The following is my summary prepared after reading Dennett’s book “Consciousness Explained”.

It is a difficult book. and this is what I got out of it. My essay is fragmentary at best, and leaves out all of his wonderful experiments and thought-experiments, which are the most interesting parts of the book. After all, It is a 450-page book and these are only 27 points. Dennett would probably deny that I got it right, and in fact I know that I deviated from his conception starting at about Point 12. I think that he would accuse me of still falling into what he calls the false belief in the “Cartesian theatre”.

The comparisons to the “Single Negotiating Text” in U.N. conferences are my own.

1. The brain is like a massively parallel computer.
2. The components are “specialists” for operations that proved successful in evolution.
3. But they can be recruited for tasks other than those for which they were originally “designed” (i.e. selected).
4. They elaborate incoming sense data in parallel, according to their specialized talents, like a bunch of “demons” (not “bureaucrats”) [these are Dennett’s terms]. The whole assembly is called “Pandemonium” and is not hierarchically organized like a bureaucracy.
5. This system is “on the edge of chaos” (Kauffman 1991) [this is my metaphor, not Dennett’s]. It works through shifting coalitions of various demons elaborating the data together, with rough rules, but no rigid pre-determined plan or program.
6. The demon coalitions issue series of preliminary drafts of a growing text, like the working draft (“Single Negotiating Text”) prepared by the Chairman of the Law of the Sea Conference, or a Prep. Committee’s draft final paper for a U.N. Special Session on Disarmament, or the Rolling Text of the Chemical Weapons Convention. In all of these clauses or paragraphs that are not yet fully agreed on (by consensus) are put in square brackets, and the negotiation then consists of aiming to remove the square brackets, each in its turn. (In the brain’s case, to remove residual uncertainty in the interpretation of the incoming data.)
7. The preliminary drafts are unconscious, or in the U.N. “unofficial”, sometimes called “non-papers” because they have no legal status – they have been neither adopted nor rejected – yet. They float in limbo, but some people can read them. So can some of the brain demons, but not “consciousness”, which is like “the public”.
8. Constant revisions of the text are done, like editing an article in a computer. (This metaphor is Dennett’s.) Once amended, only the last version is “saved”; previous versions are totally erased. They might as well never have existed. They are eliminated either by “Orwellian” mechanisms (rewriting history, as in “1984”), or by “Stalinist” mechanisms (we make them confess in show trials that they were wrong). i.e. the erased versions are eliminated either before or after they are remembered.
9. The brain also contains a serially operating computer, like a conventional IBM PC. Data and programs have to line up in a queue to go through it, so it’s slow, unlike the super-fast parallel processing.
10. The outputs from the demons (partially edited bits of text) compete for priority to go through the serial (“von Neumann”) computer. There are certain rules of priority, but also some sheer dumb luck like survival in evolution.
11. What goes through the von Neumann computer is close to a final text, but can still be edited, modified, corrected, even deleted, if the contributing “authors” (the demons) press the “editor”.
12. Gradually, the text gets reinforced by the continued interaction with some of the demon coalitions. (Like lobbying at U.N. conference, or in national decision-making, for the matter. The NGOs as demons have more influence in the early stages, but can still influence the process sometimes in the later stages. The process is now into the full official conference stage, no longer the Prep. Committee.)
13. When sufficiently “strong” (backed by the vocal public opinion), and “saved” in a more permanent type of memory, it can do a “self-referential loop” (a la Hofstadter) and sense itself as if it was part of the external world being perceived.
14. It thus becomes “conscious”. The text is now “published” and can be distributed to other minds by speaking or writing or printing.
15. It is also “saved” in long-term memory, reinforced by its verbal or written expression. Unless rehearsed in this public form, it can still be modified, so that what we “remember” may not be exactly “what really happened”.
16. This is especially true with dreams, which continue to “evolve” even after I wake up and try to write them down. Then when I try to “interpret” the dream, it’s still like a continued elaboration of it in the wakeful state. In lucid dreams, we can elaborate (e.g. try different story endings experimentally) while still asleep, though aware that we are dreaming.
17. The unconscious processing of texts by the demons goes on during sleep, though the texts are not about new sense data. This is why we can sometimes solve problems while asleep, and wake up with the solution that had eluded us before we fell asleep. (This is not in Dennett’s book, it is my own “elaboration”. True to the model, I cannot stop processing and interpreting.)
18. The starting data may come from the cultural environment rather than the natural environment perceived by the senses. The socio-cultural input is in the form of “memes” (culturally transmitted ideas). The mind is full of memes, just like a cell is full of genes.
19. The main point: sense data (and introspective data) are continually processed and elaborated, from the word “go”. We never observe “raw data” or anything close to it. Almost all is interpretation and elaboration, with the raw data as just a nucleus around which all this activity precipitates. In sense deprivation experiments, when the entry of raw data is excluded, the brain “manufactures” its initial nucleus in the form of hallucinations.
20. So our interpretation of the external world is largely “confabulation”, but an evolutionarily useful one; so there must be some correspondence to “truth”, at least as a “translation”. Otherwise we would not have been able to adapt to the external world and would not have survived.
21. Our interpretation of the internal world (our own consciousness – the only accessible part of the mind) is also largely confabulation, for the same reason – layers and layers of interpretation.
22. This also applies to the present theory, so don’t fully believe it. (This is another instance of self-reference.) Dennett’s book itself is written in a style of continuing elaboration that eventually becomes irritating – he keeps giving us “amended texts” of his theory in the light of newly presented evidence in each chapter, without ever giving us the Final Text as a summary. It is like a “stream of unconsciousness”.
23. Consciousness is not continuous, but “gappy”. We get only momentary .glimpses of our thought process, not a “stream of consciousness”.
24. A “self’ is the centre of gravity of the narrative or story that we spin. Is it “real”? A centre of gravity can be deduced from the physical behaviour of an object, but it is not a “thing”, like what Dennett calls “a pearl of the mind” or a soul – which he denies. But then, he denies almost everything, including “qualia” or secondary qualities.
25. A quale (plural qualia) refers to colours, musical sounds, textures of materials, fragrances – and the negatives of noise, putrid odours, etc. A colour like red is not simply a wavelength of light or the reflectance of a surface, it is a quality perceived as itself and not reducible to explanations. Dennett considers all qualia to be bundles of affective predispositions conditioned by evolution – e.g. “red” as a sign of danger and mobilization of the body to deal with it (we still have red traffic lights and -heaven help us – Red Alerts), blue and green as colours of tranquility and repose – sky, ocean, grass, forest.
26. Another main point: All mental structures, like all bodily structures, are ultimately explainable by evolution.
27. A self (see Point 24) is like the program that runs on the brain’s linear computer. In principle, it could be lifted off and stored on some kind of a super-diskette, and thus survive the death of the body i.e. “be saved”. (See the essay “The Importance of Being Saved” in Section IV.)

All this gave rise to further musings on my part. It seems that the brain has largely a network structure rather than a structure of patchwork quilt-like squares. The functional units (demons) are not localized – neurons might just as likely be linked to distant neurons as to close-by ones, as long as the current flows between them. Neurons are functionally related, not necessarily adjacent in space. Where have I encountered such structures before?

Well, for example, in networks of twinned cities around the world, where you might have a closer relationship with your distant twin city than with your neighbouring city down the river. Also in organizations which link individuals with similar interests around the world, such as stamp collectors or architects, no matter where they live – i.e. the 2500 non-governmental organizations. And also a card solitaire game that I like to play: you layout a shuffled deck of cards in 4 rows of 13 cards each, take out the aces, and then put into the spaces thus created the card one unit higher of the same suit as the one immediately to the left of the space. We have free choices as to which spaces to fill first, since there are 4 of them. The aim is to end up with the four suits arranged from the two to the king in each row. The chain of rearrangements does not go by rules of proximity, but by suit and number relationships. The structure is there from the beginning, but hidden to the myopic view. If we could really project long-range sequence patterns (like chess masters do), we would not have to play it out – the optimum results (for we have free choices as alternatives in most moves) would be immediately obvious: the structure would be out in the open, not hidden. But it is not a spatial/territorial, but a functional structure.

What matters in the brain is neither substance nor even three-dimensional spatial form, but four-dimensional PROCESS (including time as a dimension).