ABSTRACT
Introduction
Perhaps the cornerstone of Daniel Dennett's (1991) case for his "multiple drafts" view of consciousness in his well-known Consciousness Explained is a set of inferences he draws from the phi phenomenon. Phi was first introduced by the great gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer (1912), and a number of fascinating variations have been studied by, among others, Paul Kolers and Michael von Grünau (1976). In the simplest version of phi, two or more small dots are briefly lit in rapid succession, but it seems to the subject that a single spot moves back and forth. In the color phi phenomenon (the study of which was prompted by questions from the philosopher Nelson Goodman (1978), the two illuminated spots are different colors (red and green, say). Remarkably, if these two spots are lit for 150msec each (50msec interval)
