"...seemed..."

Il ah okay. You got me scared for a second.

I didn't understand much of what @Mww had to say.

@frank tripped up on irrelevancies. Devonian, Pleistocene, Mozart and Lorn. A couple of neat jokes, though.

@Isaac seems to have given up. His contribution was pivotal, giving a solid foundation to the physiological background.

Or to put it another way, most of this thread is his fault.

tripped up on irrelevancies. Devonian, Pleistocene, Mozart and Lorn. A couple of neat jokes, though. — Banno

That was about how Dennett avoids global skepticism. Except the Mozart and Lorn thing. Alternating them really is freaky. Also the Nutcracker and Marilyn Manson. Woo.

@Wayfarer dropped in to mention Nagel. Nobody seemed to much care.

@fdrake joined the chorus for a while. Seems he had the sense to move on, too. As did @Kenosha Kid

Here since page 1. Derailed at page 2.

Mww uses Kantain terminology and framework.

I personally found the parts that , , and were discussing to be quite interesting... the modeling portions.

...has done a fine job in carrying the good fight, apart from that strange stuff about pretheoretical beliefs. — Banno

The underlying topic is conscience experience(consciousness). If language less creatures can have conscious experience too, then an adequate account of all conscious experience must be capable of taking them into proper account as well as our own. The historical renderings(different schools of thought) do not, cannot. Since Aristotle(I think) we've placed our own conscious experience upon a pedestal, so to speak, and ferociously defended our own superiority over 'dumb' animals, by virtue of claiming that they are incapable of the kind of thought and belief - like reason - that we are. While that is most certainly true, and there are all sorts of other reasons we've wanted to be superior to other creatures, the mistake made by all was to not have taken proper account of our own minds to start with. The methodological approach was all wrong.

When methodological naturalism split from philosophy proper, it was already doomed to fail because it was already based upon and working from utterly inadequate dichotomies... subject/object, internal/external, objective/subjective, physical/non physical, mind/body, physical/mental, etc.

Emergent consciousness requires an ontological basis of at least three different categories.

Derailed at page 2. — fdrake

I very much appreciated how you actually addressed the text of Dennett's article. Closer to what I had in mind when I started this. The purpose of threads based on a specific text is of course to critique that text; and usually they go for a few tens of pages. This one grew in several directions, mostly away from the text. That explains it;s length. @CreativeSoul is right that the parts that you, Isaac, and Kenosha Kid on modelling were of interest. I have a divergent take on that, since after Davidson I'm not particularly happy with the notion of modelling; Both time and a desire not to lead the thread any further from the text prevented me from entering into a critique. I think there's still a hint of the homunculus in @Isaac's approach, along the lines of @Andrew M's Cartesian theatre... Roughly, when we refer to the cup, we are not referring to the model of the cup we have in mind, but directly to the cup.

Sure, all that. But a belief is still an attitude towards a proposition. You appear sometimes to lose track of that.

a belief is still an attitude towards a proposition — Banno

Well, as we both know, our positions sharply diverge at that point. Maybe, just maybe, we will bridge that divide one day.

:wink:

I have a divergent take on that, since after Davidson I'm not particularly happy with the notion of modelling — Banno

I guess this is because representation mechanisms can sit pretty uneasy with direct realism?

I think it's hard to have a notion of representation playing around in a philosophy of mind without sliding into Cartesian intuitions (mental represents physical, split them up like subject states representing object states), but I do think Dennett manages to have a representational account of perception without being a Cartesian; the thing doing all the representing is a bodily process' pattern, that matches environmental patterns in some way, so there's no mental/physical event distinction in the ontology for the Cartesian distinction to attach to (a consequence of characterising experiential properties as "extrinsic relational properties").

Nuh.

That'd take all the fun out of it.

But a belief is still an attitude towards a proposition. — Banno

Would be a good thread.

So in the context of consciousness, since we already know we're conscious, we can ask whether our physical explanations account for consciousness. — Marchesk

I'm not sure what you mean by "in the context of consciousness". Do you mean 'in the context of how consciousness intuitively seems to us"? If so, then physical explanations will always seem inadequate, because they necessarily leave out how consciousness intuitively seem to us. It's like expecting science to be able to give a physical explanation of the meaning of a poem or musical work.

@Banno

I guess this is because representation mechanisms can sit pretty uneasy with direct realism? — fdrake

Isaac is an indirect realist.

We're not getting our gold stars, being on the wrong team in this thread.

I agree - I think.

I have in mind the difference between talking about a calculator adding up a series of numbers and talking of a calculator flicking transistors on and off. These are two quite different ways of talking about the very same thing. Like the duck-rabbit, the argument can go on interminably as to which is "right", to the entertainment of those watching from the sideline who see both.

I'm just not at all clear as to what you position is...

Isaac is an indirect realist. — Marchesk

...beyond name-calling.

As I've repeatedly argued, regardless of whether one wishes to defend the concept of qualia, it's the colors, sounds, feels, etc. that do not fit easily with the mathematizeable explanations of science.

Or as Chalmers puts it, the structure and function does not account for the sensations of experience without positing some extra natural law, like integrated information theory.

See directly above. Except I don't defend some form of panpyschism, because I don't know what consciousness is, other than it being strongly correlated with brain activity. It just seems like a hard problem.

Maybe I'm a little too close to the fence.

But a belief is still an attitude towards a proposition.
— Banno

Would be a good thread. — fdrake

It does not end well for the position Banno is arguing from/for.

...that do not fit easily with the mathematizeable explanations of science. — Marchesk

...yeah, that bit.

I seem to recall a debate in which I used your ideas for floor polish.

Was that here, or in The Other Place?

Guess it could be close to my idea if by metaphysical you meant what I mean by supernatural: exceptions to the causal laws of the universe. — Olivier5

Yes, that's it. I prefer to speak of ontological rather than metaphysical commitments, because the very term 'metaphysical' is a tendentious one; suggesting that there is something beyond the physical (or over and above the natural in the sense of 'manifest natural law') as it does. 'Meta" and "super' are pretty much synonymous.

Defined as such, you cannot say that minds are physical, since they cannot be 'mind-independent'. — Olivier5

I don't think this is right. 'Mind-independent existence' just means something like 'existing independently of whether it is perceived'. It is arguable that we don't, or at least don't necessarily, perceive mind. Humans had minds before they were aware that they had minds. Animals have minds without being aware of the fact.

I agree with Nagel the most. But McGinn's cognitive closure is a possibility.

That of which we cannot speak ...?