Passing the Buck to Many Little Men

Baars presents the Global Workspace (GW) as an empirically testable model of consciousness. Moreover, Baars presents the GW as an “expansion” of Crick’s research on visual attention and the “searchlight of attention” metaphor (Baars 2003: 1114 and 1118). Baars, pace Crick, believes that the GW overcomes philosophical criticisms such as those that accuse other theories of consciousness of being merely another form of the “Cartesian theatre” (Ibid. 1114). Theories of consciousness that are accused of being Cartesian theatres are found lacking because they posit a single point in the brain/mind where information, perception, representations, etc. come together. This is problematic because it suggests that there is a single perceiver in the brain/mind for whom said data is presented. Often, this perceiver is called the homunculus, and the fallacy is so too named. Cartesian theatre and homunculus-like explanations of consciousness are problematic because they fall into a regress: “Well, if conscious experience is for the audience in the theater or for the homunculus, then how do we explain how the audience or homunculus experiences a unified conscious experience?”

Baars’ response to the above criticism is as follows. The GW is not a Cartesian theater and there is no homunculus because, “In the Global Workspace theory the single homunculus is replaced by a large ‘audience of experts,’” whereby there is, "no fixed, subordinate observer. Individual modules can pay as much or as little attention as suits them, based upon their particular expertise” (Newman, Baars, and Cho 2003: 1132). One need not be a nitpicking philosopher or an expert in logic to realize an obvious flaw in Baars’ reply to the above criticisms. In positing an “audience of experts” as a solution to the Cartesian theatre and/or homunculus challenges, Baars is merely shifting the burden of explanation from one audience/homunculus to many members of an audience/expert homunculi. In other words, Baars is passing the buck to many little men. Instead of explaining how one little man in the head perceives a “bound” perceptual experience, Baars’ GW now has the burden of explaining how each of the little expert men do their perceiving, and how their separate perceptions are unified into a single conscious experience.