ChatGPT said:

What you’ve written is a sharp observation—it condenses several strands of philosophy of mind and phenomenology into a single diagnosis. Let me expand and connect it a bit:

• Outward-facing senses: Our sensory apparatus is evolutionarily tuned for engagement with the environment—tracking threats, opportunities, other beings—not for introspection. We do not, for instance, see our neurons fire or hear our synapses release neurotransmitters.

• The inward blind spot: Because the machinery of cognition is opaque to itself, we encounter an empty zone where “the cause of experience” should be. This absence is then covered over or filled in.

• Projection / hallucination into the null space: The brain invents a sense of a unified subject, a coherent “I” that stands behind or within experience, precisely because there is no direct sensory grasp of the processes generating the sense of awareness. This resonates with Metzinger’s “self-model,” Dennett’s “center of narrative gravity,” and even Buddhist insights about anatta (no-self).

• Phenomenological subjectivity: What feels like irreducible subjectivity—being a conscious experiencer—is in this reading less an ontological fact and more a compensatory projection: a hallucination of coherence where there is structural opacity.

So in short:
Our senses are extroverted → the mechanisms of thought are hidden → the mind hallucinates a “subject” to stand in for what it cannot access → subjectivity itself is a kind of projection across an inward void.

You said:

Explain the phrase: center of narrative gravity

ChatGPT said:

The phrase “center of narrative gravity” comes from Daniel Dennett’s philosophy of mind, particularly in Consciousness Explained. It’s a metaphor, borrowed from physics, to describe the self as a useful abstraction rather than a concrete object. Here’s the breakdown:

1. Narrative as structure: Think of your life, thoughts, and experiences as a story—a narrative constantly being updated.

2. Center of gravity as abstraction: In physics, the center of gravity of an object isn’t a physical thing you can touch—it’s a conceptual point that makes sense of the object’s behavior. Likewise, the “self” isn’t a single part of the brain; it’s a convenient construct that organizes and explains behavior, intentions, and experiences.

3. Why it matters: Dennett uses this to argue that consciousness and the “I” are emergent: the self isn’t a metaphysical soul but the product of the brain weaving a coherent story about its perceptions and actions.

So, the “center of narrative gravity” is a way of saying: the self is the point around which your experiences and actions cohere, not a tangible entity inside your head.

If you want, I can relate this directly to your earlier idea about projecting a subject into the inward blind spot, which would show how Dennett’s notion dovetails with your line of thought. Do you want me to do that?