Re Bennett and Hacker and their mereological fallacy, they say: — Terrapin Station

It's been a while since I read it but from what I recall the book was overtly behaviorist. It identifies psychological properties by their use.

Depends on which part pf PoM.
Baars: A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness is the best scientific book on consciousness I've read albeit it's slightly old now.

Could it be as simple as why bees and not just flowers?
What I mean is could it be due to the existence of multi-cell organisms that single cell organisms still thrive. The same thing with societies and individuals. An individual mind came up with the theory of relativity but it needed something to nurture it to that point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Question_Concerning_Technology — ghost

I mean the "What are poets for?" essay mentioned by OP.

Can anyone link the essay mentioned by OP? Or a synopsis of it.

I think for science to function there has to be accidents in nature that the method is filtering out. If everything operated as billiard balls then it would be a demonstration video not an experiment.

As far as neuroscience goes, I don't think brains look deterministic by a long shot. The best neuroscientists stick to the science and tend to discuss how XYZ can help stroke victims, recover lost senses ect. Neurodevelopment is too complex to made broad arguments for/against long dead male philosophers.

How does the mind create a voice in your head only you can hear — Freya Rose

I think its generally agreed that the internal voice makes use of the same brain structures that allows you to hear external voices. Technically, only you hear your version of the external stuff. An interpretation of the oscillation. Phenomenally its different to each individual.

Personally, I do not think that Daniel Dennet´s interpretation of the theory — DiegoT

? Where has Dennett commented on Passive frame theory?

I think they are the same thing. Consciousness occurs when you need to bring attention to a problem. The "subconscious" mind is simply habit/ autonomic functions.
When you put your mind to it you do not walk into walls. However if you are walking and thinking of something else you can quite easily walk into a wall because your mind/consciousness/attention is not there.
@apokrisis can probably able to give a better explanation.

So if you make some choices that seem random, this shouldn't be the case: — Terrapin Station

Would computers have free will in your opinion?

How would you go about this?

should we start training ourselves on how to conceive or imagine? — BrianW

How would we go about this?

So was this an essay you wrote at some point prior for a philosophy course or something?

Just found this response to Dennett and others of similar persuasion: — Marchesk

@Wayfarer made a thread about this.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3174/critical-review-of-consciousness-denialism-by-galen-strawson/p1
Dennett gave an official response here: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/04/03/magic-illusions-and-zombies-an-exchange/ Which I posted pn page 5 of the thread (also discussed).

"Cheap" mental tricks or not, if you are experiencing it, isn't it real? — Tzeentch

Your OP is about if the mind is infinite. I thought you were wanting to discuss ontological realism and not the existential nature of epistemology.

As for how we turn colors into shapes and what not, that would probably involve different brain regions dedicated to the task. — Marchesk

Sure, and binded together as a single phenomenon we can discuss physically on message boards ect.

and once one got focus, the contents of that "agent" would be phenomenal, to paraphrase his argument. But why getting focus would led to a phenomenal experience still seems unexplained. — Marchesk

Yes I'm familiar with his multiple drafts model. So a particular slice of information becomes "famous" in the brain and so all the other brain compartments for a brief time bend around that so that the next slice will be consistent to the prior one in some way, which is claimed to be like a parallel processing computer.
So the brain is built up out of neurons and synpases and is interacting with some emergent noise that appears "phenomenal" (the hard problem, the binding problem et al) which is seemingly bending the organ to its will and the organ to its, like classic mind-body interaction.
I wonder how many times the thought "dualism may be correct" crosses his mind but then he had to create a new draft (pun unintended) with different wording.

Good thread,

firstly, Dennett is inconsistent with applying the Cartesian theatre. Look at his past adoration for the global neuronal workspace theory of consciousness and tell me how that is not the CT.
Anyway I'm not impressed by the Hard problem as it is phrased. Though the bottom up evo-psych explanation doesn't make sense from a philosophy of action pov either. We see phenomenal objects and respond to them as phenomenal objects and not biological code. I don't think it's controversial to say color was created by natural selection provided NS accounts for more than just random mutation but purposeful selected choices by the organisms.
Look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq6V4OD_DSs
It's undeniable a phenomenal Jesus appears and that's what is being discussed here. When I type this post I am reacting to the image of Jesus and not say- it's dimensions, hue, tone, (bit pieces). How on earth can evolution avoid addressing phenomenal objects?

The problem with this is that human consciousness is dependent on bodies. — Marchesk

How could you show it isn't? Any evidence would be something acting upon a body.

I'm not sure where the neuroscientists fall on this on average, but I would guess they're a bit more reserved about making such assumptions. — Marchesk

Well the binding problem is still unresolved. (Well some like Dennett say it's not real.) So it's not like there is specific criteria for it.

He's just repeating whatever Bostrom says.

Btw from Bostrom's paper
https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

A common assumption in the philosophy of mind is that of substrate ‐ independence . The idea is that mental states can supervene on any of a broad class of physical substrates. Provided a system implements the right sort of computational structures and processes, it can be associated with conscious experiences. It is not an essential property of consciousness that it is implemented on carbon ‐ based biological neural networks inside a cranium: silicon ‐ based processors inside a computer could in principle do the trick as well. Arguments for this thesis have been given in the literature, and although it is not entirely uncontroversial, we shall here take it as a given. — Bostrom

lol, :grin: I like he sweeps away the age old mind/body problem in a sentence. The literature for this premise is also not readily provided from what I can see.

But how far can we compress time in our mind? Can we experience a week in our minds while only sleeping for an hour? Can we experience a year in a minute? — Tzeentch

I don't know. It's possible a lot of the time compression stuff are cheap mental tricks. I can obviously imagine more than exists on earth but the mind is still limited by energy. I've tried to live inside my head before, you always need to return back to the waking world after a few hours for food ect.

Those are still determinate events since you could say it was your neurological (clasical) state which chose the irrational number.
I get what you're saying though. Maybe if it was a random number gernerator it would break the chain, or something that is known to be schotastic like QM or radiation.

ok one question,
If a device generated complex decisions that were then fed into a brain which a short time after were made conscious 100% of the time, would the device be a subconscious?

(b) A third-person observer is claiming empirical evidence of someone else's mental phenomena. — Terrapin Station

So can this not be resolved by being at an earlier point to A)?

IE: the observer predicts this mental content exists at X time and will be made conscious to the subject at Y time?

"You're dreaming even when you're not aware of any content of the dreams in question." — Terrapin Station

I wasn't referring to the dream in itself. I mean the fact parts of dreams are unpredictable unlike normal thinking. Content we associate with intentionality can appear involuntarily. The content is conscious but the argument is that prior to that it was subconscious otherwise we would have prior knowledge of it or be able to predict it coming.

With the driving example, one thing that's important to point out is that we're not talking about propositional knowledge there, we're talking about "how to" knowledge at best--in other words, the ability to do something. In that scenario, by saying that it's evidence of subconscious mental content, you're ruling out that it can simply be akin to "muscle memory," and you're saying that it's necessary to think about it in some sense, just where you're not aware that you're thinking about it. So in the face of a challenge about that, we'd need to be able to provide evidence that there's necessarily something mental about it. — Terrapin Station

I agree with a lot of what you're saying.
Btw, I see things like driving as evidence of there NOT being a subconscious. For example, when my mind drifts elsewhere I often act on habit and drive along a road towards somewhere I don't live anymore before realizing what I've done.
If there was a subconscious greater mind it would be able to discern things like that. However if it was only autonomic habit (something akin to muscle memory) then it makes more sense.
I think dreams are harder to explain but that may also be autonomic with the conscious mind discerning bits of what the autonomic mind is throwing at it. I had a good conversation with @apokrisis about this recently.

The dreams are limited by the energy they are running off. Eventually you will wake up because you need food.

As for epiphenomenalism, I think it's a misguided idea. — SophistiCat

The zombie argument only makes sense if you believe epiphenomenalism is possible.

Meet Kevin. — Wayfarer

I don't think cognitive bias counts as subconscious mental phenomena. The intent is there but it doesn't pull it off. When people learn more their intentions and approaches change.
Dunning-Kruger is a curious one. Perhaps people need to enthused with self-confidence in order to begin learning a task.

I think it was T. H. Huxley (though I cannot find the quote), while critiquing vitalism, compared it to the belief that there is some essential "traininess" in a steam locomotive — SophistiCat

I'm fairly sure you're talking about his "on the hypothesis that animals are automata" essay, and it's comparing it to a steam whistle having no effect on its machinery. While it's talking specifically about animals the steam whistle comparison grew traction beyond it. A curious thing about "steam whistles" though is that they are seen as part of the appeal of the steam train and is part of the reason many of them are still in service. So using them to show that consciousness is epiphenomenal is problematic.
The problem with identity theory (other than classical type physicalism - mental state corresponding to specific brain states- was left in the dust years ago and even Churchland's eliminativism gets more hits) is that consciousness does not appear as a series of neurons firing. There is a holistic phenomenal story that seems like a series of things "binded together" which is unlike the description of anything in nature.
This is why Dennett tends to use eliminativist explanations for consciousness. And tries to show the "bindedness" is an illusion through change blindness ect.

i have to read up on what mental phenomena is. Thanks for your response, ill be back on here. — Ranger

Terrapin was very specific but perhaps this example might help.

Conscious mental content: Kevin robs a bank because he consciously wants to go to prison.
Subconscious mental content: Kevin robs a bank, consciously he is doing it for the money but unbeknownst to him he is institutionalised and subconsciously he wants to return to prison.

The underlined part would be subconscious mental phenomena. Whether it exists or not is still controversial as it would undermine most of our institutions, including scientific research,

I'm generally in agreement with Harry here. I also agree with the sense of self evaporating the more you spend socializing instead of the opposite.
Take something as simple as walking through a wood and stepping on a branch. There is a knowing it is you and not someone else in the wood without having to be told or even hearing an inner monologue.

Your conscious phenomenal experience is a special snowflake. People have different phenomenal features to you. I never thought this was a difficult question for materialism. The harder question is addressing how it appears binded together.

I am sceptical of neo-Darwinian explanations for logic and mathematical ability. — Wayfarer

Well evolution presupposes they exist. Evolution has a general linear A to B timeline. So natural selection is saying, this is the way the universe is and now you have matching mental apparartus. I don't think logic is a peacock tail. Now I do think a lot of mental properties might be peacock tails but it would derail this thread if we went into it.
If logic was purely the result of biology then it would be some form of idealism where concious minds are literally remaking the world as they come into being. I don't think that is correct. I think the common sense intuition is probably right even though it goes against relativity. The brain does piece things together into a coherent reality but I think it's matching an existing reality with logical rules already in existence.

So the context has to be changed in order for the ball not to fall? eliminating each classical cause is the sisyphean task? Like attempting to end cancer while still having cell division?
Edit: corrected mistake.

Sorry I just re-read your OP and I understood it a lot better now.
When you're using "eternal" in the OP you mean as in the change of events being infinite.
Well I don't these points are an issue. For example if there is a cycle to the universe then it could be certain things are erased and start over are various points. The eternal being is a good question but it's possible the idea of "counting" is just a useful human construct that is applicable to finite thermodynamic things only (like respiration) and so is not applicable to eternal beings.
I also don't understand point 9. Eternalism sounds more depressing.

Yeah this sounds more like eternalism (the view that all points in time and real and eternal).

Anyway while I'm here, I never understood how consciousness is accounted for by eternalism. For example is there still a me from 13 years ago having a conscious phenomenal experience of -let's say- diving into a pool and swimming right now?
That really doesn't sound right to me.

I can see lots of legal issues opping up with they/them.
I suppose Xe/Xir is popular in some communities. There just isn't enough non-binary people yet for it to take off and become legal or mainstream.

. I could know what you dreamt without you even speaking to me. — TheWillowOfDarkness

It's empirically demonstrable you would not be able to know their dream until they told you. He's simply saying the mental content (or at least one form) is completely private until he makes it known via language so forms of behaviorism and Wittgenstein (Quinean)-esque elimination are false.
There is no need to overcomplicate that fact.

I'm sympathetic to that. Notice that in these cases ordinary word use is based on faulty assumptions, and so getting clear would actually mean eliminating terms.
However, the laboratory settings is still objective, regardless of what better terms we come up with to use in place of the folk ones.
And from reading and hearing enough of philosophers like Dennett, it's clear that the goal is to eliminate the subjective as a real category, which is a lot stronger than replacing words. — Marchesk

To be clear, I was referring to the Churchlands in that post. I can't find the video but Paul was specifically critical about language being something other than a way to talk about mental content.
But anyway, yes, the point is to turn the subjective into objective physical terms. Instead of saying: "I am sad" you will say "my dopamine levels are low" using more accurate scientific terminology to pinpoint each mental term into an objective set of events.

Dennett does seem to be an eliminativist about consciousness but I don't really care for him.

I think eliminativism could mean that the folk terms used to describe our experiences aren't suited to a laboratory because they are rough stereotypes/social constructs. That is plausible because a lot of times I struggle to describe a feeling and then just adopt terms already in existence to describe it. The fact though I can do this shows that the experiences are making a physical impact on the world. And science is supposed to investigate all things physical.
Btw it speaks to the victory of materialism/atomism/ reductionism that our direct experiences can be considered spooky when they are still our access point to the world.