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Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness

thenewatlantis.com

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Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness

#21

Post by erasemus »

mrmyers wrote: post #7
wildmusings wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/quinqual.htm

>What are qualia, exactly?

Sets of associated ideas? For example, a door knob might be associated with (1) wood, (2) black, (3) grasping, (4) turning, (5) my right hand. All these ideas are activated to some degree when I contemplate the door knob, and to a greater degree when I contemplate myself contemplating the door knob.

Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness

#23

Post by escherplex »

dvt wrote: post #9

Dennet 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 ve…

How are you going to formulate an objective phenomenological description of a subjective space which serves as a personal reification substrate for broadcast of 'qualia' models formulated from percepts and concepts by a received personal cognitive operating system? As you know, one school locks on to a 'bubbling-up' dy/dx = -yx and survival utility as overlords with 'consciousness' (whatever that is) as an emergent property supervening on a material substrate. Resonates OK if one's received nature/nurture is conformal to that description but how was/is what is experienced as 'order' possible? Ultimately it has to be postulated as a-priori predilections since order and chaos are strange bedfellows. Another school postulates 'consciousness is the only reality' a-priori with all as projections of some intentionality field. David Bohme seemed to subscribe to that principle since in 'The Undivided Universe - An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory' he postulates three spaces: 1) intentionality, 2) stochastic (only virtual Schrodinger's cats there) and 3) an objective or reified space (here). But as the original article concludes 'qui sait?'. Maybe epoché is more appropriate.

Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness

#24

Post by taxicabjesus »

dvt wrote: post #9

Dennet 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 ve…

> Dennet is a reductive materialist.

"Materialism: 1a: a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter. scientific materialism" [1]

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/materialist

Materialism became the guiding philosophy of Science in ~1845. Reductionism was all the rage.

I think materialism is losing its stranglehold on scientific progress ('science advances one funeral at a time'). There was a submission a few days ago titled "physics has demoted mass" [3]

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15679150

My experience is that the universe is probably more intricate than we can imagine.

Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness

#26

Post by Evans_Steven »

smithkl42 wrote: post #20
Evans_Steven wrote: post #16

David Bentley Hart and Ed Feser, who is also mentioned in a comment here, are theist cranks who have both developed evasive "metaphysical arguments" which apparently tell us the universe has a "light of being" (DBH) or a "prime mover" (EF) which turn out, shock horror(!), to be the Christian God that they already believe in and their "arguments" tell us nothing else (e.g. they don't tell us if the universe had a begi…

As it turns out, Daniel Bennett is an atheist materialist crank who has developed evasive "materialist arguments" which apparently tell us that the universe has no cause of existence, which turns out (shock, horror!) to be the standard atheist cant that he already believes, and so his arguments tell us nothing else... (Sorry, couldn't help myself.)

;) Let's see DBH review a book on neuroscience rather than shooting a fish in a barrel like Dennett's book - oh, hold on, he's not qualified to, because DBH doesn't actually know anything apart from what side his bread is buttered on..

Also, of course, physicists would accept the universe was created if evidence were found. The contorted metaphysical nonsense that DBH and EF espouse in a political defense of the church will only ever lead to the conclusion that the "Christian God exists". That is why they are cranks and not academics - they start with the answer.

They and their ilk are making very nice money out of lying.

Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness

#30

Post by xyzzyz »

starchild_3001 wrote: post #22

What's the big deal with consciousness? Isn't it an obvious trait of any human like, animal like, robot like semi-intelligent being? I'd expect it to emerge automatically, once correct base instincts & abilities are programmed.

The big deal is that there's no observable difference between the world where your robot is conscious of itself and has subjective experience of its surroundings, and between the world where your robot merely behaves as such, speaks to you trying to convince you that it indeed has subjective experience, but in fact it has none, its experiences are just a movie screened in an empty cinema where nobody is watching.

This unobservable difference goes the most basic axiom of science -- if there's no observable difference, then there's no difference. Yet, somehow I have subjective experience. You might also have it, though there's currently no way you can convince me that you do.

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