'Stage Effects in the Cartesian Theater: A review of Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained'

We're back to the image of an intelligent, fully conscious homunculus sitting in a control room, which Mr. Dennett calls the Cartesian Theater.

It had no need of a Cartesian Theater.

The term Cartesian Theater was brought up in the context of the Multiple Drafts Model that Dennett posits in Consciousness Explained (1991):

Richard Chappell on "The Cartesian Theater"

The book puts forward a "multiple drafts" model of consciousness, suggesting that there is no single central place (a "Cartesian Theater") where conscious experience occurs; instead there are "various events of content-fixation occurring in various places at various times in the brain".

Consciousness is the computation, there is no extra step or "Cartesian Theater" in which you become conscious of the computation.

Cartesian Theatre is a Vancouver, Canada, based software house specializing in free, commercial, games for GNU/Linux.

Dennett's view is that "there is no single, definitive 'stream of consciousness,' because there is no central Headquarters, no Cartesian Theatre where 'it all comes together'".

Sites of signal convergence do clearly exist throughout the brain but there is a concern to avoid re-inventing what Dennett calls a Cartesian Theater or single central site of convergence of the form that Descartes proposed.