What founds the knowledge of Dennett, if not his subjective observation of the world? — Olivier5

I've mentioned this already: reason cannot undermine reason, a subject cannot doubt his own subjectivity, observations cannot prove that all observations are illusory.

Our theories about the world emerge from our pretheoretical observations and reason. If some of our theories require that pretheoretical human observation and reason be illusory, then these theories undermine themselves. They must therefore be false.

I 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.

I think the contention comes from believing that qualia are properties vs phenomena. Qualia deniers talk of them as properties and so they don't make sense. They argue that the seeming produced by an experience is not a property of the input recieved therfore talk of it is fruitless. In other words, "this apple seems red" is not a property of the apple (or else it would seem red to everyone but it doesn't to colorblind people) so proposing a "red quale" is useless. What exactly is the "red quale" a property of?

Qualia advocates I find usually talk of the concept as a phenomena. A sort of "umbrella term" for experiences. So "this apple seems red" and "I experienced a red quale when looking at this apple" are identical statements.

So to an advocate saying "qualia doesn't exist" is the same as saying "nothing happens when you look at a red apple" while for a denier when an advocate says "qualia exist" it is just advocating an incoherent concept.

It's like if a software engineer talked to a hardware designer with neither knowing anything about the other's job.

SE: Which is faster? Quicksort or Merge sort?
HD: What do you mean "Quicksort"?
SE: Oh quicksort is when you *insert algorithm here*
HD: What are you saying? Starting index? Ending index? None of that stuff exists.
SE: Are you saying that computers just do things randomly without instructions?

And around and around they go. The hardware designer opens up the computer to show that "algorithms" don't exist and wonders why the software designer remains unconvinced while the software designer thinks the hardware designer is just some idiot denying the obvious.

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

Or maybe like this: Dennett's view is a pretty bold attempt to address the Hard Problem. It's not the prevailing view in either neuroscience or philosophy, so we're just looking at how Dennett has approached the topic.

I think doubt is what he's promoting. Just start with doubt that other people have the experiences they describe, as described. Imagine a weird dream that defies articulation. Imagine yourself struggling to find words for it. You settle upon a certain narrative.

Dennett thinks we're doing that all the time, and we've gotton so used to it that we're taking the narrative seriously.

Just start with doubt that other people have the experiences they describe, as described. — frank

Well as long as he's not doubting that I have experiences he can do whatever he wants.

But I'm more interested in how this:

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

Addresses the hard problem in any way. The question is "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".

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. 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.

Dennett's solution is to show how explaining functions does explain experience.

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.

“.....Don't our internal discriminative states also have some special "intrinsic" properties, the subjective, private, ineffable, properties that constitute the way things look to us (sound to us, smell to us, etc.)? No. The dispositional properties of those discriminative states already suffice to explain all the effects: the effects on both peripheral behavior (saying "Red!", stepping the brake, etc.) and "internal" behavior (judging "Red!", seeing something as red, reacting with uneasiness or displeasure if, say, red things upset one). Any additional "qualitative" properties or qualia would thus have no positive role to play in any explanations, nor are they somehow vouchsafed to us "directly" in intuition. Qualitative properties that are intrinsically conscious are a myth, an artifact of misguided theorizing, not anything given pretheoretically....”
(Dennett, 1991a, in a precursor to “Consciousness Explained”)

Not given pre-theoretically carries the implication that, if qualitative properties are possible at all, they must be given pursuant to some cognitive theory. An artifact of misguided theorizing carries the implication that, on the one hand, quality is a property, or, the consciousness of quality in and of itself, is in fact directly accessible to us because it is in fact an intuition. Taken together, it becomes clear that whichever cognitive theory predicates quality with a property, and consciousness of such as belonging to phenomena, is metaphysically empty.

Proper theorizing.....understood herein as opinion, of course, with just a hint of argumentum ab auctoritate.....attributes to quality “the order of degree in time”, as opposed to, e.g., quantity, which is “the order of content in time”. Thus it is, following that opinion, that WIL intuitions grounding WIL language, can never occur as time-determinant conditions alone (which validates “pumping” out those of that kind), for they are themselves necessarily conditioned by it, but may only be indirectly accessible iff it is conjoined to the intuition of a phenomenon which is itself conditioned by successions in time, which gives phenomena their degree. It is therefore only from such degree, that WIL language may ensue. Still, even the possibility of WIL language granted by intuition of degrees in phenomena is not sufficient for its intelligibility, for the degree of a thing..........wait for it...............does not give the order of it.

Not only are “special subjective properties” of quality not special, they are not even properties of a subject; they are merely relative understandings of a subject that thinks order in his conceptions.

Please. Hold the tomatoes. I’m only here cuz it’s too early for football.

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?

Source

I 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".

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

Maybe. The only person I know is not a robot is me.

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

We may have to recategorize consciousness as a physical thing in order to build a working theory of consciousness. IOW, talk surrounding 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.

So solving the Hard Problem just means arriving at a decent theory of consciousness. We may find along the way that: "How does consciousness arise from inanimate matter" is the wrong question

Maybe. The only person I know is not a robot is me. — khaled

Yep. And that's really where the topic ends. You can doubt that other people have phenomenal consciousness, but if you're doubting it about yourself, you're in the minority, and there may be something different about you. The rest of us definitely know qualia day in and day out.

but if you're doubting it about yourself, you're in the minority, and there may be something different about you — frank

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?" than that they are legitimately doubting it. Because I cannot conceive of someone doubting whether or not they are experiencing somthing. 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 (or just zombies since they aren't a thought experiment anymore)

We may have to recategorize consciousness as a physical thing in order to build a working theory of consciousness — frank

In that case the "Physical" in "Physical thing" just becomes redundant. Which I'm fine with. The list of "physical things" has expanded throughout time. From rocks, to less tangible waves, to less tangaible forces, to less tangible "fields" to less tangible "probability clouds" etc. If consciousness joins the mix then I think the "set of things that are not physical" will be an empty set finally. But then again, that just means that "Physical thing" has just become "Thing".

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.

That's why I can't see what Dennett says as a serious solution. It is a hypothesis (maybe, I still can't make much sense of the rest of what he says outside this paper) but even as a hypothesis it is untestable. It is funny to me how he dismissed qualia on the grounds of not being able to test for it (among other things) but whatever solution he is posing to the hard problem is equally untestable. I'm not very familiar with Dennett so maybe I'm critically misunderstanding somewhere.

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.

What an odd thing to say. How does consciousness arise from inanimate matter? If that's not a hard problem, I guess there should be an answer to that question, right?

ETA: I see Khaled beat me to it.

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

Right. Obviously you arent alone there. Likewise, Dennett says you're a deluded victim of folk psychology.

But then again, that just means that "Physical thing" has just become "Thing". — khaled

We'll finally be out from under Descartes at that point.

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

That meter has been a feature of science fiction for decades, so the concept is conceivable (which just means it's not contradictory). But yes, we're only at the beginning stages. It might be that climate change will interrupt progress and our descendants 1000 years from now will take it up and be mildly amused that we thought of it too.

What an odd thing to say. How does consciousness arise from inanimate matter? If that's not a hard problem, I guess there should be an answer to that question, right? — RogueAI

It may be that there is no answer to that question.

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

This doesn't make sense. How can the mere fact that we're doubting prove we're having an experience with 'being a p-zombie' as the alternative? If there's an alternative, then is is necessarily true that it's possible to doubt without having an experience of the thought process (presumably that's what the p-zombie does) and so you cannot then say anyone who doubts must be having an experience of doubting purely on the grounds of there being no alternative.

I'm tired of debating whether an illusion itself is something to be reckoned with. Those who deny the experience as an illusion have to understand that. The illusion itself is to be explained. The origin in its neural configurations is not the question.

The question is "Why does inanimate matter produce these mental phenomena we are making these (supposedly terribly inaccurate and incoherent) narratives about?" — khaled

I've asked this on another thread, but for you, what would an answer to this question look like?. 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.

It may be that there is no answer to that question.

If 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.

If knowing how a magic trick is done would rob you of the enjoyment, then by all means don't listen to the explanation, but on what grounds would you claim there can be no explanation?

There may be more to the academic debate, or not, but that's the only discussion I see in this thread.

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

I'm reading about the changes that took place in science when the concept of zero was introduced. Imagine someone 2400 years ago daydreaming about a theory of lightning. There just wouldnt be any way they'd ve able to do what we can do. They didnt have zero.

That's an example of what concepts can do.

You gotta quit reading so much Kant.

:wink:

Yes, a person from long ago wouldn't be able to figure out why there's lightning. It may be that we're in that position regarding consciousness, and in another thousand years we'll have it nailed down, but 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?

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

The problem is a consequence of not understanding our own thought and belief, what it consists of, how it emerges, evolves, what it gives rise to, and the role that all of this plays in our lives(conscious experience).

That's the only place to start.

He's right. Why is consciousness so hard for science to figure out? Why have we made essentially no progress on an explanation? — RogueAI

We know quite a bit about the functional aspects of consciousness. With regard to the rest: we're just starting.

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

If the sort of answer which is appropriate for noses is also appropriate for consciousness, then we've made loads of progress. We've got some really good predictive models, we've got a few plausible evolutionary 'stories', we've even isolated the development of certain neural networks involved in the development of consciousness. Given how unbelievably complex the brain is (and how recently we've been able to really examine what's going on), I don't think there's any reason to be maudlin about progress.

I'm sorry, I totally misread what I quoted you as saying. Must be euphoria hangover from Biden winning. I read you as saying: if science can given an explanation like evolution for why life changes, why can't it do it for consciousness and why is it taking so long?

Anyway, the reason to be maudlin about progress is because there hasn't been any (on the hard problem). We're really good at finding neural correlates to mental states, but on the questions of how are we conscious and why are we conscious, the theories are all over the place: panpsychism, mysterianism, it's-all-an-illusionism, computationalism, etc. There's no consensus on anything. The only other place this shows up in science is the lack of consensus to explain what's going on with quantum mechanics.

I think Dennett has done a fine job of quining the notion of "qualia". That's tremendous progress on my view, and I'm not a physicalist or dualist, or panpsychist. Part of the problem is that there remain a few archaic dichotomies at work which serve to cloud understanding rather than add to it. The object/subject and physical/mental are definitely two of them. These are man-made artificial barriers. All conscious experience consists of objects and subjects, physical and mental things. It is not one or the other. It's existentially dependent upon and consists of both.

Furthermore, there are a multitude of different kinds of conscious experience, and these are all getting mashed together in the discussion of 'experience'. They are not all the same, aside from having, emerging, and/or otherwise being existentially dependent upon the same pre-theoretical foundation, which definitely does not include "qualia" as it is targeted by Dennett.

However, the ineffable and private aspects must hold good when we're talking about language less creatures' conscious experience. Sorry Banno. It's not that we cannot talk about their conscious experience, it's that they cannot. Our knowing that much allows us to be able to refine our standard/criterion for what pre-theoretical conscious experience can and/or must include as well. But...

The biggest flaw I see in all of this... including Dennett's paper... is the sheer lack of an acceptable theory of meaning. All conscious experience must be meaningful to the creature having the experience. I suspect, when that is gotten right, the rest of the 'problems' will be much less daunting.

Ehhhhh.....you know how it is, right? Somebody’s gotta show the post-moderns how they went off the epistemic rails.

Kidding. Reading a lot does not necessarily indicate learning.

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

I've told you this before: it's extremely patronising to assume people aren't conscious in the way you are. It's also highly implausible that there are different sorts of humans which are individuated by their stance on an obscure philosophical dispute that takes a lot of its popular form in the 1970s.

If you want an explanation for why I've responded emotionally to you, it's because I've perceived you as dismissive, unengaged and evasive. You've also doubted my basic competence to discuss the issue, and when I gave you a standard definition of externalism with respect to mental content:

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

you chose to uncharitably read into it that I had no idea that internalists may allow mental states to have externally individuated properties, but not only externally individuated properties ("internalists wouldn't disagree with that"); internalists with regard to mental content align the phenomenal with intrinsic properties of mental content. Recall this is also disputed in the paper, and we've been talking about issues related to it since page 3 of the thread.

We can both play the "different type of human" game, I personally uncharitably suspect that qualia advocates do not have the capability for "second or third thoughts" in Pratchett's sense:

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.

Qualia advocates are unable to see patterns in their own thought, or notice generative patterns for their own agent-environment relationship operative within them. And if you find that over passionate, contemptuous and totally unpersuasive, remember that you have already accused me of having a limited form of consciousness when compared to you.

A fair amount of what you just said about me is how I feel about you. I understand that I've been offensive, but I thought I was just being defensive. I apologize. I do think we're better off avoiding each other.

And it's really not condescending to wonder if people are different. There are ways that I'm different from most people. I mentioned earlier that I have a cousin who has perfect pitch. That's a very distinct difference and there is a genetic basis for it.

:smile:

Our theories about the world emerge from our pretheoretical observations and reason... — Olivier5

What would such pre-linguistic reason consist of?