Now that would be a good OP. Looking forward to not participating...

SO, who is it that claims consciousness does not exist? — Banno

And my answer was...? I really don't remember mentioning names.

Hey, I'm trying to help here. Do you now think that Dennet holds that view? Pat Chalmers? David Chalmers? Anyone?

Do you now think that Dennet holds that view? — Banno

But Dennet, although not a sofisticated guy, he actually does deny neither the 1st person experiences, nor consciousness. — Eugen

Now that would be a good OP. Looking forward to not participating... — Banno

I'm hoping it'll stretch to at least ten pages, the first five of which will be me arguing that the laws of air flow dynamics are wrong before declaring that I've actually re-invented those laws in a completely new way.

In the mid section I'll claim the word 'fly' really means 'to flap wings' because that's what Aristotle meant by it, so anyone using it differently is obviously part of a deceptive conspiracy theory.

Finally I'm going to claim that aeronautical engineers foolishly think weight has no bearing at all on flight, fail to cite any such thing, then pretend I'm above such workaday requirements as actually reading the subject you're criticising.

It'll be pretty standard fare, shame you'll miss it.

OK, so Dennett... denies nether the existence of a first person experience nor consciousness?

That triple negation construct leaves me a bit unsure of what you are saying.

Well, all the best. You should be fine; its a proven strategy.

I am not a native speaker and I pay little attention to writing when I debate. It's bad... I know.

SO, do you think that Dennett denies the existence of consciousness?

No, and although I have mentioned him, I wasn't the one who brought him up in this debate.

SO, who denies the existence of consciousness?

SO, who denies the existence of consciousness? — Banno

Come one man, I've been asked several times, I have provided with links and I have mentioned I've seen this in various documentaries, articles, etc.

SO... no one you could name. OK. Makes it a bit hard to verify.

Might it be that you were mistaken in asserting that these folk exist?

Might it be that you were mistaken in asserting that these folk exist? — Banno

I really hope so!

Kudos.

A quote from Thomas Nagel’s review of Dennett’s last book which I highlighted at the time (now unfortunately paywalled):

Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”

Dennett really does deny that the first-person nature of lived experience is real. What he says it is, is the consequence of billons of unconscious cellular interactions that give rise to the illusion of first-person consciousness, which is ultimately devoid of anything personal, as such. Only molecules are real, and we are the consequence of the collective action of their ‘unconscious competence’.

It is, as Nagel says in that review, preposterous. In fact, if Dennett has done a service to philosophy, it is in ably demonstrating, across the span of an entire career, what a preposterous claim ‘eliminativism’ amounts to.

Dennett really does deny that the first-person nature of lived experience is real. — Wayfarer

...

What he says it is, is the consequence of billons of unconscious cellular interactions that give rise to the illusion of first-person consciousness, which is ultimately devoid of a — Wayfarer

Sounds real to me. How have you concluded he denies something is real yet in the same paragraph go on to summarise what he thinks it is. What's the 'it' if he's denying it is real?

What's problematic is saying something like "consciousness is a neural phenomena, and hence it is not real". Why can't it be a neural phenomena and still be real?

Quining Qualia
So contrary to what seems obvious at first blush, there simply are no qualia at all (Last paragraph).
@Wayfarer @Banno @Isaac

Yeah. In his joint works with Marcel Kinsbourne, Dennett says

Conscious experiences are real events occurring in the real time and space of the brain, and hence they are clockable and locatable within the appropriate limits of precision for real phenomena of their type

The objection, in Nagel's terms is over the "immediately aware of real subjective experiences". Neurologically, we are not 'immediately' aware, we recall (and in doing so, construct) experiences from the past.

I don't read this as denying consciousness so much as pointing out that it is post hoc.

I don't read this as denying consciousness so much as pointing out that it is post hoc. — Banno

Things have just become complicated again, apparently.

Good article.

'What is real' is a matter of judgement. So a materialist, like Dennett, is advancing the thesis that 'what is real' are the collective outputs of millions of molecular transactions.

Dennett...assures us that “through the microscope of molecular biology, we get to witness the birth of agency, in the first macromolecules that have enough complexity to ‘do things.’ ... There is something alien and vaguely repellent about the quasi-agency we discover at this level — all that purposive hustle and bustle, and yet there’s nobody home.” Then, after describing a marvelous bit of highly organized and seemingly meaningful biological activity, he concludes:

Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.

Source

The way I would challenge this is to say that this, too, is a judgement. It can't have any intrinsic merit, as the only merit any intellectual act has, is ultimately subordinated, in Dennett's philosophy, to its adaptive fitness. 'Truth' and 'illusion' can't have any first-order meaning for Dennett, because all such judgements are the output of neural mechanisms. So his philosophy is hoist by its own petard, as critics have said about him ever since he started publishing.

I don't read this as denying consciousness so much as pointing out that it is post hoc. — Banno

Yeah, that's one of the claims. As this thread's failure to cite a single example is amply demonstrating, absolutely no one is denying that there is a phenomena in need of explanation. The arguments within science are entirely over what the properties of that phenomena are. The argument in philosophy seems to be entirely over what constitutes an explanation. Which, as ever with philosophy, seems to be irresolveable.

Yep.

The arguments within science are entirely over what the properties of that phenomena are. The argument in philosophy seems to be entirely over what constitutes an explanation. Which, as ever with philosophy, seems to be irresolveable. — Isaac

Scientists will never understand why philosophical questions are not resolvable by scientific means, because it's a philosophical issue, not a scientific one.

As this thread's failure to cite a single example — Isaac

Alex Rosenberg. I remember that he held the view that only quarks and leptons exist.

Scientists will never understand why philosophical questions are not resolvable by scientific means, because it's a philosophical issue, not a scientific one. — Wayfarer

I didn't say "irresolvable by scientific means", I just said "irresolveable".

Alex Rosenberg. — Wheatley

I've read a little of Rosenburg, could you supply a quote?