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.