  Although the Jamesian emphasis on the continuity of consciousness is widely viewed sympathetically, there are dissenters. Galen Strawson endorses realism – he believes change and succession can be directly experienced – but he also rejects James’ stream-metaphor as ‘inept’, and argues that consciousness is radically discontinuous and disjointed: ‘It is always shooting off, fuzzing, shorting out, spurting and stalling.’ (1997: 421). For Strawson there are gaps and fissures in our experience, and these are sometimes accompanied by dramatic changes in content: ‘The (invariably brief) periods of true experiential continuity are usually radically disjunct from each other in this way, even when they are not radically disjunct in terms of content.’ (1997:  422)[6] In a similar vein, Dennett holds that ‘One of the most striking features of consciousness is its discontinuity (1991: 356).