What founds the knowledge of Dennett, if not his subjective observation of the world? — Olivier5
think both sides are talking past each other now. Qualia advocates believe that Dennett is trying to deny his own internal experience, when he is just trying to come up with better ways to talk about them because "Qualia" is not good enough for that. Qualia deniers believe that the advocates are proposing qualia as a some psychological concept for which we can find neurological evidence, when all they're trying to do is to affirm that people experience things. — khaled
Just start with doubt that other people have the experiences they describe, as described. — frank
Dennett thinks we're doing that all the time, and we've gotton so used to it that we're taking the narrative seriously. — frank
Why does inanimate matter produce these mental phenomena we are making these (supposedly terribly inaccurate and incoherent) narratives about?" Not "How accurate are our narratives of what we're experiencing?" No answer to the latter will address the former because the latter admits that we are at least experiencing something, which poses the question "Why". — khaled
The Hard Problem isn't about explaining how consciousness arises from inanimate matter. — frank
The hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers 1995) is the problem of explaining the relationship between physical phenomena, such as brain processes, and experience (i.e., phenomenal consciousness, or mental states/events with phenomenal qualities or qualia). Why are physical processes ever accompanied by experience? And why does a given physical process generate the specific experience it does—why an experience of red rather than green, for example?
I keep coming back to something Chalmers said once about Dennett: that he might truly be different from the rest of us. If so, maybe Isaac, Banno, and drake are in that same category — frank
don't know how reliable that is but there. I didn't say the hard problem is explaining consciousness per se, but explaining what is the relationship between experience and physical matter. What processes bring about the experience of "Oh that's hot". — khaled
Maybe. The only person I know is not a robot is me. — khaled
but if you're doubting it about yourself, you're in the minority, and there may be something different about you — frank
We may have to recategorize consciousness as a physical thing in order to build a working theory of consciousness — frank
So solving the Hard Problem just means arriving at a decent theory of consciousness. — frank
The Hard Problem isn't about explaining how consciousness arises from inanimate matter. The "easy" problem is explaining how the functions of consciousness work, easy in the sense that science already has the tools to do that. The Hard Problem is about explaining experience. It's not clear that science does have the conceptual tools for that.
Maybe, but I'd much sooner believe that people are only pretending to doubt it about themselves or that what they're doubting isn't "whether or not they have experience" but something more practical like "Is the concept of qualia a fitting description of conscious experience?" — khaled
But then again, that just means that "Physical thing" has just become "Thing". — khaled
Until we can somehow make a "consciousness-o-meter" I can't conceive of that happening. The problem is not just hard it's unapproachable — khaled
The mere fact that they are doubting shows that they are experiencing something (a thought process). Unless they're not in which case they are p-zombies — khaled
The question is "Why does inanimate matter produce these mental phenomena we are making these (supposedly terribly inaccurate and incoherent) narratives about?" — khaled
It may be that there is no answer to that question.
materialism is right, and inanimate matter exists, there's an explanation for how it gives rise to conscious experience. We might never KNOW the explanation, but that's different than there not being an answer. — RogueAI
If I ask "why do we have noses" an evolutionary, or physiological account suffices as an answer, but for some reason such an account is insufficient for the 'hard problem' enthusiasts. I've yet to get clear on why.
So solving the Hard Problem just means arriving at a decent theory of consciousness. — frank
But how would such a theory ever be confirmed? That theory must be able to tell us the conditions required for consciousness to occur. But how will we test the hypothesis? Until we can somehow make a "consciousness-o-meter" I can't conceive of that happening. The problem is not just hard it's unapproachable. One person can say "consciousness is physical and it arises when x and y occur" and another might say "consciousness is inherent in all matter and combines according to x and y" but without the consciousness-o-meter, they are both just as clueless as a layman as to what is actually happening.
And I can't conceive of how a consciousness-o-meter will be made. How will we make a device that detects something which we're not even sure has any physical impact. If my couch is conscious, that is still consistent with every physical and chemical law there is. We don't even have a clue on how to begin detecting consciousness, only a bunch of hypothesis all of which are untestable. — khaled
...the Hard Problem doesnt insist on any ontological commitments. In fact, it implies that we may have to be flexible in order to solve it. — frank
as Isaac said
If I ask "why do we have noses" an evolutionary, or physiological account suffices as an answer, but for some reason such an account is insufficient for the 'hard problem' enthusiasts. I've yet to get clear on why.
He's right. Why is consciousness so hard for science to figure out? Why have we made essentially no progress on an explanation? — RogueAI
I keep coming back to something Chalmers said once about Dennett: that he might truly be different from the rest of us. If so, maybe Isaac, Banno, and drake are in that same category. Note that there really is this inability to conceive qualia. There tends to be emotion behind it (on both sides). I think there might be an experience gap here that only shows up in our inability to make sense of one another. — frank
About mental content? Roughly the idea that the content of mental states of an agent is differentiated by that agent's (history of) agent-environment relationships. — me
Externalism with regard to mental content says that in order to have certain types of intentional mental states (e.g. beliefs), it is necessary to be related to the environment in the right way. Internalism (or individualism) denies this, and it affirms that having those intentional mental states depends solely on our intrinsic properties. — SEP
In its most general formulation, externalism with regard to a property K is a thesis about how K is individuated. It says that whether a creature has K or not depends in part on facts about how the creature is related to its external environment — SEP
Individualism or internalism with respect to a property K says that whether a creature has K or not supervenes on its intrinsic properties only. — SEP
First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.
Our theories about the world emerge from our pretheoretical observations and reason... — Olivier5
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.