In other words, what makes some events conscious and others unconscious; some
in consciousness and some outside of consciousness?
Let’s take the most familiar example – the unconscious driving phenomenon. You
drive on a well-known route, say to work or a friend’s house. On one occasion
you are acutely aware of all the passing trees, people, shops, and traffic signals.
Another day you are so engrossed in worrying about consciousness that you are
completely unaware of the scenery and your own actions. You realise only on
arriving at your destination that you have driven all that way unaware of what
you were doing. You have no recollection at all of having passed through all those
places and made all those decisions. Yet you must, in some sense, have noticed
the traffic signals because you did not drive through a red light, run over the old
lady on the crossing, or stray on to the wrong side of the road. You applied the
brakes when necessary, maintained a reasonable driving distance from the car in
front, and found your usual route. So, considering the red light, what makes the
difference between its being in consciousness and out of consciousness?
This is where the Cartesian theatre comes in. We can easily imagine that during
each of these journeys the things I was conscious of were on the stage, and all the
others were not: the things ‘I’ was aware of were those presented to my mind’s eye,
visible on my mental screen at the time, available to ‘me’ to look at, consider, or
act upon. But there is no literal place inside the brain that constitutes this theatre.
So, what are the alternatives? Some theories keep the theatre metaphor while try-
ing to avoid the impossibilities of a Cartesian theatre. Some throw out all theatre
FIGURE 5.5 • Experienced drivers may find that they arrive at their destination with no memory of having driven there at
all. Were they really conscious all along but then forgot the experience (an Orwellian interpretation)? Was
consciousness prevented by something else, such as paying attention to a conversation or music (a Stalinesque
interpretation)? Were there two parallel consciousnesses, one driving and one talking? Or does the unconscious
driving problem reveal the futility of asking questions about what is ‘in’ consciousness at any time? Theories of
consciousness account for this phenomenon in many different ways.
