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Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

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Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#51

Post by Gormisdomai »

metaxy2 wrote: post #38

There's a lot of talk in here about whether consciousness is binary, whether it can turn on and off like a lightswitch, as if that's a good proxy for dualism vs. materialism. I would argue that this is a totally separate question. In terms of my core intuitions, I'm a hardcore dualist. Chalmers is my favorite philosopher. But the idea of something being "weakly conscious" makes plenty of sense to me. In fact, I have…

If you're interested in the philsiophical implications of being "semi conscious" check out section 3 of http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html

Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#52

Post by vidarh »

meditationapp wrote: post #37
kranner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's unfair of you to lump meditation with homeopathy. The latter is obviously pseudoscience but there are many studies backing the former's claims to reduce anxiety, depression, etc.

Meditation apps. People are clearly getting rich selling "mindfulness" to people who think they need it. Of course, what they really need to do is put their phone away and actually focus on, you know, nothing.

Mindfulness is not "focusing on nothing". Mindfulness is, if anything to "defocus". To let the mind flow and pay attention on what arises without getting caught up in it.

One of the favourite analogies I've seen uses is that of a series of boats racing down the river. Normally you're on one, and you might move from boat to boat. Mindfulness meditation is stepping off onto the shore and paying attention to the boats racing past.

"Focusing on nothing" is concentration practice. You need a degree of concentration practice to calm your mind enough for mindfulness meditation, but mindfulness meditation itself is not a concentration practice, but an insight pratice.

Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#53

Post by TheActualWalko »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #42
metaxy2 wrote: post #38

There's a lot of talk in here about whether consciousness is binary, whether it can turn on and off like a lightswitch, as if that's a good proxy for dualism vs. materialism. I would argue that this is a totally separate question. In terms of my core intuitions, I'm a hardcore dualist. Chalmers is my favorite philosopher. But the idea of something being "weakly conscious" makes plenty of sense to me. In fact, I have…

> In my father's last months, I saw him medicated on morphine to the point of being near unconscious, and it's easy to imagine that he was having the same sort of weak experiences as I've had. None of this rattles my dualist intuitions at all. But if your consciousness is separate from your physical brain, how come pumping certain chemicals affect consciousness on a very fundamental level ? With your examples, you co…

> But if your consciousness is separate from your physical brain, how come pumping certain chemicals affect consciousness on a very fundamental level ?

I would argue that it doesn't.

Consider the following changes to your conscious experience:

- You stub your toe. Your experience changes to include pain.

- Someone says your mother's name. Your experience changes to include thoughts of your mother.

- You take LSD. Your experience changes to include a range of thoughts, sensations, and hallucinations characteristic of a psychedelic experience.

Which of these would you say count as a change to the part of you that we have been referring to with the word 'consciousness'?

I would argue that none of these are changes to what your consciousness is; your conscious experience continues to simply be the feeling of what it's like to have your own thoughts.

As your thoughts change, your experience of having them changes, but your consciousness never ceases to be anything other than the experience of having your thoughts. On a "fundamental level" nothing about consciousness has changed. Your consciousness is still sitting in a movie theater, watching your brain play out - it's just watching a different movie.

My argument rests on the view that your consciousness is not the haver of thoughts, but is the unexplained witness to the actual haver of thoughts - the brain.

As evidence for this I'd ask you to imagine what would happen if we built up, piece by piece, a perfect computer model of your mind.

It would have the same thoughts, it would express the same ideas, and we could look at the state of the computer at each moment and explain exactly which structures in your mind led to, for example, whatever you choose to say in response to this comment.

At no point would we find some sort of mysterious glitch in the computation, a glitch that we would have to assume was the point where the magic extra-physical force of consciousness entered the picture and exerted its control.

The mind and its thoughts must work without consciousness, as such consciousness can only be the experience of watching the mind do its work, and not an integral part of its functioning.

Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#54

Post by naasking »

Qcombinator wrote: post #33
naasking wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, eliminativism manages to take an even whackier view of things than dualism. Whereas dualism has painted itself into a corner by refusing to reexamine its suppositions, eliminativism "resolves" the problem by shutting its eyes, that is, by denying the existence of those things it must explain. As a result, it is an incoherent position. Not even remotely. I'm not even sure how you could possibly fo…

> Materialism can classify qualia as an illusion But can it? To say something is an illusion is to say that is really an experience of something else. And qualia are qualitative experiences, so the claim is that certain experiences are not experiences… which is problematic. Of course, a proper argument needs to be fleshed out more than that, but eliminativists face a real difficulty, unless they broaden the definitio…

> But can it? To say something is an illusion is to say that is really an experience of something else.

Your definition for "illusion" begs the question by simply assuming a subject is needed, ie. an "I" must experience an illusion. Rather, an illusion is simply describing the relation between perception and truth. If a perception, taken at face value, entails a false conclusion, then it's an illusion.

Even the basic dictionary definitions of illusion make no reference to a subject. They're all of the form of "a false idea or belief", or "a deceptive appearance or impression". Beliefs and appearances are attributes we can ascribe to mechanistic systems too, like computers, which can have sensors plugged into Bayesian inference engines that can infer false "beliefs".

So requiring a subject is a property that you have imposed on the meaning of illusion, it's not intrinsic to it.

Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#55

Post by naasking »

psyc wrote: post #32
naasking wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, eliminativism manages to take an even whackier view of things than dualism. Whereas dualism has painted itself into a corner by refusing to reexamine its suppositions, eliminativism "resolves" the problem by shutting its eyes, that is, by denying the existence of those things it must explain. As a result, it is an incoherent position. Not even remotely. I'm not even sure how you could possibly fo…

I've read a few Dennett books and watched many of his talks, and imo the main problem with him is his and his fans' motte & bailey style of arguing. He spends inordinate amounts of time heavily suggesting that consciousness is an ephemeral nothing that we're not just ignorant about, but mistaken about. But when pressed enough, then he retreats to a just barely reasonable stance that's closer to Chalmers than the stan…

> He spends inordinate amounts of time heavily suggesting that consciousness is an ephemeral nothing that we're not just ignorant about, but mistaken about.

That's right, it's an illusion, in the sense that we perceive ourselves to have some irreducible subjectivity, but we actually don't.

> But when pressed enough, then he retreats to a just barely reasonable stance that's closer to Chalmers than the stances he spends most of his time communicating.

I'd like to see a citation for that, because as far as I've seen, Dennett hasn't changed his stance on this subject in over 20 years, and he's been very straightforward about his position in every interview I've watched or read.

And what he thinks is quite clear: he's a straight up materialist. Qualia don't actually exist as some irreducible phenomenon and consciousness is an illusion. He's published multiple books on the subject arguing for this position quite forcefully.

Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#56

Post by danielam »

Qcombinator wrote: post #33
naasking wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, eliminativism manages to take an even whackier view of things than dualism. Whereas dualism has painted itself into a corner by refusing to reexamine its suppositions, eliminativism "resolves" the problem by shutting its eyes, that is, by denying the existence of those things it must explain. As a result, it is an incoherent position. Not even remotely. I'm not even sure how you could possibly fo…

> Materialism can classify qualia as an illusion But can it? To say something is an illusion is to say that is really an experience of something else. And qualia are qualitative experiences, so the claim is that certain experiences are not experiences… which is problematic. Of course, a proper argument needs to be fleshed out more than that, but eliminativists face a real difficulty, unless they broaden the definitio…

Adding to your post, let's consider an example, i.e., "redness" as it is commonly understood. Dualists will relegate "redness" to an experience because, to them, matter is devoid of things like "redness" by virtue of the dualist's presupposed concept of matter. The dualist still have to deal with a number of problems stemming from his position, e.g., the interaction problem, but he can at least ostensibly locate "redness" in reality, viz., the Cartesian mind. Even if it is an illusion, it exists as an illusion in the mind. Materialists, who typically dispense with the Cartesian immaterial mind but stick with a broadly Cartesian concept of matter, either live in the vain hope that they can eventually locate "redness" somewhere in matter, or come to the absurd eliminativist conclusion that "redness" simply doesn't exist or that it is an illusion. Of course, if it is an illusion, then it still exists as an illusion, hence the incoherence of eliminativist materialism. Aristotelianism accepts a richer view of matter in which "redness" does exist, so there is no need to posit this bizarre and unbridgeable division between physical things and immaterial mental qualium.

"Selves" and zombies also crop up in these conversations, but they are neither here nor there. We're talking about the existence of things like "redness". Talk of "selves" is no doubt related to the Cartesian identification of mind and self, but something that is entirely irrelevant to the question at hand.

Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#57

Post by naasking »

danielam wrote: post #56
Qcombinator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Materialism can classify qualia as an illusion But can it? To say something is an illusion is to say that is really an experience of something else. And qualia are qualitative experiences, so the claim is that certain experiences are not experiences… which is problematic. Of course, a proper argument needs to be fleshed out more than that, but eliminativists face a real difficulty, unless they broaden the definitio…

Adding to your post, let's consider an example, i.e., "redness" as it is commonly understood. Dualists will relegate "redness" to an experience because, to them, matter is devoid of things like "redness" by virtue of the dualist's presupposed concept of matter. The dualist still have to deal with a number of problems stemming from his position, e.g., the interaction problem, but he can at least ostensibly locate "red…

> Materialists, who typically dispense with the Cartesian immaterial mind but stick with a broadly Cartesian concept of matter, either live in the vain hope that they can eventually locate "redness" somewhere in matter, or come to the absurd eliminativist conclusion that "redness" simply doesn't exist or that it is an illusion.

Funny how you keep calling materialism "absurd" and "incoherent", yet provide no coherent argument of your own to support this position. If anyone unfamiliar with this subject is reading this thread, rest assured that the anti-materialist sentiments espoused here are a minority view. A recent survey of academic philosophers found that the majority support a materialist philosophy of mind, so frankly, these charges of incoherency and absurdity don't pass a lay person's basic sniff test.

As for the existence of "redness" specifically, I can easily point out how the various thought experiments that allegedly support the existence of redness are fallacious. So instead of making further bold claims, would you care to present such an argument for scrutiny?

> Of course, if it is an illusion, then it still exists as an illusion, hence the incoherence of eliminativist materialism.

A car is also an illusion under materialism. But clearly I drove something to work this morning. So does this apparent incongruity entail some incoherency in materialism? Or is the problem really that you're attacking a straw man?

Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#58

Post by metaxy2 »

simonh wrote: post #40
metaxy2 wrote: post #38

There's a lot of talk in here about whether consciousness is binary, whether it can turn on and off like a lightswitch, as if that's a good proxy for dualism vs. materialism. I would argue that this is a totally separate question. In terms of my core intuitions, I'm a hardcore dualist. Chalmers is my favorite philosopher. But the idea of something being "weakly conscious" makes plenty of sense to me. In fact, I have…

But is conciousness really an absolute quality like gravitation, or a qualitative one like say turbulence? Are you a turbulence dualist? If conciousness arises from certain physical arrangements and processes of matter at a macroscopic scale, like turbulence, then we can absolutely talk about it arising from non-concious matter just as we can talk about turbulence arising from static or ordered matter.

Dualists tend to have the intuition that it's an absolute quality--or at least, something with a special status beyond a higher-order description of patterns in physical activity. Your turbulence example is perfect: I can't imagine a fishtank that is atom-for-atom identical to a system that's experiencing turbulence, but somehow isn't "really" turbulent. I can easily imagine a system that is in the exact same state as my brain, but isn't having any internal experiences.

In Philosophy of Mind, this is discussed in terms of different types of "supervenience" and whether the mind supervenes on the physical world in the same way as something like turbulence or digestion, or in a more limited sense where the physical world determines the content of experience but there's still more going on; and I think some say it doesn't supervene in any sense at all (but that probably just comes down to a disagreement about terminology).

Physicalists say consciousness supervenes on physical processes in the exact same way as higher-order physical properties like turbulence, digestion, being alive, etc. Dualists feel that still leaves something out.

Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#59

Post by metaxy2 »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #42
metaxy2 wrote: post #38

There's a lot of talk in here about whether consciousness is binary, whether it can turn on and off like a lightswitch, as if that's a good proxy for dualism vs. materialism. I would argue that this is a totally separate question. In terms of my core intuitions, I'm a hardcore dualist. Chalmers is my favorite philosopher. But the idea of something being "weakly conscious" makes plenty of sense to me. In fact, I have…

> In my father's last months, I saw him medicated on morphine to the point of being near unconscious, and it's easy to imagine that he was having the same sort of weak experiences as I've had. None of this rattles my dualist intuitions at all. But if your consciousness is separate from your physical brain, how come pumping certain chemicals affect consciousness on a very fundamental level ? With your examples, you co…

Modern, sophisticated dualists tend to think that consciousness just sits "on top" of brain activity, experiences are generated based on what's going on the brain. Many are "epiphenomenalists," who say that the content is determined only by brain activity, so the information flow is one way: brain -> conscious experience.

This has loads of problems (if consciousness has some influence over behavior, then what's the physical mechanism? And if there's none, then why are we able to even talk about it?). But dualists argue that materialism is even worse because it leaves you with outright paradoxes.

So, on this account, a weakly conscious system is just a system that's physically organized in a way that generates only weak experiences.

Re: Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul

#60

Post by simonh »

metaxy2 wrote: post #58
simonh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is conciousness really an absolute quality like gravitation, or a qualitative one like say turbulence? Are you a turbulence dualist? If conciousness arises from certain physical arrangements and processes of matter at a macroscopic scale, like turbulence, then we can absolutely talk about it arising from non-concious matter just as we can talk about turbulence arising from static or ordered matter.

Dualists tend to have the intuition that it's an absolute quality--or at least, something with a special status beyond a higher-order description of patterns in physical activity. Your turbulence example is perfect: I can't imagine a fishtank that is atom-for-atom identical to a system that's experiencing turbulence, but somehow isn't "really" turbulent. I can easily imagine a system that is in the exact same state a…

But if it's an absolute quality, it shouldn't depend on the arrangement or state of brain matter at all. The mass of a group of atoms is an absolute quality that doesn't change depending on how you move them about. Yet our experience of consciousness depends totally and critically in highly testable ways on the arrangement of atoms in our neurons. There doesn't seem to be much absolute about it at all. Even tiny changes can eliminate it completely. I just find it very hard to credit the absolute quality proposition, yet I don't see how dualism can avoid it.

So yes materialist answers to this question still have a lot of explaining to do, but dualism can't have a free ride either. It certainly doesn't seem to me to be simpler. At least in the physicalist explanation we can point to other epiphenomena and compare them to consciousness in broad ways. But what known, explicable, testable phenomena can we compare dualism to? It stands apart from all of science.

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