Sensations and thought take place, he theorizes, by parallel, multi-track processes of interpretation. This motion, like the motion of our heads, is edited out early in the processing from eyeball to consciousness. Drafts can be written and then withdrawn from circulation, as subsequent events confirm or refute them. Dennett then provides biological examples of parallel processing in the brain and traces the origin of various functions within the development of the animal world. Natural selection, he points out, favors the development of nervous systems because they enable biological organisms to track or even anticipate important features of the environment.
Brains are, in essence, anticipation machines.
Simple nervous systems are capable only of proximal anticipation, behavior that is appropriate to what is in the immediate future. Better brains are those that can extract more information, faster, and use it to avoid problems in the first place. It also reflects back on the process of evolution and speeds it up, Dennett explains. This critical side was developed by the dialectical philosophers. Notwithstanding such legitimate questions, many of Dennett's metaphors and biological examples ring true and provide a fascinating glimpse into the rapidly developing study of the mind.