viewpoint; however, Kuījī's commentary presents detailed line by line Madhyamaka viewpoints as well and is therefore the earliest surviving Madhyamaka commentary on the Heart Sutra. Of special note, although Woncheuk did his work in China, he was born in Silla, one of the kingdoms located at the time in Korea. 

The chief Tang Dynasty commentaries have all now been translated into English. 

Notable Japanese commentaries include those by Kūkai (9th Century, Japan), who treats the text as a tantra, and Hakuin, who gives a Zen commentary.

There is also a Vietnamese commentarial tradition for the Heart Sutra. The earliest recorded commentary is the early 14th century commentary entitled ‘Commentary on the Prajñāhṛdaya Sutra’ by Pháp Loa.

All of the East Asian commentaries are commentaries of Xuanzang's translation of the short version of the Heart Sutra. Kukai's commentary is purportedly of Kumārajīva's translation of the short version of the Heart Sutra;but upon closer examination seems to quote only from Xuanzang's translation.

Major Chinese language Commentaries on the Heart Sutra

#	English Title	Taisho Tripitaka No.	Author  / Dates
1.	Comprehensive Commentary on the Prañāpāramitā Heart Sutra	T1710	Kuiji   (632–682 CE)
2.	Prajñāpāramitā Heart Sutra Commentary	T1711	Woncheuk or (pinyin :Yuance)   (613–692 CE)
3.	Brief Commentary on the Prajñāpāramitā Heart Sutra	T1712	Fazang   (643–712 CE)
4.	A Commentary on the Prajñāpāramitā Heart Sutra	M522	Jingmai   c. 7th century
5.	Secret Key to the Heart Sutra	T2203A	Kūkai   (774–835 CE)
6.	Straightforward Explanation of the Heart Sutra	M542	Deqing   (1546–1623 CE)
7.	Explanation of the Heart Sutra	M1452 (Scroll 11)	Zibai   (1543–1603 CE)
8.	Explanation of the Keypoints to the Heart Sutra	M555	Ouyi zhixu   (1599–1655 CE)
9.	Zen Words for the Heart	B021	Hakuin Ekaku   (1686–1768 CE)

India

Eight Indian commentaries survive in Tibetan translation and have been the subject of two books by Donald Lopez. These typically treat the text either from a Madhyamaka point of view, or as a tantra (esp. Śrīsiṃha). Śrī Mahājana's commentary has a definite "Yogachara bent". All of these commentaries are on the long version of the Heart Sutra. The Eight Indian Commentaries from the Kangyur are (cf first eight on chart):

Indian Commentaries on the Heart Sutra from Tibetan and Chinese language Sources

#	English Title	Peking Tripitaka No.	Author / Dates
1.	Vast Explanation of the Noble Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom	No. 5217	Vimalamitra (b. Western India f. ca. 797 CE – 810 CE)
2,	Atīśa's Explanation of the Heart Sutra	No. 5222	Atīśa (b. Eastern India, 982 CE – 1045 CE)
3.	Commentary on the 'Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom	No. 5221	Kamalaśīla (740 CE – 795 CE)
4.	Commentary on the Heart Sutra as Mantra	No. 5840	Śrīsiṃha (probably 8th century CE)
5.	Explanation of the Noble Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom	No. 5218	Jñānamitra (c. 10th–11th century CE)
6.	Vast Commentary on the Noble Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom	No. 5220	Praśāstrasena
7.	Complete Understanding of the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom	No. 5223	Śrī Mahājana (probably c. 11th century)
8.	Commentary on the Bhagavati (Mother of all Buddhas) Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, Lamp of the Meaning	No. 5219	Vajrāpaṇi (probably c. 11th century CE)
9.	Commentary on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom	M526	Āryadeva (or Deva) c. 10th century

There is one surviving Chinese translation of an Indian commentary in the Chinese Buddhist Canon. Āryadeva's commentary is on the short version of the Heart Sutra.

Other

Besides the Tibetan translation of Indian commentaries on the Heart Sutra, Tibetan monk-scholars also made their own commentaries. One example is Tāranātha's A Textual Commentary on the Heart Sutra. 

In modern times, the text has become increasingly popular among exegetes as a growing number of translations and commentaries attest. The Heart Sutra was already popular in Chan and Zen Buddhism, but has become a staple for Tibetan Lamas as well.

Selected English translations

The first English translation was presented to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1863 by Samuel Beal, and published in their journal in 1865. Beal used a Chinese text corresponding to T251 and a 9th Century Chan commentary by Dàdiān Bǎotōng (大顛寶通) [c. 815 CE]. In 1881, Max Müller published a Sanskrit text based on the Hōryū-ji manuscript along an English translation.

There are more than 40 published English translations of the Heart Sutra from Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan, beginning with Beal (1865). Almost every year new translations and commentaries are published. The following is a representative sample.

Author	Title	Publisher	Notes	Year	ISBN
Geshe Rabten	Echoes of Voidness	Wisdom	Includes the Heart Sutra with Tibetan commentary	1983	ISBN 0-86171-010-X
Donald S. Lopez, Jr.	The Heart Sutra Explained	SUNY	The Heart Sutra with a summary of Indian commentaries	1987	ISBN 0-88706-590-2
Thich Nhat Hanh	The Heart of Understanding "Translation amended 2014". Retrieved 2017-02-26.	Parallax Press	The Heart Sutra with a Vietnamese Thiền commentary	1988	ISBN 0-938077-11-2
Norman Waddell	Zen Words for the Heart: Hakuin's Commentary on the Heart Sutra	Shambhala Publications	Hakuin Ekaku's commentary on Heart Sutra	1996	ISBN 9781570621659
Donald S. Lopez, Jr.	Elaborations on Emptiness	Princeton	The Heart Sutra with eight complete Indian and Tibetan commentaries	1998	ISBN 0-691-00188-X
Edward Conze	Buddhist Wisdom: The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra	Random House	The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra, along with commentaries on the texts and practices of Buddhism	2001	ISBN 978-0375726002
Chan Master Sheng Yen	There Is No Suffering: A Commentary on the Heart Sutra	Dharma Drum Publications	Heart Sutra with Modern Commentary on Heart Sutra from Major Chan Master From Taiwan China	2001	ISBN 1-55643-385-9
Tetsugen Bernard Glassman	Infinite Circle: Teachings in Zen	Shambhala Publications	Translations and commentaries of The Heart Sutra and The Identity of Relative and Absolute as well as Zen precepts	2003	ISBN 9781590300794
Geshe Sonam Rinchen	Heart Sutra: An Oral Commentary	Snow Lion	Concise translation and commentary from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective	2003	ISBN 9781559392013
Red Pine	The Heart Sutra: the Womb of Buddhas	Counterpoint	Heart Sutra with commentary	2004	ISBN 978-1593760090
14th Dalai Lama	Essence of the Heart Sutra	Wisdom Publications	Heart Sutra with commentary by the 14th Dalai Lama	2005	ISBN 978-0-86171-284-7
Geshe Tashi Tsering	Emptiness: The Foundation of Buddhist Thought	Wisdom Publications	A guide to the topic of emptiness from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, with English translation of the Heart Sutra	2009	ISBN 978-0-86171-511-4
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso	The New Heart of Wisdom: An explanation of the Heart Sutra	Tharpa Publications	English translation of the Heart Sutra with commentary	2012	ISBN 978-1906665043
Karl Brunnholzl	The Heart Attack Sutra: A New Commentary on the Heart Sutra	Shambhala Publications	Modern commentary	2012	ISBN 9781559393911
Doosun Yoo	Thunderous Silence: A Formula For Ending Suffering: A Practical Guide to the Heart Sutra	Wisdom Publications	English translation of the Heart Sutra with Korean Seon commentary	2013	ISBN 978-1614290537
Kazuaki Tanahashi	The Heart Sutra: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic of Mahayana Buddhism	Shambhala Publications	English translation of the Heart Sutra with history and commentary	2015	ISBN 978-1611800968

Recordings

The Heart Sūtra has been set to music a number of times. Many singers solo this sutra.

• The Buddhist Audio Visual Production Centre (佛教視聽製作中心) produced a Cantonese album of recordings of the Heart Sūtra in 1995 featuring a number of Hong Kong pop singers, including Alan Tam, Anita Mui and Faye Wong and composer by Andrew Lam Man Chung (林敏聰) to raise money to rebuild the Chi Lin Nunnery.
• Malaysian Imee Ooi (黄慧音) sings the short version of the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit accompanied by music entitled 'The Shore Beyond, Prajna Paramita Hrdaya Sutram', released in 2009.
• Hong Kong pop singers, such as the Four Heavenly Kings sang the Heart Sūtra to raise money for relief efforts related to the 921 earthquake.
• An alternative Mandarin version was performed by Faye Wong in 2009 at the Famen Temple and its recording subsequently used as a theme song in the blockbusters Aftershock (2010) and Xuanzang (2016).
• Shaolin Monk Shifu Shi Yan Ming recites the Sutra at the end of the song "Life Changes" by the Wu-Tang Clan, in remembrance of the deceased member ODB.
• The outro of the b-side song Ghetto Defendant by the British first wave punk band The Clash also features the Heart Sūtra, recited by American beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
• A slightly edited version is used as the lyrics for Yoshimitsu's theme in the PlayStation 2 game Tekken Tag Tournament. An Indian styled version was also created by Bombay Jayashri title named - Ji Project. It was also recorded and arranged by Malaysian singer/composer Imee Ooi. An Esperanto translation of portions of the text furnished the libretto of the cantata La Koro Sutro by American composer Lou Harrison.
• The heart sutra appears as a track on an album of sutras "performed" by VOCALOID voice software, using the Nekomura Iroha voice pack. The album Syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism by VOCALOID is by the artist tamachang.

Popular culture

In the centuries following the historical Xuanzang, an extended tradition of literature fictionalizing the life of Xuanzang and glorifying his special relationship with the Heart Sūtra arose, of particular note being the Journey to the West (16th century/Ming dynasty). In chapter nineteen of Journey to the West, the fictitious Xuanzang learns by heart the Heart Sūtra after hearing it recited one time by the Crow's Nest Zen Master, who flies down from his tree perch with a scroll containing it, and offers to impart it. A full text of the Heart Sūtra is quoted in this fictional account.

In the State of Divinity (2000 TV series), the sex-fiend character Tian Boguang recites the entire Heart Sutra repeatedly to control his tendencies.

The mantra of the Heart Sūtra was used as the lyrics for the opening theme song of the 2011 Chinese television series Journey to the West. 

In episode 4 of Haganai Next, Yukimura chants this while on a roller coaster. 

In the 2003 Korean film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring, the apprentice is ordered by his Master to carve the Chinese characters of the sutra into the wooden monastery deck to quiet his heart.

Influence on western philosophy

Schopenhauer, in the final words of his main work, compared his doctrine to the Śūnyatā of the Heart Sūtra. In Volume 1, § 71 of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer wrote: "…to those in whom the will [to continue living] has turned and has denied itself, this very real world of ours, with all its suns and Milky Ways, is — nothing." To this, he appended the following note: "This is also the Prajna–Paramita of the Buddhists, the 'beyond all knowledge,' in other words, the point where subject and object no longer exist."

Eliminative materialism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eliminativists argue that modern belief in the existence of mental phenomena is analogous to the ancient belief in obsolete theories such as the geocentric model of the universe.

 

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is the claim that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. It is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behavior and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.

Eliminativism about a class of entities is the view that that class of entities does not exist. For example, materialism tends to be eliminativist about the soul; modern chemists are eliminativist about phlogiston; and modern physicists are eliminativist about the existence of luminiferous aether. Eliminative materialism is the relatively new (1960s–1970s) idea that certain classes of mental entities that common sense takes for granted, such as beliefs, desires, and the subjective sensation of pain, do not exist. The most common versions are eliminativism about propositional attitudes, as expressed by Paul and Patricia Churchland, and eliminativism about qualia (subjective interpretations about particular instances of subjective experience), as expressed by Daniel Dennett and Georges Rey. These philosophers often appeal to an introspection illusion. 

In the context of materialist understandings of psychology, eliminativism stands in opposition to reductive materialism which argues that mental states as conventionally understood do exist, and that they directly correspond to the physical state of the nervous system. An intermediate position is revisionary materialism, which will often argue that the mental state in question will prove to be somewhat reducible to physical phenomena—with some changes needed to the common sense concept. 

Since eliminative materialism claims that future research will fail to find a neuronal basis for various mental phenomena, it must necessarily wait for science to progress further. One might question the position on these grounds, but other philosophers like Churchland argue that eliminativism is often necessary in order to open the minds of thinkers to new evidence and better explanations.

Overview

Various arguments have been put forth both for and against eliminative materialism over the last forty years. Most of the arguments in favor of the view are based on the assumption that people's commonsense view of the mind is actually an implicit theory. It is to be compared and contrasted with other scientific theories in its explanatory success, accuracy, and ability to allow people to make correct predictions about the future. Eliminativists argue that, based on these and other criteria, commonsense "folk" psychology has failed and will eventually need to be replaced with explanations derived from the neurosciences. These philosophers therefore tend to emphasize the importance of neuroscientific research as well as developments in artificial intelligence to sustain their thesis.

Philosophers who argue against eliminativism may take several approaches. Simulation theorists, like Robert Gordon and Alvin Goldman argue that folk psychology is not a theory, but rather depends on internal simulation of others, and therefore is not subject to falsification in the same way that theories are. Jerry Fodor, among others, argues that folk psychology is, in fact, a successful (even indispensable) theory. Another view is that eliminativism assumes the existence of the beliefs and other entities it seeks to "eliminate" and is thus self-refuting.

Schematic overview: Eliminativists suggest that some sciences can be reduced (blue), but that theories that are in principle irreducible will eventually be eliminated (orange).

 

Eliminativism maintains that the common-sense understanding of the mind is mistaken, and that the neurosciences will one day reveal that the mental states that are talked about in everyday discourse, using words such as "intend", "believe", "desire", and "love", do not refer to anything real. Because of the inadequacy of natural languages, people mistakenly think that they have such beliefs and desires. Some eliminativists, such as Frank Jackson, claim that consciousness does not exist except as an epiphenomenon of brain function; others, such as Georges Rey, claim that the concept will eventually be eliminated as neuroscience progresses. Consciousness and folk psychology are separate issues and it is possible to take an eliminative stance on one but not the other. The roots of eliminativism go back to the writings of Wilfred Sellars, W.V. Quine, Paul Feyerabend, and Richard Rorty. The term "eliminative materialism" was first introduced by James Cornman in 1968 while describing a version of physicalism endorsed by Rorty. The later Ludwig Wittgenstein was also an important inspiration for eliminativism, particularly with his attack on "private objects" as "grammatical fictions".

Early eliminativists such as Rorty and Feyerabend often confused two different notions of the sort of elimination that the term "eliminative materialism" entailed. On the one hand, they claimed, the cognitive sciences that will ultimately give people a correct account of the workings of the mind will not employ terms that refer to common-sense mental states like beliefs and desires; these states will not be part of the ontology of a mature cognitive science. But critics immediately countered that this view was indistinguishable from the identity theory of mind. Quine himself wondered what exactly was so eliminative about eliminative materialism after all: 

“

Is physicalism a repudiation of mental objects after all, or a theory of them? Does it repudiate the mental state of pain or anger in favor of its physical concomitant, or does it identify the mental state with a state of the physical organism (and so a state of the physical organism with the mental state)?

”

On the other hand, the same philosophers also claimed that common-sense mental states simply do not exist. But critics pointed out that eliminativists could not have it both ways: either mental states exist and will ultimately be explained in terms of lower-level neurophysiological processes or they do not. Modern eliminativists have much more clearly expressed the view that mental phenomena simply do not exist and will eventually be eliminated from people's thinking about the brain in the same way that demons have been eliminated from people's thinking about mental illness and psychopathology.

While it was a minority view in the 1960s, eliminative materialism gained prominence and acceptance during the 1980s. Proponents of this view, such as B.F. Skinner, often made parallels to previous superseded scientific theories (such as that of the four humours, the phlogiston theory of combustion, and the vital force theory of life) that have all been successfully eliminated in attempting to establish their thesis about the nature of the mental. In these cases, science has not produced more detailed versions or reductions of these theories, but rejected them altogether as obsolete. Radical behaviorists, such as Skinner, argued that folk psychology is already obsolete and should be replaced by descriptions of histories of reinforcement and punishment. Such views were eventually abandoned. Patricia and Paul Churchland argued that folk psychology will be gradually replaced as neuroscience matures.

Eliminativism is not only motivated by philosophical considerations, but is also a prediction about what form future scientific theories will take. Eliminativist philosophers therefore tend to be concerned with the data coming from the relevant brain and cognitive sciences. In addition, because eliminativism is essentially predictive in nature, different theorists can, and often do, make different predictions about which aspects of folk psychology will be eliminated from folk psychological vocabulary. None of these philosophers are eliminativists "tout court".

Today, the eliminativist view is most closely associated with the philosophers Paul and Patricia Churchland, who deny the existence of propositional attitudes (a subclass of intentional states), and with Daniel Dennett, who is generally considered to be an eliminativist about qualia and phenomenal aspects of consciousness. One way to summarize the difference between the Churchlands's views and Dennett's view is that the Churchlands are eliminativists when it comes to propositional attitudes, but reductionists concerning qualia, while Dennett is an anti-reductionist with respect to propositional attitudes, and an eliminativist concerning qualia.

Arguments for eliminativism

Problems with folk theories

Eliminativists such as Paul and Patricia Churchland argue that folk psychology is a fully developed but non-formalized theory of human behavior. It is used to explain and make predictions about human mental states and behavior. This view is often referred to as the theory of mind or just simply theory-theory, for it is a theory which theorizes the existence of an unacknowledged theory. As a theory in the scientific sense, eliminativists maintain, folk psychology needs to be evaluated on the basis of its predictive power and explanatory success as a research program for the investigation of the mind/brain.

Such eliminativists have developed different arguments to show that folk psychology is a seriously mistaken theory and needs to be abolished. They argue that folk psychology excludes from its purview or has traditionally been mistaken about many important mental phenomena that can, and are, being examined and explained by modern neurosciences. Some examples are dreaming, consciousness, mental disorders, learning processes, and memory abilities. Furthermore, they argue, folk psychology's development in the last 2,500 years has not been significant and it is therefore a stagnating theory. The ancient Greeks already had a folk psychology comparable to modern views. But in contrast to this lack of development, the neurosciences are a rapidly progressing science complex that, in their view, can explain many cognitive processes that folk psychology cannot.

Folk psychology retains characteristics of now obsolete theories or legends from the past. Ancient societies tried to explain the physical mysteries of nature by ascribing mental conditions to them in such statements as "the sea is angry". Gradually, these everyday folk psychological explanations were replaced by more efficient scientific descriptions. Today, eliminativists argue, there is no reason not to accept an effective scientific account of people's cognitive abilities. If such an explanation existed, then there would be no need for folk-psychological explanations of behavior, and the latter would be eliminated the same way as the mythological explanations the ancients used.

Another line of argument is the meta-induction based on what eliminativists view as the disastrous historical record of folk theories in general. Ancient pre-scientific "theories" of folk biology, folk physics, and folk cosmology have all proven to be radically wrong. Eliminativists argue the same in the case of folk psychology. There seems no logical basis, to the eliminativist, for making an exception just because folk psychology has lasted longer and is more intuitive or instinctively plausible than the other folk theories. Indeed, the eliminativists warn, considerations of intuitive plausibility may be precisely the result of the deeply entrenched nature in society of folk psychology itself. It may be that people's beliefs and other such states are as theory-laden as external perceptions and hence intuitions will tend to be biased in favor of them.

Specific problems with folk psychology

Much of folk psychology involves the attribution of intentional states (or more specifically as a subclass, propositional attitudes). Eliminativists point out that these states are generally ascribed syntactic and semantic properties. An example of this is the language of thought hypothesis, which attributes a discrete, combinatorial syntax and other linguistic properties to these mental phenomena. Eliminativists argue that such discrete and combinatorial characteristics have no place in the neurosciences, which speak of action potentials, spiking frequencies, and other effects which are continuous and distributed in nature. Hence, the syntactic structures which are assumed by folk psychology can have no place in such a structure as the brain. Against this there have been two responses. On the one hand, there are philosophers who deny that mental states are linguistic in nature and see this as a straw man argument. The other view is represented by those who subscribe to "a language of thought". They assert that the mental states can be multiply realized and that functional characterizations are just higher-level characterizations of what's happening at the physical level.

It has also been argued against folk psychology that the intentionality of mental states like belief imply that they have semantic qualities. Specifically, their meaning is determined by the things that they are about in the external world. This makes it difficult to explain how they can play the causal roles that they are supposed to in cognitive processes.

In recent years, this latter argument has been fortified by the theory of connectionism. Many connectionist models of the brain have been developed in which the processes of language learning and other forms of representation are highly distributed and parallel. This would tend to indicate that there is no need for such discrete and semantically endowed entities as beliefs and desires.

Arguments against eliminativism

Intuitive reservations

The thesis of eliminativism seems to be so obviously wrong to many critics, under the claim that people know immediately and indubitably that they have minds, that argumentation seems unnecessary. This sort of intuition pumping is illustrated by asking what happens when one asks oneself honestly if one has mental states. Eliminativists object to such a rebuttal of their position by claiming that intuitions often are mistaken. Analogies from the history of science are frequently invoked to buttress this observation: it may appear obvious that the sun travels around the earth, for example, but for all its apparent obviousness this conception was proved wrong nevertheless. Similarly, it may appear obvious that apart from neural events there are also mental conditions. Nevertheless, this could equally turn out to be false.

But even if one accepts the susceptibility to error of people's intuitions, the objection can be reformulated: if the existence of mental conditions seems perfectly obvious and is central in people's conception of the world, then enormously strong arguments are needed in order to successfully deny the existence of mental conditions. Furthermore, these arguments, to be consistent, need to be formulated in a way which does not pre-suppose the existence of entities like "mental states", "logical arguments", and "ideas", otherwise they are self-contradictory. Those who accept this objection say that the arguments in favor of eliminativism are far too weak to establish such a radical claim; therefore there is no reason to believe in eliminativism.

Self-refutation

Some philosophers, such as Paul Boghossian, have attempted to show that eliminativism is in some sense self-refuting, since the theory itself presupposes the existence of mental phenomena. If eliminativism is true, then the eliminativist must permit an intentional property like truth, supposing that in order to assert something one must believe it. Hence, for eliminativism to be asserted as a thesis, the eliminativist must believe that it is true; if that is the case, then there are beliefs and the eliminativist claim is false.

Georges Rey and Michael Devitt reply to this objection by invoking deflationary semantic theories that avoid analyzing predicates like "x is true" as expressing a real property. They are construed, instead, as logical devices so that asserting that a sentence is true is just a quoted way of asserting the sentence itself. To say, "'God exists' is true" is just to say, "God exists". This way, Rey and Devitt argue, insofar as dispositional replacements of "claims" and deflationary accounts of "true" are coherent, eliminativism is not self-refuting.

Qualia

Another problem for the eliminativist is the consideration that human beings undergo subjective experiences and, hence, their conscious mental states have qualia. Since qualia are generally regarded as characteristics of mental states, their existence does not seem to be compatible with eliminativism. Eliminativists, such as Daniel Dennett and Georges Rey, respond by rejecting qualia. This is seen to be problematic to opponents of eliminativists, since many claim that the existence of qualia seems perfectly obvious. Many philosophers consider the "elimination" of qualia implausible, if not incomprehensible. They assert that, for instance, the existence of pain is simply beyond denial.

Admitting that the existence of qualia seems obvious, Dennett nevertheless states that "qualia" is a theoretical term from an outdated metaphysics stemming from Cartesian intuitions. He argues that a precise analysis shows that the term is in the long run empty and full of contradictions. The eliminativist's claim with respect to qualia is that there is no unbiased evidence for such experiences when regarded as something more than propositional attitudes. In other words, they do not deny that pain exists, but that it exists independently of its effect on behavior. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Dennett and Rey have defended eliminativism about qualia, even when other portions of the mental are accepted.

Efficacy of folk psychology

Some philosophers argue that folk psychology is a quite successful theory. Simulation theorists doubt that people's understanding of the mental can be explained in terms of a theory at all. Rather they argue that people's understanding of others is based on internal simulations of how they would act and respond in similar situations. Jerry Fodor is one of the objectors that believes in folk psychology's success as a theory, because it makes for an effective way of communication in everyday life that can be implemented with few words. Such an effectiveness could never be achieved with a complex neuroscientific terminology.

Cartesian materialism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Objects experienced are represented within the mind of the observer (see Cartesian theater).

 

In philosophy of mind, Cartesian materialism is the idea that at some place (or places) in the brain, there is some set of information that directly corresponds to our conscious experience. Contrary to its name, Cartesian materialism is not a view that was held by or formulated by René Descartes, who subscribed rather to a form of substance dualism. 

In its simplest version, Cartesian materialism might predict, for example, that there is a specific place in the brain which would be a coherent representation of everything we are consciously experiencing in a given moment: what we're seeing, what we're hearing, what we're smelling, and indeed, everything of which we are consciously aware. In essence, Cartesian materialism claims that, somewhere in our brain, there is a Cartesian theater where a hypothetical observer could somehow "find" the content of conscious experience moment by moment. In contrast, anything occurring outside of this "privileged neural media" is nonconscious.

History

Multiple meanings

According to Marx and Engels (1845), French materialism developed from the mechanism of Descartes and the empiricism of Locke, Hobbes, Bacon and ultimately Duns Scotus who asked "whether matter could not think?" Natural science, in their view, owes to the former its great success as a "Cartesian materialism", bereft of the metaphysics of Cartesian dualism by philosophers and physicians such as Regius, Cabanis, and La Mettrie, who maintained the viability of Descartes' biological automata without recourse to immaterial cognition. 

However, philosopher Daniel Dennett uses the term to emphasize what he considers the pervasive Cartesian notion of a centralized repository of conscious experience in the brain. Dennett says that "Cartesian materialism is the view that there is a crucial finish line or boundary somewhere in the brain, marking a place where the order of arrival equals the order of 'presentation' in experience because what happens there is what you are conscious of."

Other modern philosophers have generally used less specific definitions. For example, O'Brien and Opie define it as the idea that consciousness is "realized in the physical materials of the brain", and W. Teed Rockwell defines Cartesian materialism in the following way: "The basic dogma of Cartesian materialism is that only neural activity in the cranium is functionally essential for the emergence of mind." However, although Rockwell's concept of Cartesian materialism is less specific in a sense, it is a detailed reply to Dennett's version, not an undeveloped predecessor. The main theme of Rockwell's book Neither Brain nor Ghost is that the arguments Dennett uses to refute his version of Cartesian Materialism actually support the view that the mind is an emergent property of the entire Brain/Body/World Nexus. For Rockwell, claiming the entire brain is identical to the mind has no better justification than claiming that part of the brain is identical to the mind. 

Dennett's version of the term is the most popular.

Cartesian dualism

Descartes believed that a human being was composed of both a material body and an immaterial soul (or "mind"). According to Descartes, the mind and the body could interact. The body can affect the mind; for example, when you place your hand in a fire, the body relays sensory information from your hand to your mind, which results in your having the experience of pain. Similarly, the mind can affect the body; for example, you can decide to move your hand and your muscles obey, moving your hand as you desired. 

Descartes noted that, although our two eyes independently see an object, our conscious experience is not of two separate fields of vision each possessing an image of the object. Rather, we seem to experience one continuous, oval-shaped field of vision that possesses information from both eyes which seems to have somehow been 'merged' into a single image. (Consider in a movie, when a character looks through binoculars and the audience is shown what he is looking at, from the character's point of view. The image shown is never made up of two completely separate circular images-- rather the director shows us a single figure-eight shaped region made up of information from each eyepiece.) 

Descartes noted that information from both eyes seems to have been merged somehow before "entering" conscious perception. He also noted similar effects for the other senses. Based on this, Descartes hypothesized that there must be some single place in the brain where all the sensory information is assembled, before finally being relayed to the immaterial mind.

His best candidate for this location was the pineal gland, since he thought it was the only part of the brain that is a single structure, rather than one duplicated on both the left and right halves of the brain. Descartes therefore believed that the pineal gland was the "seat of the soul" and that any information that was to "enter" consciousness had to pass through the pineal gland before it could enter the mind. In his perspective, the pineal gland is the place where all information "comes together."

Dennett's account of Cartesian materialism

At the present time, the consensus of scientists and philosophers is to reject dualism and its immaterial mind, for a variety of reasons. Similarly, many other aspects of Descartes' theories have been rejected; for example, the pineal gland turned out to be endocrinological, rather than having a large role in information processing.

According to Daniel Dennett, however, many scientists and philosophers still believe, either explicitly or implicitly, in Descartes' idea of some centralized repository where the contents of consciousness are merged and assembled, a place he calls the Cartesian theater. 

In his book Consciousness Explained (1991), Dennett writes:

Let's call the idea of such a centered locus in the brain Cartesian materialism, since it's the view you arrive at when you discard Descartes' dualism but fail to discard the imagery of a central (but material) Theater where it "all comes together."

Although this central repository is often called a "place" or a "location", Dennett is quick to clarify that Cartesian materialism's "centered locus" need not be anatomically defined-- such a locus might consists of a network of diverse regions.

Dennett's arguments against Cartesian materialism

In Consciousness Explained, Dennett offers several lines of evidence to dispute the idea of Cartesian materialism.

No exact place

One argument against Cartesian materialism is that most neuroscientists have discounted the idea of a single brain area where all information "comes together". Instead, information seemed to be stored and processed in a variety of disparate neural structures. For example, once information from the eyes reaches the visual cortex, it is analyzed by a variety of overlapping feature maps, each detecting a particular aspect, but a central location where this information is merged back together to re-represent it has not been found. Dennett argues that there would be no point to such a merger since all the analysis has already been performed and there is no homunculus who would benefit from a reconstructed composite.

Timing anomalies of conscious experience

Another argument against Cartesian materialism is inspired by the results of several scientific experiments in the fields of psychology and neuroscience. In experiments that demonstrate the Color Phi phenomenon and the metacontrast effect, two stimuli are rapidly flashed on a screen, one after the other. Amazingly, the second stimulus can, in some cases, actually affect the perception of the first stimulus. In other experiments conducted by Benjamin Libet, two electrical stimulations are delivered, one after another, to a conscious subject. Under some conditions, subjects report having felt the second stimulation before they felt the first stimulation.

These experiments call into question the idea that brain states are directly translatable into the contents of consciousness. How can the second stimuli be 'projected backwards in time', such that it can affect the perception of things that occurred before the second stimulus was even administered?

Two attempted explanations

Two different types of explanations have been offered in response to the timing anomalies. One is that perhaps sensory information is assembled into a buffer before being passed on to consciousness after a substantial time delay. Since consciousness occurs only after a time lag, the incoming second stimulus would have time to affect the stored information about the first stimulus. In this view, subjects correctly remember their having had inaccurate experiences. Dennett calls this the "Stalinesque Explanation" (after the Stalinist Soviet Union's show trials that presented manufactured evidence to an unwitting jury). 

A second explanation for the timing takes the opposite tack. Perhaps the subjects, contrary to their own reports, initially experienced the first stimulus as being prior to and untainted by the second stimulus. However, when subjects were later asked to recall what their experiences had been, they found that their memories of the first stimulus had been tainted by the second stimulus. Therefore, they inaccurately report experiences that never actually occurred. In this view, subjects have accurate initial experiences, but inaccurately remember them. Dennett calls this view the "Orwellian Explanation", after George Orwell's novel 1984, in which a totalitarian government frequently rewrites history to suit its purposes. 

How are we to choose which of these two explanations is the correct one? Both explanations seem to adequately explain the given data, both seem to make the same predictions. Dennett sees no principled basis for choosing either of the explanations, so he rejects their common assumption of a theater. He says:

We can suppose, both theorists have exactly the same theory of what happens in your brain; they agree about just where and when in the brain the mistaken content enters the causal pathways; they just disagree about whether that location is to be deemed pre-experiential or post-experiential. [...] They even agree about how it ought to "feel" to subjects: Subjects should be unable to tell the difference between misbegotten experiences and immediately misremembered experiences.

Dennett's conclusions

Dennett's argument has the following basic structure:

1. If Cartesian materialism were true and there really was a special brain area (or areas) that stored the contents of conscious experience, then it should be possible to ascertain exactly when something enters conscious experience.
2. It is impossible, even in theory, to ever precisely determine when something enters conscious experience.
3. Therefore, Cartesian materialism is false.

According to Dennett, the debate between Stalinesque and Orwellian explanations is unresolvable — no amount of scientific information could ever answer the question. Dennett therefore argues (in accord with the philosophical doctrine of verificationism) that, since the differences between the two explanations are unresolvable, the point of disagreement is logically meaningless so both explanations are mistaken.

Dennett feels that the insistence on a place where 'it all comes together' (the Cartesian Theater) is fundamentally flawed, and therefore that Cartesian materialism is false. Dennett's view is that "there is no single, definitive 'stream of consciousness,' because there is no central Headquarters, no Cartesian Theatre where 'it all comes together'".

To avoid the perceived shortcomings of Cartesian materialism, Dennett instead proposes the multiple drafts model — a model of consciousness which lacks a central Cartesian theater.

Replies and objections to Dennett and his arguments

A philosophy without adherents?

Perhaps the primary objection to Dennett's use of the term Cartesian materialism is that it is a philosophy without adherents. In this view, Cartesian materialism is essentially a "Straw Man" — an argument explicitly constructed just so it can be refuted:

The now standard response to Dennett’s project is that he has picked a fight with a straw man. Cartesian materialism, it is alleged, is an impossibly naive account of phenomenal consciousness held by no one currently working in cognitive science or the philosophy of mind. Consequently, whatever the effectiveness of Dennett’s demolition job, it is fundamentally misdirected (see, e.g., Block, 1993, 1995; Shoemaker, 1993; and Tye, 1993).

It is a point of intense debate as to how many philosophers and scientists even accept Cartesian materialism. On the one hand, some say that this view is "held by no one currently working in cognitive science or the philosophy of mind" or insist that they "know of no one who endorses it." (Michael Tye) On the other hand, some say that Cartesian materialism "informs virtually all research on mind and brain, explicitly and implicitly" (Antonio Damasio) or argue that the common "commitment to qualia or 'phenomenal seemings'" entails an implicit commitment to Cartesian materialism that becomes explicit when they "work out a theory of consciousness in sufficient detail".

Dennett suggests that the Cartesian materialism, though rejected by many philosophers, still colors people's thinking. He writes:

Perhaps no one today explicitly endorses Cartesian materialism. Many theorists would insist that they have explicitly rejected such an obviously bad idea. But as we shall see, the persuasive imagery of a Cartesian theater keeps coming back to haunt us — laypeople and scientists alike — even after its ghostly dualism has been denounced and exorcised.

Replies from dualism

Many philosophers question Dennett's immediate rejection of dualism (dismissing it after only a few pages of argument in Consciousness Explained), pointing to a variety of reasons that people often find dualism to be a compelling view.

To proponents of dualism, mental events have a certain subjective quality to them, whereas physical events obviously do not. That is, for example, what a burned finger feels like, what sky blue looks like, what nice music sounds like, and so on. There is something that it's like to feel pain, to see a familiar shade of blue, and so on; These sensations independent of behavior are known as qualia, and the philosophical problem posed by their alleged existence is called the hard problem of consciousness by Chalmers.

Dualists argue that Dennett does not explain these phenomena, so much as ignore them. Indeed, the title of Dennett's book Consciousness Explained is often lampooned by critics, who call the book Consciousness Explained Away or even Consciousness Ignored.

Replies from Cartesian materialists

Some philosophers have actively accepted the moniker of Cartesian Materialists, and are not convinced by Dennett's arguments.

O'Brien and Opie (1999) embrace Cartesian materialism, arguing against Dennett's claim that the onset of phenomenal experience in the brain cannot in principle be precisely determined, and offering what they consider to be a way to accommodate Phi phenomenon within the Cartesian materialist paradigm. 

Block has described an alternative called "Cartesian Modularism" in which the contents of conscious experience are distributed in the brain.

Replies from neuroscience

Despite Dennett's insistence that there are no special brain areas that store the contents of consciousness, many neuroscientists reject this assertion. Indeed, what separates conscious information from unconscious information remains a question of interest, and how information from disparate brain regions are assembled into a coherent whole (the Binding problem) remains a question which is actively investigated. Recently Global Workspace Theory has argued that perhaps the brain does possess some universally accessible "workspace".

Another criticism comes from investigation into the human visual system. Although both eyes each have a blind spot, conscious visual experience does not subjectively seem to have any holes in it. Some scientists and philosophers had argued, based on subjective reports, that perhaps the brain somehow "fills in" the holes, based upon adjacent visual information. Dennett had powerfully argued that such "filling in" was unnecessary, based on his objections to a Cartesian theater. Ultimately, however, studies have confirmed that the visual cortex does perform a very complex "filling in" process.

The impact of this is itself controversial. Some assume that this is a devastating blow against Dennett, while others have argued that this in no way confirms Cartesian materialism or refutes the multiple drafts model, and that Dennett is fundamentally right even if he's mistaken about this detail.