Documentary looks at old and new models of human consciousness |305|

How I think about something and how I focus my energy does seem to directly affect my environment. I cannot will it to change, nor can I decide on an outcome I want to achieve. However, supporting or resisting it seems to affect its course.
This, and some of the other comments you have made remind me of conversations I used to have with my parents. They would perhaps be watching a game of golf on TV, and comment that one player was lucky, or another had bad luck. I disagreed, saying simply. "you make your own luck". By this I don't mean one can will the golf ball to drop into the hole, but the flow of the game I consider is affected by one's state of mind.

And not just golf of course, if we expect the world to be a cold and hostile place, it may well be so. If we expect it to be friendly and nurturing, then that may be too. In my opinion we don't just observe some objective reality, we create.
 
This, and some of the other comments you have made remind me of conversations I used to have with my parents. They would perhaps be watching a game of golf on TV, and comment that one player was lucky, or another had bad luck. I disagreed, saying simply. "you make your own luck". By this I don't mean one can will the golf ball to drop into the hole, but the flow of the game I consider is affected by one's state of mind.

And not just golf of course, if we expect the world to be a cold and hostile place, it may well be so. If we expect it to be friendly and nurturing, then that may be too. In my opinion we don't just observe some objective reality, we create.

I agree, and a quote that has guided much of my thinking is:

“The most important question a person can ask is, "Is the Universe a friendly place?” ― Albert Einstein

When I first heard that quote my answer to the question was 'no'. I knew I had a problem and needed to figure out a way to change that.
 
This, and some of the other comments you have made remind me of conversations I used to have with my parents. They would perhaps be watching a game of golf on TV, and comment that one player was lucky, or another had bad luck. I disagreed, saying simply. "you make your own luck". By this I don't mean one can will the golf ball to drop into the hole, but the flow of the game I consider is affected by one's state of mind.

And not just golf of course, if we expect the world to be a cold and hostile place, it may well be so. If we expect it to be friendly and nurturing, then that may be too. In my opinion we don't just observe some objective reality, we create.
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/
 
Damn you infernal rabbit hole, release me from thy grip! :D

Nicole...if I may.... your experiences seem to me what modern day wiccans or satanists (I don't use that word in the negative sense but rather as those who worship nature and seek to practice the manipulation of the natural world via 'magick'.(to use crowley's spelling). iow, satan is more or less equivalent to nature and not the evil being of christian mythology)

So I wonder if you actively engage in ritualistic behavior or that these things just happen to you by 'mere' thought. I ask because I'm kind of fascinated in how engaging in ritual seems to be a necessary part of the process of magick. It's like, why can't I just say I'd like something to happen but instead need to burn certain incense during certain phases of the moon in a garment adorned with symbols made of silver thread after fasting and prayer for 3 days then making certain bodily gesticulations while chanting certain seemingly nonsensical words... :)
 
So I wonder if you actively engage in ritualistic behavior or that these things just happen to you by 'mere' thought. I ask because I'm kind of fascinated in how engaging in ritual seems to be a necessary part of the process of magick. It's like, why can't I just say I'd like something to happen but instead need to burn certain incense during certain phases of the moon in a garment adorned with symbols made of silver thread after fasting and prayer for 3 days then making certain bodily gesticulations while chanting certain seemingly nonsensical words... :)

Reminds me of the psychic healers in certain communities. If you ask they flat out say, "Yup, all this pulling out black blood & what not is fake magic tricks".

Their point is that the goal is to get the subconscious mind into a state where it lets go of the mechanistic, physicalist thinking and accepts the possibility of being healed. The theatrics draw people into that malleable underlying reality - we might think of it as canceling out the negative-psi of disbelief.

Then again sometimes it's not magic tricks but possibly something way more numinous:

"....We introduce ourselves, and he picks up a small bag and we walk out to the car. Twenty minutes later we are driving down Shore Drive, which parallels the coast, and he asks me to stop at a super- market. Would I go in and buy two steaks? Sure. In those days I was a vegetarian, really a vegan, and buying steaks for a powerful shaman seems very odd...But hospitality demands his request be honored, so I go into the market and buy him two of the best Porterhouse cuts they have. A mile further and Shore Drive cuts through a state park, and suddenly we are in beach wilderness such as the 16 th century colonists would have seen, and it runs on for several miles. We are about midway through when Rolling Thunder asks me to pull over. Reaching for his bag, he opens the door and gets out of the car, asking me when he is supposed to be at the A.R.E. I think he wants to take a leak. But no; he clearly intends to leave me. About seven p.m., I say, he thanks me, asks me to build a small fire where he is to work, and turns and walks down the bank and into the woods. “Don’t forget the steaks,” he says as he strolls away. He is completely natural in all of this. It is not being done for effect and, as it is happening, it seems the most obvious and appropriate thing for him to be doing. Only, as I watch him vanish into the trees, does it become clear how unusual this is. Presumably he is going to sleep in the woods.

Rolling Thunder reminds me of a Polish sergeant I once met. He was so thoroughly secure in his esoteric skill set that what seemed improbable he did with effortless competence. I realize they are just different kinds of warriors.

....It goes on monotonously. Everything else is silent. Suddenly, I notice that there is a white mist-like form taking shape around and in front of Rolling Thunder’s body. Sometimes I can see it, sometimes not. But it becomes stronger, steadier, until it is continuously present. It is almost dark now, but the fire gives enough light to see. Then it takes form, slowly at first, but as if gathering energy into itself it takes form. I can clearly see that the smoke-like figure is a wolf. Rolling Thunder moves as rhythmically as a clock. Sweep. Sweep. Flick. Sweep. Sweep. Flick.

After about 30 minutes the form be- gins to fade, first losing shape, then be-coming increasingly insubstantial. Finally, it is nothing more than a chimera, there and not there. Then it is gone. Roll-ing Thunder straightens up, and stops. He makes a kind of gesture, and somehow we are released and come forward. The boy is very peaceful. His mother also has come forward, and she leans over him, kissing his forehead. The wound is completely healed. It looks like your skin does when a scab falls off leaving smooth unlined pink skin, shiny in its newness. I am astonished. Clearly so is everyone else. I go over to Hugh Lynn. Hugh Lynn asks me, “What did you see?” I tell him, and when I the mist took form, he says, “Was it a wolf?”

....People are departing. I can hear cars starting and, in the glare of their head-lights, I go over and kick out the fire. Rolling Thunder is there before me. He reaches down and I can see the steaks. Both are withered and gray. One of them hardly looks like meat at all. “You put whatever is wrong into the steak?” “That’s right. The fire will purify and release it. " He throws them into the hot coals. The fat crackles and catches fire. The two of us stand there in silence. It doesn’t take long, and they are gone.

During those minutes I don’t know what Rolling Thunder is thinking.

But I am trying to reconsider how the world works."

- -Adapted from Jones & Krippner, 2012, pp. 41-48
 
an illusion is a type of subjective experience.
I don't think that's what Denett means... I think he means there is no subjective experience. there's just a lot of chemical and electrical activity that we are misinterpreting as "experience." It's such an utterly silly idea that it's hard to put into words, but I think this is the essence of what he's saying. of course he adds a lot of flowery philosophical bullshit so people don't call him on it.

Now, we have plenty of examples of these folk making comments along the lines I quoted above in terms of free will, the hard problem and the sense of self being illusory. If they are functionally equivalent to "consciousness is an illusion" then they would equally paint an unflattering picture of the reasoning skills of these thinkers. The thing is, I can't think of how they can possibly be considered equivalent.
- free will can get pretty complex, but Susan Blackmore's inturpetation seems to be heavily leaning toward Denett's position.
- I gotta call bullshit on anyone who say "hard problem of consciousness" unless they can tell me how "easy" stuff like memory works.
-- "paints an unflattering picture of the reasoning skills of these thinkers" defiantly agree with that :)


It's important because it hurts our ability to give ourselves our best chance of figuring all this stuff out. It leads us to reject or accept ideas for the wrong reasons.
- I agree more with other posters on this thread who saw a lot of of tried show horses paraded out to do their little thing and then trot back to the barn.
 
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Yes I hear you, but what if you help create that reality by spending time on it and buy into it? With other words, by adding your energy to a subject you help give it life? At least this is the impression I am starting to get from reality...

I guess what I am suggesting is that it comes down to lobbying. If you get enough people to agree with an idea it becomes real in our consensus reality.
sure... I have the sense that you're totally right... but I have no way/experience to definitely prove it.
 
Henry Stapp and Von Neumann wrote a lot about this, there's an ongoing debate in this thread about observer's collapsing the wave function right now.

Actually if he's willing Stapp might be a good guy to try and have on the show, he's not sold on parapsychology but he did write a chapter for Beyond Physicalism wherein he said that it was possible to bring in both Psi and Post-mortem survival into our current physics just by accepting the observer having the power to collapse wave functions.

Sadly me, Neil, and possibly other forum members have tried to get in touch with him via email to clarify points but don't think anyone has ever gotten a response?
I'd defeinatly be up for it if someone successfully reaches out to him.
 
I don't think that's what Denett means... I think he means there is no subjective experience. there's just a lot of chemical and electrical activity that we are misinterpreting as "experience." It's such an utterly silly idea that it's hard to put into words, but I think this is the essence of what he's saying. of course he adds a lot of flowery philosophical bullshit so people don't call him on it.

Well, to me Dennett seems pretty explicit that he does not deny subjective experience:

Which idea of qualia am I trying to extirpate? Everything real has properties, and since I don't deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has properties. I grant moreover that each person's states of consciousness have properties in virtue of which those states have the experiential content that they do. That is to say, whenever someone experiences something as being one way rather than another, this is true in virtue of some property of something happening in them at the time, but these properties are so unlike the properties traditionally imputed to consciousness that it would be grossly misleading to call any of them the long-sought qualia. Qualia are supposed to be special properties, in some hard-to-define way. My claim--which can only come into focus as we proceed--is that conscious experience has no properties that are special in any of the ways qualia have been supposed to be special.
(from Quining Qualia)​

How do you interpret this passage? Or are you basing your interpretation on other statements he's made? In which case it would be helpful to provide quotes.

- free will can get pretty complex, but Susan Blackmore's inturpetation seems to be heavily leaning toward Denett's position.
- I gotta call bullshit on anyone who say "hard problem of consciousness" unless they can tell me how "easy" stuff like memory works.-
- "paints an unflattering picture of the reasoning skills of these thinkers" defiantly agree with that :)

I think you've sort of switched gears on me here. We were discussing whether the claim "consciousness is an illusion" is equivalent to the claims that free will or the sense of self are illusions. You argued there is no difference. I didn't argue that their position is correct or can't be challenged. I agree that the free will issue is complex. Unlike the nonsensical argument "consciousness is an illusion". That's my point! There's no equivalence!

- I agree more with other posters on this thread who saw a lot of of tried show horses paraded out to do their little thing and then trot back to the barn.

I didn't hear anything from any of them that I hadn't heard many times before either, but I think the filmaker, who posted in this thread, addressed that by noting that the interviews are aimed at a general audience with little previous exposure to these topics. Nothing wrong with that. But all due respect, this seems unrelated to the point I was making, which was of far more general application.

I'm hoping we can dig a little deeper into this. I think its an important discussion to have and that we'll get something positive out of it.
 
Incidentally. in case it matters to anyone in assessing what I've written above (it shouldn't, but I know it matters to some), I don't agree with Dennett on his approach to the hard problem, I don't think consciousness is likely explainable by resorting to physical properties (I'm focussing on consciousness as a fundamental property related to information and information processing, ala Integrated Information Theory), and I think that what we identify as our self is basically the phenomenological properties of an information processing system, in which sense I suppose it could be characterised as an illusion.
 
Damn you infernal rabbit hole, release me from thy grip! :D

Nicole...if I may.... your experiences seem to me what modern day wiccans or satanists (I don't use that word in the negative sense but rather as those who worship nature and seek to practice the manipulation of the natural world via 'magick'.(to use crowley's spelling). iow, satan is more or less equivalent to nature and not the evil being of christian mythology)

So I wonder if you actively engage in ritualistic behavior or that these things just happen to you by 'mere' thought. I ask because I'm kind of fascinated in how engaging in ritual seems to be a necessary part of the process of magick. It's like, why can't I just say I'd like something to happen but instead need to burn certain incense during certain phases of the moon in a garment adorned with symbols made of silver thread after fasting and prayer for 3 days then making certain bodily gesticulations while chanting certain seemingly nonsensical words... :)


This is as good a way to start a thread under Extended Consciousness & Spirituality as any. I posted my answer under On being an empath and claircognizant channel, but have not figured out yet how to link to it.
 
How do you interpret this passage? Or are you basing your interpretation on other statements he's made? In which case it would be helpful to provide quotes.

Uhhh....

There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory).
-Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained


I think he means there is no subjective experience. there's just a lot of chemical and electrical activity that we are misinterpreting as "experience."
-Alex

Seems like the same thing to me?

Furthermore, his TED talk is actually called the "Illusion of Consciousness"?

I think that what we identify as our self is basically the phenomenological properties of an information processing system, in which sense I suppose it could be characterised as an illusion.

Without minds there is no information, let alone "information processing"?
 
Uhhh....

There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory).
-Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained


I think he means there is no subjective experience. there's just a lot of chemical and electrical activity that we are misinterpreting as "experience."
-Alex

Seems like the same thing to me?

How does that suggest he doesn't accept the reality of subjective experience?


Yeah, I mentioned that video above. Have you watched it?

Without minds there is no information, let alone "information processing"?

I'm leaning towards you having it backwards, but we should probably continue this in a new thread.
 
How does that suggest he doesn't accept the reality of subjective experience?

I suppose without some background it might seem he's accepting there's something real to consciousness.

Dennets think the 1st person experience can be accounted for by third person facts. He calls this heterophenomenology.

It's doomed to failure, as noted here:

Heterophenomenology Debunked

What is analyzed in this paper is of fundamental importance to the viability of Dennett’s works on mind and consciousness. Dennett uses the heterophenomenology method as the basis to ground his thoughts on subjectivity and phenomenal experiences. It is argued here that Dennett’s formulation of heterophenomenology fails to provide the founding framework with which to ground studies on consciousness and qualia. Analysis in the paper has important import on the rest of his theory of consciousness and mind, for without credible philosophical underpinnings, his reasoning on consciousness and mind at large is not likely to amount to much.

As Schoepenhauer once said, "...materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself".

Yeah, I mentioned that video above. Have you watched it?

I've read the transcript. It's a terrible talk, designed to promote ingroup selection where those who agree with him are the smart ones who see through the "trick" and everyone else are fools.

But then again, even being fooled by a magic trick is an experience, and thus requires a mind.

If there's confusion about what Dennet means IMO it's because of Dennet's own confused writing [and response to critics] - Even fellow materialist Searle isn't sure what to make of him:

Dennett resents the fact that I characterize his rhetorical style as “having a certain evasiveness” because he does not state his denial of the existence of conscious states clearly and unambiguously at the beginning of his book and then argue for it. He must have forgotten what he admitted in response to another critic who made a similar complaint, the psychologist Bruce Mangen. Here is what he said:

He [Mangen] accuses me of deliberately concealing my philosophical conclusions until late in the book, of creating a “presumptive mood,” of relying on “rhetorical devices” rather than stating my “anti-realist” positions at the outset and arguing for them. Exactly! That was my strategy…. Had I opened with a frank declaration of my final conclusions I would simply have provoked a chorus of ill-concealed outrage and that brouhaha would have postponed indefinitely any remotely even-handed exploration of the position I want to defend.

What he boasts of in response to Mangen is precisely the “evasiveness” I was talking about. When Mangen makes the charge, he says “Exactly!” When I make the same charge, he says, “Nonsense.” But when a philosopher holds a view that he is pretty sure is right but which may not be popular, he should, I suggest, try to state it as clearly as he can and argue for it as strongly as he can. A “brouhaha” is not an excessive price to pay for candor.

My suspicion is Dennet knows his ideas are unworkable but wants to present a bulwark to what he feels would allow religion to exist on justified grounds.

I'm leaning towards you having it backwards, but we should probably continue this in a new thread.

Whatever you feel is best.
 
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This is as good a way to start a thread under Extended Consciousness & Spirituality as any. I posted my answer under On being an empath and claircognizant channel, but have not figured out yet how to link to it.

It's hard to stay on topic because these discussions lead (at least with my brain) immediately down tangential paths. Pretty much everyone's posts will inspire to lead me down another path and if I were to start a new thread every time under the 'proper' forum topic header, I'd be here all day and night, lol.

I assume Alex is the forum administrator. Maybe he can move things to the proper forum topic but that'd be something that mods would do rather than Alex having to use up all his time.
 
I suppose without some background it might seem he's accepting there's something real to consciousness.

Dennets think the 1st person experience can be accounted for by third person facts. He calls this heterophenomenology.

It's doomed to failure, as noted here:

Heterophenomenology Debunked

While I haven't read your link, I have read the book. And yes, some background is helpful. But I'd suggest reading it from the horses mouth, if you haven't.

Heterophenomenology refers to Dennett's proposed method of scientifically studying phenomenology. It is not a position as to whether we have subjective experience and in fact that is the chapter where Dennett discusses the concept of the philosophical zombie (which he doesn't take seriously by the way). He states that it can't on its own distinguish between zombies and conscious entities.

He in no way denies subjective experience in that chapter, quite the opposite. He just says that our subjective experience does not necessarily help us understand what's going on under the hood:

"You are not authoritative about what is happening in you, but only about what seems to be happening in you, and we are giving you total, dictatorial authority over the account of how it seems to you, about what it is like to be you. And if you complain that some parts of how it seems to you are ineffable, we heterophenomenologists will grant that too."

As to whether it's doomed to failure or not, I don't know. I haven't thought about it that much (haven't thought about it at all really since reading the book a few years ago!). So I don't take a position on that.

I've read the transcript. It's a terrible talk, designed to promote ingroup selection where those who agree with him are the smart ones who see through the "trick" and everyone else are fools.

But then again, even being fooled by a magic trick is an experience, and thus requires a mind.

The issue at hand is not whether the content of the talk is good or not - the issue is whether he makes the argument that "consciousness is an illusion" and denies subjective experience. As I recall, that doesn't even remotely come up in the presentation, which focusses, quite literally, on optical illusions (which only make sense if the person has subjective experience, as I argued above!)

If there's confusion about what Dennet means IMO it's because of Dennet's own confused writing - Even fellow materialist Searle isn't sure what to make of him:
I recall reading that exchange awhile back as well and I agree that Searle did not correctly interpret Dennett. But that's besides the point - I'm not alleging bad faith here. For example, I think you and Alex honestly believe that Dennett denies subjective experience.

But I also suspect you base that largely on the writings of his critics. Here is the closest direct quote I've been able to find by Dennett that I suspect is the - mistaken - origin of the "Dennett believes consciousness is an illusion" meme:

"Something similar is happening to consciousness. Today we talk about our conscious decisions and unconscious habits, about the conscious experiences we enjoy (in contrast to, say, automatic cash machines, which have no such experiences) — but we are no longer quite sure we know what we mean when we say these things. While there are still thinkers who gamely hold out for consciousness being some one genuine precious thing (like love, like gold), a thing that is just "obvious' and very, very special, the suspicion is growing that this is an illusion."​

That's the illusion Dennett writes about. Not conscious experience itself.

While I'm at it, here is the source, I believe, of the oft repeated slur that Dennett considers us to be biological robots:

"if the self is "just" the Center of Narrative Gravity, and if all the phenomena of human consciousness are explicable as "just" the activities of a virtual machine realized in the astronomically adjustable connections of a human brain, then, in principle, a suitably "programmed" robot, with a silicon-based computer brain, would be conscious, would have a self. More aptly, there would be a conscious self whose body was the robot and whose brain was the computer. This implication of my theory strikes some people as obvious and unobjectionable. "Of course we're machines! We're just very, very complicated, evolved machines made of organic molecules instead of metal and silicon, and we are conscious, so there can be conscious machines — us." For these readers, this implication was a foregone conclusion. What has proved to be interesting to them, I hope, are the variety of unobvious implications encountered along the way, in particular those that show how much of the commonsense Cartesian picture must be replaced as we learn more about the actual machinery of the brain."​

He compares us to machines, robots but conscious machines, conscious robots.

My suspicion is Dennet knows his ideas are unworkable but wants to present a bulwark to what he feels would allow religion to exist on justified grounds.

I dunno - I don't spend much time on motive when I assess arguments. Once they are out there they no longer belong to their author - motives are irrelevant, IMO. Arguments must rise and fall on their own merits.

In any event, I haven't been approaching this topic from the perspective of assessing whether I think Dennett is right. The main concept that I can think of that I've found personally useful in his writing his proposition that the mere fact of having subjective experiences does not really help us much in figuring out how they work.
 
While I haven't read your link, I have read the book. And yes, some background is helpful. But I'd suggest reading it from the horses mouth, if you haven't.

Eh, I've read/listened/watched to enough Dennet over the last decade or so. If I can get a free copy I'll make a discussion thread.

Heterophenomenology refers to Dennett's proposed method of scientifically studying phenomenology. It is not a position as to whether we have subjective experience and in fact that is the chapter where Dennett discusses the concept of the philosophical zombie (which he doesn't take seriously by the way). He states that it can't on its own distinguish between zombies and conscious entities.

If you can explain the first person via the third person, the first person is an illusion/trick/whatever-Dennet-wants-to-call-it.

He in no way denies subjective experience in that chapter, quite the opposite. He just says that our subjective experience does not necessarily help us understand what's going on under the hood:

"You are not authoritative about what is happening in you, but only about what seems to be happening in you, and we are giving you total, dictatorial authority over the account of how it seems to you, about what it is like to be you. And if you complain that some parts of how it seems to you are ineffable, we heterophenomenologists will grant that too."

As to whether it's doomed to failure or not, I don't know. I haven't thought about it that much (haven't thought about it at all really since reading the book a few years ago!). So I don't take a position on that.

Yeah, he's wrong about that. You are an authority about what is happening to when it comes to consciousness because with consciousness seeming is being.

Not to mention that you have thoughts is important, as it means materialism has to explain why those thoughts are illusions if physics fixes all the facts.

Perhaps the most profound illusion introspection foists on us is the notion that our thoughts are actually recorded anywhere in the brain at all in the form introspection reports. This has to be the profoundest illusion of all, because neuroscience has been able to show that networks of human brain cells are no more capable of representing facts about the world the way conscious introspection reports than are the neural ganglia of sea slugs! The real challenge for neuroscience is to explain how the brain stores information when it can’t do so in anything like the way introspection tells us it does—in sentences made up in a language of thought.

Seems to my Dennet tries to dance around what the more honest materialist Alex Rosenberg says clearly?

Anyway the paper I linked in my last post goes more into why Dennet's attempt to reduce the first person to third person study is doomed to fail.

The issue at hand is not whether the content of the talk is good or not - the issue is whether he makes the argument that "consciousness is an illusion" and denies subjective experience. As I recall, that doesn't even remotely come up in the presentation, which focusses, quite literally, on optical illusions (which only make sense if the person has subjective experience, as I argued above!)

Ok, so the talk is titled "The Illusion of Consciousness"....Dennet does a bunch of tricks/illusions...but the point of the talk is not that consciousness is an illusion? Got it. :)

Honestly, where do you think he was going with his presentation?

I recall reading that exchange awhile back as well and I agree that Searle did not correctly interpret Dennett. But that's besides the point - I'm not alleging bad faith here. For example, I think you and Alex honestly believe that Dennett denies subjective experience.

My point was that Searle is right, Dennet's own take on his philosophical stance w.r.t consciousness is confusing so one can't help but be confused.

But anyway no, pretty sure neither I nor Alex think Dennet is trying to say what you claim. That said I think Dennet is trying to dance around the conclusion materialism forces on him that I mentioned above - that all thoughts have to be illusions.

Talk about extraordinary claims needing extraordinary evidence!

But I also suspect you base that largely on the writings of his critics.

Lol. Maybe wait for me & Alex to answer before assuming this?

But sure..based on the critics...and not that presentation above which is titled "The Illusion of Consciousness". :)

That's the illusion Dennett writes about. Not conscious experience itself.

Yeah, even there I think he's wrong. It seems the number of academics - including scientists - who think he's wrong is growing.

Even the scientific findings aren't necessarily on his side given the evidence for Orch-OR where consciousness is one of the fundamental aspects of reality, which if Hammerroff is right would help explain the afterlife.

Still, I think part of the problem is Dennet himself is trying to get around the absurdity of his position and thus leaves the reader unsure about his use of illusion.

Either that or his writing on consciousness is accidentally confusing, in which case I'd say since he's a materialist anyway if he's right neuroscience will let us know.

While I'm at it, here is the source, I believe, of the oft repeated slur that Dennett considers us to be biological robots:

He compares us to machines, robots but conscious machines, conscious robots.

Pretty sure that was Dawkins people accused of saying we're biological robots? Rightly so, by the way, unless Goodreads is lying to me:

“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene


In any case it's not at all clear we're machines, or even that the universe is a machine.

I dunno - I don't spend much time on motive when I assess arguments. Once they are out there they no longer belong to their author - motives are irrelevant, IMO. Arguments must rise and fall on their own merits.

Oh, I'm not assessing Dennet's arguments on his motives, I'm pondering why he would continue beating the drum for the bad arguments he's used all these years.

In any event, I haven't been approaching this topic from the perspective of assessing whether I think Dennett is right. The main concept that I can think of that I've found personally useful in his writing his proposition that the mere fact of having subjective experiences does not really help us much in figuring out how they work.

He's wrong again. Not surprising.

An Empirical Case Against Materialism

Empirical arguments for materialism are highly circumstantial — based, as they are, upon inductions from our knowledge of the physical and upon the fact that mental phenomena have physical correlates, causes and effects. However, the qualitative characteristics of first-person conscious experience are empirically distinct from uncontroversially physical phenomena in being — at least on our present knowledge — thoroughly resistant to the kind of abstract, formal description to which the latter are always, to some degree, readily amenable. The prima facie inference that phenomenal qualities are, most probably, non-physical may be resisted either by denying their existence altogether or by proposing that they are properties of some peculiar sort of mysterious physical complexity, located, for example, within the functioning of the brain. It is argued here, however, that the first, eliminative hypothesis is empirically absurd — while the second is extravagant, vague, ad hoc and (for various additional reasons) profoundly implausible.

Taken together, these considerations provide a compelling empirical case against materialism — yet its converse, mentalism, is usually regarded as subject to serious difficulties of its own. I conclude by suggesting empirical and theoretical desiderata, respectively, for the vindication of materialism and alternatively, for the development and defense of a potentially robust and viable mentalist theory of consciousness.
 
Eh, I've read/listened/watched to enough Dennet over the last decade or so. If I can get a free copy I'll make a discussion thread.

If you PM me your email I can try and email it to you.

If you can explain the first person via the third person, the first person is an illusion/trick/whatever-Dennet-wants-to-call-it.

He's not talking about explaining it in third person terms. he's talking about studying people to try and understand it - given that we can only experience consciousness in the first person, this entails approaching it from the third person given that a scientist can't really just have herself as her only subject.

Again, I take no position on whether his method is a good one or not - I just want us to be clear on what he's talking about (and what he's not talking about).

Yeah, he's wrong about that. You are an authority about what is happening to when it comes to consciousness because with consciousness seeming is being.

You are an authority on what you perceive - you are not necessarily an authority on why you perceive.

For example, assume for the sake of the argument that integrated information theory is correct and that subjective experience is integrated information. Could you figure that out simply by having subjective experiences?

Take another example: healing. We all have the experience of healing. For example, when we cut ourselves. Does that subjective experience entail that we understand how the healing works?


Where do you get the idea that Dennett doesn't think we have thoughts?

Seems to my Dennett tries to dance around what the more honest materialist Alex Rosenberg says clearly?

I'm not sure what point you're getting at here. That Rosenberg quote doesn't seem to me to be more or less clear than how Dennett writes but in any event, what bearing does this have on anything I've argued? What does it matter if Rosenberg writes more clearly than Dennett? What point turns on this?

Anyway the paper I linked in my last post goes more into why Dennet's attempt to reduce the first person to third person study is doomed to fail.

And again I'll say that this has no bearing on the argument I've been making! I take no position on whether the method is doomed to fail or not.

Ok, so the talk is titled "The Illusion of Consciousness"....Dennet does a bunch of tricks/illusions...but the point of the talk is not that consciousness is an illusion? Got it. :)

Don't know what to tell you. A better title would probably have been "the Illusions of Consciousness", but what matters more: the title, or the content?
Honestly, where do you think he was going with his presentation? He states pretty clearly which illusions he refers to, none of them being consciousness itself.

My point was that Searle is right, Dennet's own take on his philosophical stance w.r.t consciousness is confusing so one can't help but be confused.

Ok, some people find him confusing - where does that take us?

But anyway no, pretty sure neither I nor Alex think Dennet is trying to say what you claim. That said I think Dennet is trying to dance around the conclusion materialism forces on him that I mentioned above - that all thoughts have to be illusions.

It seems to me that you are ascribing positions that you think he should have rather than assessing what he says his opinions are.

Lol. Maybe wait for me & Alex to answer before assuming this?

But sure..based on the critics...and not that presentation above which is titled "The Illusion of Consciousness". :)

I've watched that presentation a few times over the years - maybe you can point out which part of it you think makes your point.

Yeah, even there I think he's wrong. It seems the number of academics - including scientists - who think he's wrong is growing.

Even the scientific findings aren't necessarily on his side given the evidence for Orch-OR where consciousness is one of the fundamental aspects of reality, which if Hammerroff is right would help explain the afterlife.

You're arguing against points I haven't made. I haven't made any claims about him being right. My claim was that it is not accurate to ascribe to him the position "consciousness is an illusion".

Still, I think part of the problem is Dennet himself is trying to get around the absurdity of his position and thus leaves the reader unsure about his use of illusion.

Either that or his writing on consciousness is accidentally confusing, in which case I'd say since he's a materialist anyway if he's right neuroscience will let us know.

Look, I don't find Dennett confusing on this but you do. I've know there are posts that make it clear that you understand this or that concept that confuses the hell out of me. YMMV.

Pretty sure that was Dawkins people accused of saying we're biological robots? Rightly so, by the way, unless Goodreads is lying to me:

“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

What does that have to do with Dennett?

In any case it's not at all clear we're machines, or even that the universe is a machine.

Oh, I'm not assessing Dennet's arguments on his motives, I'm pondering why he would continue beating the drum for the bad arguments he's used all these years.

He's wrong again. Not surprising.

An Empirical Case Against Materialism

Whether or not he's right or wrong is immaterial to the point I've been making which is that it is important to accurately assess what someone's argument is BEFORE reaching conclusions. I think what we often do is to use shortcuts that can be misleading (to ourselves and others) and lead us away from productive discussion.
 
I think after this we should consider making a separate thread.

The documentary discussion will be overwhelmed otherwise - if people care enough about Dennett they can follow the new thread.

If you PM me your email I can try and email it to you.

I'd rather get a legal copy, thanks.

He's not talking about explaining it in third person terms. he's talking about studying people to try and understand it - given that we can only experience consciousness in the first person, this entails approaching it from the third person given that a scientist can't really just have herself as her only subject.

Again, I take no position on whether his method is a good one or not - I just want us to be clear on what he's talking about (and what he's not talking about).

From his aforementioned debate with Searle:

"I have my candidate for the fatally false intuition, and it is indeed the very intuition Searle invites the reader to share with him, the conviction that we know what we’re talking about when we talk about that feeling—you know, the feeling of pain that is the effect of the stimulus and the cause of the dispositions to react—the quale, the “intrinsic” content of the subjective state. How could anyone deny that!? Just watch—but you have to pay close attention."


As Searle points out:

"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. 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 think most readers, when first told this, would assume that I must be misunderstanding him. Surely no sane person could deny the existence of feelings. But in his reply he makes it clear that I have understood him exactly. He says, “How could anyone deny that!? Just watch…”"


Dennett is either confused himself or trying desperately to make the reader think he can explain consciousness with materialism.

There's definitely a magic trick going on, but it's with Dennett's evasiveness (or self-confusion) rather than with consciousness, where what you see (or hear, smell, etc) is what you get.

You are an authority on what you perceive - you are not necessarily an authority on why you perceive.

For example, assume for the sake of the argument that integrated information theory is correct and that subjective experience is integrated information. Could you figure that out simply by having subjective experiences?

Take another example: healing. We all have the experience of healing. For example, when we cut ourselves. Does that subjective experience entail that we understand how the healing works?

You're an authority that having perceived is not a trick, or an illusion. It's part of your first person perspective, the root of who you are.

Healing is in your first person experience, so it's not really comparable.

In any case, that doesn't make you the only authority but that doesn't mean Dennett necessarily knows better. In fact he studied under a behaviorist, Ryle, and that program was an embarrassing failure which might suggest, as I said earlier, that the average person has a better grasp of consciousness than he does.

Where do you get the idea that Dennett doesn't think we have thoughts?

The point is materialism is false, obviously absurd, because to follow it to its honest conclusion to accept all thought is illusory.

Don't know what to tell you. A better title would probably have been "the Illusions of Consciousness", but what matters more: the title, or the content?

He states pretty clearly which illusions he refers to, none of them being consciousness itself.

Sure. Me, Searle, all of Dennett's critics through the years are confused.

Heck even Dennett himself was confused about his own ideas, which is why he misnamed the title of his presentation. :)

Ok, some people find him confusing - where does that take us?

When even a fellow materialist philosopher like Searle finds you confusing, what's happening is Dennett is either being evasive or his writing is subpar.

In any case, his claim is objective third person observation will explain first person subjective experience and as such we can skip over him without any guilt. If there's any worth to his words neuroscience will eventually let us know.

I've watched that presentation a few times over the years - maybe you can point out which part of it you think makes your point.

It's the point of the entire presentation IMO.

"So I have todo a little bit of the sort of workthat a lot of you won't like,for the same reason that you don't like to seea magic trick explained to you.How many of you here, if somebody -- some smart aleck --starts telling you how a particular magic trick is done,you sort of want to block your ears and say, "No, no, I don't want to know!Don't take the thrill of it away. I'd rather be mystified.Don't tell me the answer."A lot of people feel that way about consciousness, I've discovered.And I'm sorry if I impose some clarity, some understanding on you.You'd better leave now if you don't want to know some of these tricks."

So consciousness is a trick, and he's going to explain it. But if you can't handled the truth (or rather his personal faith in what the truth is) you can leave.

"So now I'm going to illustrate how philosophers explain consciousness.But I'm going to try to also show youthat consciousness isn't quite as marvelous --your own consciousness isn't quite as wonderful --as you may have thought it is.This is something, by the way, that Lee Siegel talks about in his book.He marvels at how he'll do a magic show, and afterwardspeople will swear they saw him do X, Y, and Z. He never did those things.He didn't even try to do those things.People's memories inflate what they think they saw.And the same is true of consciousness."


Seems clear what he's saying is people are deceived about consciousness being real, because to him the first person can be completely explained by third person accounts. (Now there's an issue with trying to explain consciousness retroactively, as neuroscientist Tallis notes it's impossible for matter to hold memories if matter is what materialists claim it is.)

If you got something different out of the presentation that's fine, people can have different opinions. I still see it as him saying consciousness is an illusion.

I also think the presentation is worthless, an attempt by him to claim those who don't agree are fooled and therefore less intelligent.

Look, I don't find Dennett confusing on this but you do. I've know there are posts that make it clear that you understand this or that concept that confuses the hell out of me. YMMV.

Well I think Dennett's being evasive on purpose, to cover for the weaknesses in his theory.

And even Searle, who is a trained materialist philosopher, finds Dennett - a fellow materialist - confusing or deliberately evasive.

My mileage - which people can take or leave - is that Dennett isn't worth spending time on unless one has some interest debating some bits of philosophy that have become irrelevant.

In assessing his grasp of the science, let's keep in mind cognitive scientist Armin W. Geertz's comments regarding Dennett's supposedly scientific claims about religion:

"....A recent book by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, called Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York 2006) is a catastrophe if our goal is to persuade skeptics of the advantages of cognitive approaches to the study of religion - or even just introduce cognition to the curious! Dennett seems to be hellishly bent on turning his readers off. I would say that about 40% ofthe book is an inelegant, polemical attack on religion and religious people. He claims to be using all those pages to persuade intolerant religious people to read his book.

I used to think that philosophers by definition are sophisticated thinkers, gifted in the art of persuasive argument, valiantly exposing hidden assumptions and opaque meanings. But I am wrong.

What Dennett has done is a disservice to the entire neuroscientific community.

If people were skeptical before his book came out, they will be downright hostile ftom now on, and the rest of us in the cognitive science of religion will have to pay the price!

The worst thing about the book is that the cognitive part is poorly done..."

I mean how much time should we spend with a guy who tells us neuroscience will figure it out if he can't get the science right? Let the scientists have their go then right?

I realize Dennet has a problem with religion, and he doesn't want there to be a genuine free will because to him the idea is "supernatural" even if a variety of other philosophers don't have that problem. I sympathize he was trained under Ryle, a behaviorist, and that might make him angry/sad/scared at the idea that reality has some mental aspect that can't be reduced to matter. Maybe he's come to associate consciousness with souls, and fears he'll go to Hell if consciousness isn't reducible to matter.

So it's fine for him to have his religious faith in materialism if that helps him, but other people can go on their own journeys and have faith in different things that help them get through the day.

Not everyone has to be a materialist after all, no matter how much Dennett & the other New Atheists try to mock people for having decided they have different beliefs.

What does that have to do with Dennett?

You said Dennett is accused of calling people biological robots. My point is that's Dawkins. Did anyone on Skeptiko ever accuse Dennett of saying people are biological robots?

Whether or not he's right or wrong is immaterial to the point I've been making which is that it is important to accurately assess what someone's argument is BEFORE reaching conclusions. I think what we often do is to use shortcuts that can be misleading (to ourselves and others) and lead us away from productive discussion.

Sorry, but I'm pretty confident I've read Dennett correctly, at least as far was one can pierce his evasiveness. If I find a free legal copy of the book I'll give it a try if I think debating his output is worth the time.

I've provided a few links where others point to where he's either a confused writer, deliberately evasive, or proposing worthless ideas for understanding consciousness.

If others want to pursue his ideas they are free to do so - they can also check out the old Dennett Debunked thread.
 
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