Here is the part I completely lost the thread - Right at the beginning..
> “Yorick,” I said aloud to my brain, “you are my brain. The rest of my body, seated in this chair, I dub ‘Hamlet.’” So here we all are: Yorick’s my brain, Hamlet’s my body, and I am Dennett.
Why is the brain or the body different from "I"? There seems to be an unstated assumption that your ego is different from your physical manifestation and I did not see anything to substantiate that. This is a religious argument and I could not make sense of the arguments following it.
Maybe there is already an assumption that I missed.
I don't think there's any assumption, and later on he explores your point of view as well:
> The matter was not nearly as strange or metaphysical as I had been supposing. Where was I? In two places, clearly: both inside the vat and outside it. Just as one can stand with one foot in Connecticut and the other in Rhode Island, I was in two places at once.
But this also has problems that he gets into. If the brain and body are both "you", and one is destroyed, do you not exist anymore? Do you half exist? What if your brain gets a new body or your body gets a new brain, or both at the same time? I thought the whole point of this story was to challenge the assumption that your brain and body are both "you" by imagining different scenarios that make that difficult to believe, not to just assume it isn't true. I also didn't think it made any arguments or conclusions, it's just following an interesting thread and seeing where it leads. It's supposed to be thought-provoking, not persuasive.
The brain is part of you, but not the whole you, so it's different by definition. Same goes for the body. Now that they are split, the distinction is only more pronounced.
The narrator goes on to investigate how and whether the difference is actually supported by subjective feelings.
I find the existence of the "narrator" to be utterly debasing of the thought experiment.
Apply Dennett's deconstructions to the author and ask yourself why are you interested in this thesis of indeterminacy of the self when you've already a priori accepted and endorsed Dennett's existence though your consideration of his story on its own terms. Simply apply the same logic you used to accept the source to acceptance of yourself.
Is the dislocation of Dennett's brain from his body a genuinely marvelous feature of the scenario when the scenario is just in your own mind, already a totally displaced manifestation of Dennett's?
Maybe you are not sure that Dennett exists (apparently he actually doesn't) in which case what's going on in this thread: Is it all thoughts from no one mechanically clicking in the machine of "your" own mind?
How can there be a reasoned discussion of a topic the author himself has totally debased?
More troublingly, this response is no more meaningful, don't bother trying to respond because there's no one to respond to! Yet you're stuck with the chaotic intrusion from no one to no one.
If Dennett somehow transcends his scenario, of which there is universal agreement on this forum that he does because even in death his existence is unquestioned, this whole scene is a fright.
Ultimately, why will you allow his scenario to debase your own commonsense, unless there's a greater wisdom of the self to be learned and mastered?
Maybe there is!
So let's look at Dennett himself: he happily maintained he was Dennett his entire life and is consummately well known as such.
Sure, the story places you from the start with the assumption that there was someone who has been split in the first place.
But why does the topic have to be about any more than that? The question is not "is there a Dennet?", but "what locates a person?". What's there about it that prevents reasoned discussion?
When I try to rely on my common sense, I fall into ruts already described in the story, which Dennet the author clearly shows aren't worth much. Seems my common sense deserves some debasing.
The funny thing is, we already have some experiments that do answer this. There was an experiment where two people wore glasses that projected other's physical view point and IIRC, it led to identity and gender confusion. (Unfortunately, I am not able to find that experiment link now).
It seems like we have solid evidence that your brain maps your body, but the map is in your brain. You is the brain as it exists now seems to be a reasonable starting point and I would expect the philosopher to poke holes starting from that.
> “Yorick,” I said aloud to my brain, “you are my brain. The rest of my body, seated in this chair, I dub ‘Hamlet.’” So here we all are: Yorick’s my brain, Hamlet’s my body, and I am Dennett.
Why is the brain or the body different from "I"? There seems to be an unstated assumption that your ego is different from your physical manifestation and I did not see anything to substantiate that. This is a religious argument and I could not make sense of the arguments following it.
Maybe there is already an assumption that I missed.