Consciousness Explained (Repost)

Consciousness is notoriously difficult to explain. On one hand, there are facts about conscious experience-the way clarinets sound, the way lemonade tastes-that we know subjectively, from the inside. On the other hand, such facts are not readily accommodated in the objective world described by science. How, after all, could the reediness of clarinets or the tartness of lemonade be predicted in advance? Central to Daniel C. Dennett's attempt to resolve this dilemma is the "heterophenomenological" method, which treats reports of introspection nontraditionally-not as evidence to be used in explaining consciousness, but as data to be explained. Using this method, Dennett argues against the myth of the Cartesian theater-the idea that consciousness can be precisely located in space or in time.