Presence: Where Are We?

179 IN 1978, THE PHILOSOPHER DANIEL DENNETT presented us with an interesting and entertaining thought experiment entitled “Where am I?” as the last chapter of his Brainstorms book.1 Dennett recounts the story of a “curious episode” in his life where his brain got surgically separated from his body, with each connection between them restored by placing two “microminiaturized radio transceivers” between each input and output pathway. After the operation he, or rather his body, goes to visit his brain, which was placed, in keeping with the best philosophical traditions, in a lifesupport vat. While looking with his own eyes at his own brain he starts to wonder: