And it seems like people go, Dennett says consciousness is an illusion. He showed us some optical illusions. So he must be right." It makes no sense. — Terrapin Station
Dennett, like Chalmers, Searle, etc. thinks that consciousness can't be fit into a physicalist explanation of the world. — Marchesk
If they'd just realize that this is a mistake . . . — Terrapin Station
If it is a mistake, nobody has succeeded in showing how you can explain the subjective in terms of the objective, which is what the hard problem is about. See Nagel. — Marchesk
All the perception stuff Dennett shows in his videos is to show people can't be sure about their qualia and if they can't be sure about that then how can they commit to it being real. — Forgottenticket
Yes, since all they have, as empiricists, is experience to work with, any knowledge of the external world or even the conclusion that there must be one is fruit of the poisoned tree.But Dennett and Frankish only want to endorse radical skepticism for introspection and subjectivity, not the external world. Dennett is a pragmatic realist when it comes to objectivity. But I think the sword cuts both ways, as a good skeptic would be sure to point out. — Marchesk
But if color and taste are illusions, what reason would we have for supposing that shape and weight are not? After-all, we know about apples by experiencing them via our sensations of color, taste, etc. — Marchesk
So, they think that consciousness is actually physical and the illusion is that it is not? What does it mean to be physical vs non-physical? Once you go down this road you acquire not just another hard problem, but a "serious problem" with having to explain how the physical and non-physical interact. Dualism is the problem and monism is the answer. Also discarding these incoherent terms of "physical" and "non-physical" would also be useful. Everything is information which is why there is an aboutness to your mind - of being about the world. Your mind is an effect (as well as a cause hence the need for explanation about how the mind and world interact) and effects are about their causes. This is why we can get informed about the ripeness of the apple and about your visual system and about the light in the environment just by the color on the apple that you see.Dennett, like Chalmers, Searle, etc. thinks that consciousness can't be fit into a physicalist explanation of the world. But unlike them, he takes the position that this means consciousness must be an illusion, because why would consciousness be the one thing that's an exception in the universe? — Marchesk
After reading and hearing enough Dennett, I can't say that he even knows what he's talking about.I've read and heard enough of Dennett to be convinced that he thinks there is no consciousness and we are philosophical zombies. Except that he likes to keep using the word with a different definition. Which would be consciousness in the functional or behavioral sense only, because those can be fit into a materialist explanation. — Marchesk
If consciousness is an illusion, then how is free will not?I haven't been angered but I have been frustrated by some neuroscientists who say we do not have free will and in some cases this position has implications in law and morality. They argue your mind is your brain, the brain is programmed, so there's no free will. I think science needs to be more circumspect and more creative. An economist might say, dollars don't exist, it's just a collective illusion, I think this is very bad advice and I also think it is bad, greedy reductionist advice to say free will is an illusion. — D. Dennett
CJ How important is self-reflection to consciousness?
DD Very. — The Guardian.com
That isn't a problem at all. We speak objectively all the time - about the world, about our minds, about our preferences. Subjective language is just category errors where we project mental phenomenon onto non-mental phenomenon - like as if the apple were really red. The apple is ripe or rotten, not red or black. Ripeness is a property of fruit, not minds. Redness is a property of minds, not light or apples. Red and black are mental properties, or effects, that are about the ripeness of the apple, the light in the environment and the state of your visual system thanks to causation. Effects carry information about their causes. Illusions (or subjectivity) crop up when our minds don't interpret the causes correctly.If it is a mistake, nobody has succeeded in showing how you can explain the subjective in terms of the objective, which is what the hard problem is about. See Nagel. — Marchesk
But I think the sword cuts both ways, as a good skeptic would be sure to point out. — Marchesk
All the perception stuff Dennett shows in his videos is to show people can't be sure about their qualia and if they can't be sure about that then how can they commit to it being real. — Forgottenticket
Red and black are mental properties, or effects, that are about the ripeness of the apple, the light in the environment and the state of your visual system thanks to causation. Effects carry information about their causes. Illusions (or subjectivity) crop up when our minds don't interpret the causes correctly. — Harry Hindu
All it shows is that consciousness doesn't accurately report the external world 100% of the time — Terrapin Station
I recall one change blindness experiment changed a sign in a photo from yellow to grey (or something like that) and no one noticed. — Forgottenticket
I dont see how such things can be labeled as subjective. How are your imaginings, dreams and inner dialog subjective if I can refer to them with language and use them as explanations for your behavior that I percieve? How is that any different than talking about atoms as an explanation for the behavior of matter that I perceive? Your imaginings, dreams and inner dialog have as much causal power as a boulder rolling down a hill towards your car an can be talked about like we can talk about any natural process.And how does this work with imagination, dreams, inner dialog? Subjective experience isn't exclusive to perception. — Marchesk
I dont see how such things can be labeled as subjective. How are your imaginings, dreams and inner dialog subjective if I can refer to them with language and use them as explanations for your behavior that I percieve? — Harry Hindu
Dennett, like Chalmers, Searle, etc. thinks that consciousness can't be fit into a physicalist explanation of the world. But unlike them, he takes the position that this means consciousness must be an illusion, because why would consciousness be the one thing that's an exception in the universe?
I've read and heard enough of Dennett to be convinced that he thinks there is no consciousness and we are philosophical zombies. Except that he likes to keep using the word with a different definition. Which would be consciousness in the functional or behavioral sense only, because those can be fit into a materialist explanation. — Marchesk
I linked to Keith Frankish's article on Illusionism. — Marchesk
Like I said, we don't experience atoms and we use them as explanations for what we do see. We can't see anything smaller than a wavelength of EM energy. So there are things that we don't experience in the world that aren't just imaginings and dreams. Would those things that we don't experience thanks to the limitations of our sensory organs be considered subjective, too? In other words, are you saying that the information that is missing from our experience of the world is subjective and everything else is objective?Because you can't experience my imagination, dreams, inner dialog and have to settle for language and behavior to know about them. And if I don't tell you, there will be experiences I have you won't ever know about, nor will you have any means of finding out, because they can't always be inferred from behavior. — Marchesk
Not yet. But we can hook someone's brain to a computer and have it interpret their intentions and move a mouse cursor on the screen and click on letters to type words. Google "Brain-Computer interfaces".It's not like we can hook someone's brain up to a machine and have it read out their thoughts or display their dreams on a tv. — Marchesk
I don't understand Nagel's question. Is he asking what it is to be the whole bat, or just it's brain, or what?This why Nagel asked what it's like to be a bat and used that as an example of how there is a gap between objective explanation and subjective experience. — Marchesk
I don't understand Nagel's question. Is he asking what it is to be the whole bat, or just it's brain, or what? — Harry Hindu
What makes us think that there is a what it is like for a bat, but not ask the same question of a computer robot with sensory systems?He's asking what the subjective experience of a bat is like; which obviously cannot be answered since we are not bats. But really the question is "is it like anything to be a bat?". Of course, we know what the question means, but I never liked the "what's it like" part, because being a bat cannot be like anything but being a bat, if it is like anything at all. Perhaps the question should be simpler, perhaps "is there any subjective 'feel' to being a bat?". Of course the answer is that we don't and cannot know; we can only guess. — Janus
Of course the answer is that we don't and cannot know; we can only guess. — Janus
Probably because we know that bats have brains and central nervous systems which are not too dissimilar to our own; whereas computers have nothing analogous. — Janus
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