If you want to support that assertion then quote directly from Dennett. — Janus

 So, as Dennett wryly notes, he is committed to the belief that we are all philosophical zombies (if you define the term "philosophical zombie" as functionally identical to a human being without any additional non-material aspects)—adding that his remark is very much open to misinterpretation. — Wikipedia

From Dennett himself, Fool.

An immaterial mind would be as unnecessary — TheMadFool

Unless it decides to take a course of action. Which material object created the computer you're writing this on?

Reading your reply again, you've entirely missed the point, and the implied irony, of the passage you have quoted.

From Dennett himself, Fool. — Janus

Too bad Wikipedia ain't good enough for you, Janus!

An immaterial mind would be as unnecessary
— TheMadFool

Unless it decides to take a course of action. Which material object created the computer you're writing this on?

Reading your reply again, you've entirely missed the point, and the implied irony, of the passage you have quoted. — Wayfarer

Implied irony? Where?

If you want to make claims about what Dennett says, then nothing will substitute adequately for Dennett's own words. That should be obvious, even to a fool.

If you want to make claims about what Dewnnett says, then nothing will substitute adequately for Dennett's own words. That should be obvious, even to a fool — Janus

Good day Janus

@Wayfarer

And then, also, there are those more than abstract — in fact, transcendental — orientations of the mind, such as goodness or truth or beauty in the abstract, which appear to underlie every employment of thought and will, and yet which correspond to no concrete objects within nature. And so on and so forth. — David Bently Hart

Morality has an other-worldly feel to it! The laws of nature are not aligned with morality. In fact morality goes against the grain - why is being good liking walking uphill? Unnatural! Nonphysical! Kant might be relevant.

Commit the most heinous crime imaginable and you will, at no point, violate the (physical) laws of nature. No wonder God!

@Wayfarer

This problem, moreover, points toward the far more capacious and crucial one of mental intentionality as such — the mind’s pure directedness (such that its thoughts are about things) — David Bentley Hart

I couldn't grasp this so-called aboutness. What is it exactly? Thanks.

@Wayfarer

eliminativism: Whatever cannot be reduced to the most basic physical explanations cannot really exist. — David Bentley Hart

Reminds me of @Alexandre Harvey-Tremblay's theory of everything (he has a thread on it if you're interested). I asked him whether his theory had anything to say about free will and his response was to task me with expressing free will mathematically. If that couldn't be done, free will was nonsense. Consciousness is an illusion! :chin:

@Wayfarer

But, alas, his story does not hold together. Some of the problems posed by mental phenomena Dennett simply dismisses without adequate reason; others he ignores. Most, however, he attempts to prove are mere “user-illusions” generated by evolutionary history, even though this sometimes involves claims so preposterous as to verge on the deranged. — David Bentley Hart

This user-illusion concept really interests me. From a physicalist perspective, true, what's really going on are nerves and synapses switching on/off (bioelectricity). However, here I am, try as hard as I might, I can't actually become conscious/aware of these events. All I get to "see" is the finished product - I see houses, people; I smell perfume, fart; I taste sugar, salt; and so on. It is like a standard desktop GUI furnished with relvant icons we can manipulate at will (most of the time). This however begs the question does it not? An indication of that is the word "illusion".

what's really going on are nerves and synapses switching on/off (bioelectricity). — TheMadFool

That's not what's going on. It's electrical storms going on on the lightning- and fractal-like neural network. This electric storm gives rise to consciousness. Electric charge being a concept not understood intrinsically by modern physics.

Implied irony? Where? — TheMadFool

Maybe not 'irony', then. But he's commented that Dennett says 'no philosopher before Descartes is of any consequence'. He then briefly recapitulates philosophy before Descartes where he says this:

In the pre-modern vision of things, the cosmos had been seen as an inherently purposive structure of diverse but integrally inseparable rational relations — for instance, the Aristotelian aitia, which are conventionally translated as “causes,” but which are nothing like the uniform material “causes” of the mechanistic philosophy. And so the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect. Hence the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence.

'The mind', here, is the Greek term 'nous'. And I know it's regarded as archaic by a lot of people, but I am immensely sympathetic to that understanding. Then, he says, Descartes' dualism is 'a chimera', which is a mythological creature with a lion's head on a goat's body - emphasising the artificiality of Descartes' dualism. So he's saying that Descartes' philosophy is itself problematical. But then he says:

Here, in this phantom space between the phenomenal and physical worlds (he means, the apparent space between Descartes 'mind' and 'matter'), is just where the most interesting questions should probably be raised. But Dennett has no use for those. He is content with the stark choice with which the modern picture confronts us: to adopt either a Cartesian dualism or a thoroughgoing mechanistic monism.

So, he's saying that Descartes' dualism, which is from the perspective of earlier philosophy is already 'a chimera', is the basis for Dennett's materialism, which says, either try and defend the Cartesian 'res cogitans' - the 'ghost in the machine' - or accept that only matter is real.

After that, he then says that Dennett thinks that 'interactions between bodies and minds would violate the laws of physics' - which, given what he says above, he plainly thinks is a specious argument.

I couldn't grasp this so-called aboutness. What is it exactly? Thanks. — TheMadFool

Are you familiar with the work of Franz Brentano? I won't try and break it down here.

You've said that Strawson was wrong about Dennett. Well, John Searle is wrong in exactly the same way. (My comment in brackets.)

To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. (which is exactly what Strawson says, also!) For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain...Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that consciousness does not really exist? — John Searle

Of course Dennett doesn't say that 'consciousness is an illusion' in so many words, but it is the only reasonable surmise as to the implication of his ideas, which is that mind, or even being (as in, human being) is an illusory consequence of the co-ordinated activity of cellular and molecular processes which alone are real. He's a materialist, right? That's what materialism says. These processses, taken singly, are unconscious and purely molecular - but they collectively generate what we understand as 'consciousness'. He says this over and over, in every book, practically in every paragraph, in fact, it's the only thing he says, yet somehow, it's one thing that you can't acknowledge that he says. And these critics of his, Strawson and Searle, are his peers, they're not mugs. So if you keep saying that they, and I, 'don't understand what Dennett is on about', then I again suggest the shoe should really be on the other foot. And that is my last word to you on it, I promise!

That's not what's going on. It's electrical storms going on on the lightning- and fractal-like neural network. This electric storm gives rise to consciousness. Electric charge being a concept not understood intrinsically by modern physics. — GraveItty

:up: You say it better than me but electrical storms remind me seizures/epilepsy.

Thanks for that gracious walkthrough of David Bentley Hart's essay. It was helpful. Really gave me that 10,000 foot view of the essay.

:flower:

You say it better than me but electrical storms remind me seizures/epilepsy. — TheMadFool

That depends. Some visions, thoughts, and dreams can be pretty stormy. Luckily, soft cool summer breezes have their place too.

To be intellectual about a subject, I must know the subject matter concisely.

Consciousness - to be aware and alerted of the universe - is not something I can be concise about.

Thus, there is no intellectual discussion to be had; years of attempted discussions support this.

You can, however, understand consciousness, but science there is impossible.

Can I take a specimen of someone's consciousness? Can I produce a model?

There's a what it is like to be conscious - what it is like to think, smell, feel, taste, see, and hear - and this aspect of consciousness is known only to me. I can't put it out there, like I can my hand, for study/examination by another person. Thus, if I want to investigate consciousness from a scientific standpoint, I could only channel my efforts towards neurons, synapses, the brain, and so on but not that side to consciousness referred to by the expression "what it is like to be conscious". This is the hard problem of consciousness.

However, what bothers me is this: The hard problem of consciousness actually does not refute physicalism since it doesn't prove consciousness is physically inexplicable. All it does is show existing scientific methods can't access the what it is like to be conscious facet of consciousness. It's like saying that a ladder (science) is too short to reach the roof (consciousness) and not that if we ever get our hands on a longer ladder (improved and more sophisticated science) we still won't be able to give a physical explanation for consciousness including the what it is like to be conscious of it.

In short, the hard problem of consciousness is more about the limitations of our tools (science) than anything special about consciousness. Though the intention was to score a point for nonphysicalism, the hard problem of consciousness is simply a critique on physicalism.

I think there's a broad difference between the builder of a house and the home-owner. The builder does not experience life in the house, the home-owner is the opposite.

In this context, let's be firm in saying the builder and the home-owner are totally different - one builds the house (consciousness) - one experiences the house (consciousness).

0. The builder does not own the house, the home owner does not build the house.

1. The home-owner cannot re-build the house lest he first deconstruct it, in which case he becomes a builder.

2. The builder cannot experience the house as a home.

3. To understand each others perspectives one must first lose their original role.

Consciousness may be knowable by a creator entity or is walled-out by nature(given creator entities are void).

Knowledge of consciousness is on the right side of the subject matter, but the subject of consciousness - from the hypothesised left side - is unknowable.

If I build my own house, I change roles.

The past cannot be unwound, we do not have consciousness creators but it's hypothesis-able. A good house or?

And what are the background discursive , valuative conventions ( knowledge relative to the times, as you put it) that makes such things as ‘news cycles’ and ‘technological gadgets’ comprehensible in the first place? — Joshs

This is a confusion of what I said, but can be clarified somewhat, in that it is entirely possible that aesthetic judgements are not comprehensible at all, between separate subjects each in possession of his own. Case in point.....some guy wears his hair in some weird-assed configuration, and when I see it, I say to myself....wtf’s that guy thinking!!! He and I each apprehend his hair style as a personification of his character; he judges it cool; I judge it stupid. Aesthetic judgements, each.

Confusing, in that understanding is the “background discursive valuation conventions” which grounds the knowledge of its time, but that has nothing to do with the way one feels about news cycles and the newest gadgets. There is a vast disconnect between the comprehension of what a news cycle is, and the personal impression it makes on a subject’s condition.
————-

You are aware that an entire movement within the arts argues that what art is in the first place is cultural critique. — Joshs

No, I’m not, but that’s ok, cuz I don’t care about entire movements or cultural critiques. I grant their reality, but assign them to social anthropology, whereas my sole personal interest is epistemological metaphysics.

whatever an artist for their own ostensive reasons decides to create of aesthetic value addresses and in some sense differentiates itself from a set of culture conventions., whether that is what they have in mind or not. — Joshs

For which there is no reasonable justification, which reduces that entire proposition to a mere personal aesthetic judgement, in this case yours because it’s your assertion. Although he may, there is no reason to suppose an artist always, creates in order to address, or distinguish from, cultural conventions, re: Chihuly glass. Now, if the artist declares he intended to differentiate from cultural conventions, the empirical confirmation resides, but then the claim he made not have had that in mind, becomes false.
————-

Every aesthetic or other kind of judgement that we make, no matter how trivial, gets its sense form a larger set of shared social values, and at the same time reinterprets those values. — Joshs

Some do, insofar as some material which reason uses in the formation of them, is obtained in a social environment. To say EVERY judgement so arises, makes explicit no judgement is possible WITHOUT a larger set of social values, which is quite absurd, for then it is necessarily the case I cannot make the determination of left-turn/right-turn on a split trail, in the backwoods of the Allagash wilderness, when in fact, I have perfect authority to make an purely aesthetic judgement (left turn looks pretty nice, think I’ll wander thataway for awhile), or a discursive judgement (I know the tent’s set up to the right and my knees are killin’ me).
———-

Of course , I didn’t have in mind trivial aesthetic judgements.... — Joshs

Good, because there aren’t any, in philosophy. They abound, in detriment to the discipline, in social anthropology and empirical psychology, the various and sundry pitiful examinations of human weaknesses, as opposed to the internal understanding of its powers.

Yes, it's a big part. But the terminology is cleared so that the discussion becomes fruitful.

One thing is to be in similar terminological area, that is agreeing on what we are talking about, another thing is the phenomena meant by the use of the word. What matters to me is the issue at had: is experience what we have or is it illusory in some manner.

I think it should be evident that we have experience, as we think we have. Our intuitions are correct in this point.

I have been watching videos and reading a little bit about the hard problem of consciousness and also about qualia. It seems like philosophers are discussing how the physical can create our experiences, or our consciousness. This is what I assume is called the "explanatory gap". — Flaw

Let's try to get clear about which explananda sit on either side of the alleged "gap". Unfortunately there's a lack of uniformity in the relevant terminology, and persistent disagreement about the underlying philosophical issues.

Chalmers puts it like this (in his influential 1995 paper, "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness"):

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. [...]

What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open. [...]

This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere. — David Chalmers

(Here are links to the cited papers by Nagel and Levine.)

As someone with a computer science background with a little experience with AI & machine learning, I was wondering whether or not consciousness can be simulated and what that would "mean"? — Flaw

By definition a simulation is not the genuine article. For example, a computer simulation of an ecosystem or star system is not a genuine ecosystem or star system, even if it's a very accurate and useful model.

It seems there's no reason to suppose that packing more and more information-processing functions into a program would ever yield the sort of "subjective character" of experience that's said to generate the hard problem of consciousness.

John Searle has provided influential arguments along these lines dating back to 1980. He offers a brief and amended presentation of his views in a handy little 1997 book, The Mystery of Consciousness.

Computers play the same role in studying the brain that they play in any other discipline. They are immensely useful devices for simulating brain processes. But the simulation of mental states is no more a mental state than the simulation of an explosion is itself an explosion. — John Searle

:cheer:

Of course they do. Aesthetic judgements switch....
— Mww

Some likes and dislikes may change overnight (...) I wouldn't call such fickle likes and dislikes "aesthetic judgements"). — Janus

They aren’t, likes and dislikes alike .......see what I did right there??......are the objects of judgements. They are that to which the judgement pertains. That an attitude regarding some like or dislike, such that altering from affirmation to negation with some relative ease, says nothing about the format under which the end result manifests. That you at one time like cauliflower, then at some later time dislike it, may indeed be a fickle assessment of cauliflower, but the judgement by which the change was even possible, cannot be said to suffer that same quality.

That you like cauliflower now, but dislike it later, are each nonetheless aesthetic judgements. That you are fickle with respect to your feelings regarding cauliflower over time, does not carry over to the fickle-ness of the judgements regarding the stuff, insofar as each judgement arises simultaneously with, and necessarily representative of, the feeing.

A clue to the difference between aesthetic and discursive judgements.

I think what you’re describing is close to Identity theory in theory of mind. The intro on SEP explains it better than I could.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

"Pain is the firing of C fibers", pointing out that while it might be valid in a physiological sense, it does not help us to understand how pain feels. — Wayfarer

If it was that simple - "Pain feels like firing of the C fiber." Now what?
To me such problems seem to be made up. It doesn't matter which viewpoint one takes on this. Whether working with a "reflection of mind in itself" or with a "reflection of matter in itself" - it is still _just_ a reflection.

Simulated consciousness would be the (a) genuine article assuming a functionalist account of consciousness (not identity). It's a controversial stance (as is every other), but not obviously wrong.

some guy wears his hair in some weird-assed configuration, and when I see it, I say to myself....wtf’s that guy thinking!!! He and I each apprehend his hair style as a personification of his character; he judges it cool; I judge it stupid. Aesthetic judgements, each.

Confusing, in that understanding is the “background discursive valuation conventions” which grounds the knowledge of its time, but that has nothing to do with the way one feels about news cycles and the newest gadgets. There is a vast disconnect between the comprehension of what a news cycle is, and the personal impression it makes on a subject’s condition. — Mww

What larger cultural norms shape your response to someone else’s hair style? Until the beatniks and the hippies( let your freak flag fly) , 20th century mores concerning the range of hairstyles considers acceptable ran within fairly strict limits. Remember when classical
musicians were called long-hairs, or men with beards were considers intellectuals? They stood out against a backdrop of conformity in style. Normal was considered aesthetically proper. Today, we have grown up within a larger worldview concerning aesthetics like hairstyle and clothing choice such that the new conformity is non-conformity, self-expression, thinking outside the box. So in the first place , when you encounter someone with a ‘weird-assed’ hair configuration, your having been raised in a post 60’s milieu means that encountering individualism in fashion is built into our expectations when we walk down the street. We may never have seen a particular configuration , and it may be particularly extreme with respect to what we’ve seen before , but we have an interpretive slot to put it into thanks to our upbringing that someone living in the 1950’s would not have. What they would consider immoral or psychological deviance we would
recognize as just their personal expression. Beyond this most general cultural background , what will inform your aesthetic reaction to someone more particularly would be your relation to subcultural groups. You are more likely to react with nonchalance or enthusiasm if you are a member of an avant-garde theater or art group, for instance.


As far as news cycles are concerned, one’s belong to larger cultural worldivews has much more to do with interpreting news that. simply recognizing it as news. Why do you think there are today such polarized news sources (fox, brett art, new york times)? Because how one interprets the news, and whether one even considers it news vs propaganda, is a function of the cultural worldview one identifies with.

To say EVERY judgement so arises, makes explicit no judgement is possible WITHOUT a larger set of social values, which is quite absurd, for then it is necessarily the case I cannot make the determination of left-turn/right-turn on a split trail, in the backwoods of the Allagash wilderness, when in fact, I have perfect authority to make an purely aesthetic judgement (left turn looks pretty nice, think I’ll wander thataway for awhile), or a discursive judgement (I know the tent’s set up to the right and my knees are killin’ me). — Mww

What are you doing on a trail in the first place? There is a background context of relevant goals and purposes out of which emerges your decision rondo a hike in a particular place. Each of your subordinate decisions in preparation for, on the way to, and on that hike are i forms by those larger concerns, expections and understandings(what a hike means for you, what style , length, speed you prefer, what you want to get out of the expereince, whether you like to go alone).
By the time you have arrived at that fork in the trial, all of that background contributes to your decision about which side to turn. The contribution of this background becomes obvious if you are with a friend and they choose differently than you. Let’s say you both are trying to get back to the campground before dark. Your background of navigation knowledge comes into play, including your practice of use of maps, compass, sun , memory, which may be different from your friend’s.

The two of you may not be in a hurry and instead the choice of direction may have to do with your sense of which direction will be most enjoyable. In that case background knowledge comes into play. You may have an intuitive ‘feel’ that one direction has more possibilities than the other, but this feel doesn’t come out of thin air. Your years of prior experiences hiking comes into play in an implicit sense ,including the look of the terrain , type of foliage, amount of sun, proximity to water, among many other facts of information. All of this background is at the ready and you draw from it in making your decision.