Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
thenewatlantis.com
Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
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Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#2This is a really terrible review. I really want to say something that contributes more, but my god, this person does not understand or even care to understand Dennet. Again and again, he elides over all of Dennet's reasoning only to seize suddenly on the conclusion, which prima facie he disagrees with, as an apparent absurdity or contradiction. I don't intend to write an elaborate dissection of the article, but just as a particularly egregious example:
"Similarly, when Dennett claims that words are “memes” that reproduce like a “virus,” he is speaking pure gibberish. Words reproduce, within minds and between persons, by being intentionally adopted and employed."
The review can be summarized, in brief: "Dennet gives some 'ingenious' arguments that I do not particularly care to follow, but for all the effort, he does not seem to grasp the fundamental flaw - namely, that he disagrees with me."
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#3This is a really terrible review. I really want to say something that contributes more, but my god, this person does not understand or even care to understand Dennet. Again and again, he elides over all of Dennet's reasoning only to seize suddenly on the conclusion, which prima facie he disagrees with, as an apparent absurdity or contradiction. I don't intend to write an elaborate dissection of the article, but just…
Dennett’s arguments are very frustrating because he refuses to engage with the fundamental problem of explaining the existence of subjective experience, and how it could arise from physical processes. In dismissing this problem, he doesn’t do much more than simply refuse to engage with it. “Consciousness Explained”? More like consciousness denied.
For example, he insists that our consciousness isn’t quite as broad as we think, and presents ample evidence to show the we are aware of much less than we think we are. Great, but totally irrelevant for explaining the fundamental phenomenom of subjective experience. And yet it is presented as evidence that the phenomenon is really not a problem at all.
What makes this even more frustrating is that the existence of subjective experience is really the only thing one can be absolutely sure of in this world (see Descartes and also the brain in a vat thought experiment). And yet it is the one thing that Dennett refuses to acknowledge.
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#4This is a really terrible review. I really want to say something that contributes more, but my god, this person does not understand or even care to understand Dennet. Again and again, he elides over all of Dennet's reasoning only to seize suddenly on the conclusion, which prima facie he disagrees with, as an apparent absurdity or contradiction. I don't intend to write an elaborate dissection of the article, but just…
Dennett’s arguments are very frustrating because he refuses to engage with the fundamental problem of explaining the existence of subjective experience, and how it could arise from physical processes. In dismissing this problem, he doesn’t do much more than simply refuse to engage with it. “Consciousness Explained”? More like consciousness denied. For example, he insists that our consciousness isn’t quite as broad as…
Consciousness Explained Away!
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#5The title would be clearer if it implied that it was a review of a single philosopher - Maybe "Daniel Dennet - The Illusionist"
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#6This is a really terrible review. I really want to say something that contributes more, but my god, this person does not understand or even care to understand Dennet. Again and again, he elides over all of Dennet's reasoning only to seize suddenly on the conclusion, which prima facie he disagrees with, as an apparent absurdity or contradiction. I don't intend to write an elaborate dissection of the article, but just…
Dennett’s arguments are very frustrating because he refuses to engage with the fundamental problem of explaining the existence of subjective experience, and how it could arise from physical processes. In dismissing this problem, he doesn’t do much more than simply refuse to engage with it. “Consciousness Explained”? More like consciousness denied. For example, he insists that our consciousness isn’t quite as broad as…
We absolute can be aware of subjective experience/awareness.
Hawkins posited in "On Intelligence" that consciousness is simply the feeling of having a neo-cortex.
While I am as baffled as any/many at having subjective qualia appear so "real", I really don't have any basis for believing/thinking that they could arise from anything else other than from physical quanta hitting my senso-sphere and being interpreted by a biological machine.
I also have no basis for not thinking/believing that this is not nonsense.
How you you break the conundrem of primary-physics vs primary-mind?
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#7This is a really terrible review. I really want to say something that contributes more, but my god, this person does not understand or even care to understand Dennet. Again and again, he elides over all of Dennet's reasoning only to seize suddenly on the conclusion, which prima facie he disagrees with, as an apparent absurdity or contradiction. I don't intend to write an elaborate dissection of the article, but just…
Dennett’s arguments are very frustrating because he refuses to engage with the fundamental problem of explaining the existence of subjective experience, and how it could arise from physical processes. In dismissing this problem, he doesn’t do much more than simply refuse to engage with it. “Consciousness Explained”? More like consciousness denied. For example, he insists that our consciousness isn’t quite as broad as…
In Consciousness Explained, Dennet is deliberately not dealing with that problem because he had already written his thesis, a book, and several papers on the subject of content and qualia and that sort of argument. He was also a student of Quine, who had his own rather extensive criticisms of the notion of intentionality and subjective experience. As such, he decided to leave that particular sort of discussion out, and just focus on his main objective (as he remarks in the appendix).
The following papers represent I think a pretty good summary of his response to the sort of objection you raise. They might not be the best, but they seem to be the ones that come to mind at least for me.
https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/quinqual.htm
https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/JCSarticle.pdf
The first is an extensive attack on the notion of qualia as a useful notion. The second explains the methodological approach implicit to rejecting this sort of notion, especially in the social/psychological sciences.
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#8This is a really terrible review. I really want to say something that contributes more, but my god, this person does not understand or even care to understand Dennet. Again and again, he elides over all of Dennet's reasoning only to seize suddenly on the conclusion, which prima facie he disagrees with, as an apparent absurdity or contradiction. I don't intend to write an elaborate dissection of the article, but just…
I don’t know if I disagree with you, but I certainly don’t agree.
His point is that Dennett and any philosophers who ignore all philosophy before the 17th century are and always will be running in endless circles with arguments that are intrinsically unsolvable by nature of the way they are framed.
I just got through about 1/2 of Feser’s The last Superstition which basically makes the same argument.
That claim to me seems more an objection to hand-wavvy philosophy rather than an application of it.
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#9Dennet is a reductive materialist. He'd probably disagree with my hardline depiction of him, but, in my opinion, if it quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it's probably a duck. For what it's worth, he identifies as a 'teleofunctionalist' (???).
The author of the piece doesn't seem to be a reductive materialist, so obviously Dennet won't jive with him. I'm also not a materialist, so I don't really find Dennet very insightful. For example, he denies the existence of qualia (and rejects everything that comes with that experience; see Nagel's famous What is it like to be a bat?).
With that said, I think he's made some pretty big contributions to materialism, in particular with regards to evolutionary theory and by providing some pretty solid theories of an 'emergent' non-hand-wavy consciousness. I don't really agree with his points and I think he's being crudely reductive, but dismissing the man's life work is kind of unfair.
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#10This is a really terrible review. I really want to say something that contributes more, but my god, this person does not understand or even care to understand Dennet. Again and again, he elides over all of Dennet's reasoning only to seize suddenly on the conclusion, which prima facie he disagrees with, as an apparent absurdity or contradiction. I don't intend to write an elaborate dissection of the article, but just…
Dennett’s arguments are very frustrating because he refuses to engage with the fundamental problem of explaining the existence of subjective experience, and how it could arise from physical processes. In dismissing this problem, he doesn’t do much more than simply refuse to engage with it. “Consciousness Explained”? More like consciousness denied. For example, he insists that our consciousness isn’t quite as broad as…
> the fundamental problem of explaining the existence of subjective experience
(honest) why is this a problem? what's the difference between my "experience" and the experience of, say, a film camera?