It's impossible to objectively explain the subjective. To do so is a category error.
Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
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Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#12Earlier 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…
> 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?
If you don't think it's a problem, then it's not. There's no real way, presently, to prove there isn't a difference.
Likewise, I could say there is no difference between my experience of satiation after eating, and the experience of a garbage can being filled full. If you don't think there's a problem with that, fine. No way to show there isn't. However, people inclined to agree with your film example might not be inclined to agree with my satiation example.
Is there any difference between light falling in your eyes and your experience of vision, and light falling in a corpses eyes, and its experience of vision? Does a corpse experience vision as much as you do?
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#13Earlier 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…
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…
> While I am as baffled as any/many at having subjective qualia appear so "real"
Appear so real compared to what?
Are you claiming that your experience of your own thoughts are subjectively more real than your experience of your sensory perceptions?
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#14This 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…
That was the point of the first few paragraphs at least, but unfortunately the actual review is much longer. The point doesn't seem to be especially fair to me for two reasons:
First, what one is aware of is not necessarily what one regards as relevant to the topic at hand, and the statement was only that Dennett did not think anything before Descartes was especially relevant to his own view of the matter. In an earlier work, Consciousness Explained, Dennett discusses at numerous points some of the models of the mind entertained in the platonic dialogue Theaetetus for inspiration and comparison, so he's clearly not completely unaware of all philosophy before the 17th century. From reading several of his papers and books, there are other examples to this effect, but I don't want to belabor the point. It does not seem at all unreasonable for someone to judge a number of approaches or prior developments irrelevant to present concerns.
Second, this sort of accusation is fundamentally unfalsifiable, and can be made about any field. From the current front page, you might perhaps run across someone who claims "Anyone trying to study compilers without having studied the history of the Oberon Compiler will be running in endless circles". I would not be unsympathetic to such a person. The Oberon Compiler seems to have embodied quite a few really interesting and innovative new ideas, even ones that haven't been followed up on since. However, such a person would still be being fairly silly. It is a generally tolerated delusion for one to assume that one's own field of knowledge, domain, and preferred schools of thought are absolutely crucial to correct thinking on some matter. Nonetheless, the history of the human intellectual edifice is one of continual reinvention and independent development of numerous important innovations. There comes a point when any professional, must start developing their own arguments and responses rather than just playing field historian.
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#15It's impossible to objectively explain the subjective. To do so is a category error.
Maybe objectively, but not subjectively.
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#16David 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 beginning or not, because, of course, they don't want to go toe-to-toe with physics). DBH and EF are the latest in a long line of "philosophers" paid directly or indirectly by the corrupt church to provide sophistries to make the billions of peasant believers continue paying their tithes. Let them, with their oh-so-deep metaphysical arguments, predict something true about the universe that physics doesn't yet know and then we might listen. I'm surprised the utterances of a crank like DBH would reach the pages of HN.
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#17Dennet 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…
> he denies the existence of qualia
No, he doesn't. He just says that qualia aren't what we intuitively think they are.
Denying the existence of qualia would mean denying that we have subjective experiences. Dennett doesn't deny that. But he does deny that many of our usual intuitions about qualia are correct, by showing how they lead to inconsistent and incoherent thinking about our experiences.
It's quite true that Dennett's view of qualia is very different from that of many other philosophers. But to say he denies the existence of qualia does not come close to doing justice to his actual views.
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#18Dennet 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…
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Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#19Earlier 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…
> 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?
The camera doesn't have (1) an attentional system, (2) a model of the world in memory, (3) a model of itself within that model.
Re: Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness
#20David 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.)