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Daniel Dennett: 'Where Am I?'

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: Daniel Dennett: 'Where Am I?'

#91

Post by Quailman84 »

n4r9 wrote: post #89
Quailman84 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm understanding your thought experiment correctly, you are saying that you could stimulate the right part of the brain to cause the person to have an experience of seeing the color red without actually perceiving something red. I think that it would be right to say that they would have gained a more complete understanding of what it is like to perceive the color red, but that's only because you have caused them…

> you have caused them to actually perceive the color red Perhaps pedantic, but I'd argue there is no perception going on, since the senses are not involved. > the important part is that you are making them experience redness firsthand To me the important part is this: knowledge of the experience of redness can be transferred to a someone, without them going through the process of seeing redness, but purely by means…

I don't think it's pedantic, semantics are absolutely necessary for talking about this kind of thing precisely. I use the word perception to describe certain mental phenomena that we take as usually occurring in response to stimuli: sights, smells, etc. I'm not certain I totally understand your definition, but it sounds like you use the term to describe a type of process where sensory organs and the brain interact with the rest of the physical world to create mental phenomena—the same phenomena that I would call a perception. So because there aren't actual objects interacting with the sensory organs, then direct neural stimulation of the brain isn't a perception under your definition.

I can see where you are coming from with the idea that you could trigger those neural changes through some other process. It's an interesting idea, and I wonder if it could be true in practice somehow. Regardless, I'd still argue that you are manipulating the brain in one way or another to create a firsthand experience of seeing the color red. If you can explain redness fully in terms of physical systems and processes, then somebody having that firsthand experience for the first time shouldn't be thinking "oh, so that's what it is like to actually see red."

If these are purely physical processes, then that knowledge should have come along with your complete knowledge of all of physics. You should also know what it is like to have experiences that your brain doesn't have the hardware for, like a bat's experience of echolocation. It seems like an unfairly high bar to clear; how could you understand an experience without having it firsthand? But if you are committed to believing that conscious experience is a physical thing, then I think you are also committed to believing that it can be fully described in physical terms. Physicalists do have arguments that try to explain how you could pass that bar in theory or dodge the commitment altogether, but personally I think those arguments are pretty weak.

Re: Daniel Dennett: 'Where Am I?'

#92

Post by malux85 »

lIl-IIIl wrote: post #87
malux85 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing - but more generalised to just “sensory input” The fact that our brains and sensory input have been tightly coupled since forever basically means we don’t have a framework for perceiving these in different spatial coordinates simultaneously. But then I was thinking what if our sensory input was split up? My eyes in one location, seeing stuff, my ears in another location hearing stuf…

> My eyes in one location, seeing stuff, my ears in another location hearing stuff, my mouth in another location tasting stuff, then my notion of self switches back to wherever the brain is, but where was that transition? There's a text adventure game that has exactly that as a game mechanic. I don't remember what it is called, I want to say it's "A Mind Forever Voyaging" but reading about it on Wikipedia makes no me…

That sounds cool!

Re: Daniel Dennett: 'Where Am I?'

#93

Post by n4r9 »

Quailman84 wrote: post #91
n4r9 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have caused them to actually perceive the color red Perhaps pedantic, but I'd argue there is no perception going on, since the senses are not involved. > the important part is that you are making them experience redness firsthand To me the important part is this: knowledge of the experience of redness can be transferred to a someone, without them going through the process of seeing redness, but purely by means…

I don't think it's pedantic, semantics are absolutely necessary for talking about this kind of thing precisely. I use the word perception to describe certain mental phenomena that we take as usually occurring in response to stimuli: sights, smells, etc. I'm not certain I totally understand your definition, but it sounds like you use the term to describe a type of process where sensory organs and the brain interact wi…

> If you can explain redness fully in terms of physical systems and processes, then somebody having that firsthand experience for the first time shouldn't be thinking "oh, so that's what it is like to actually see red."

I mean, I think I totally agree here. It's just that I think a "full" explanation would be able to include a description of "what it is like". And that somebody having the firsthand experience would think "Yup, that matches what I read it would be like". The cynical side of me feels that people who deny this will ever be possible are being a little pessimistic or unambitious.

> You should also know what it is like to have experiences that your brain doesn't have the hardware for, like a bat's experience of echolocation.

I don't think that this necessarily follows. The hardware defines limits to what an individual can understand. I will never have a full understanding of the location and velocity of every atom in the universe - even if in principle a physical description of it could exist - because my brain's hardware is insufficient to represent the model. Likewise I cannot expect a human to know what it's like to have a bat's experiences. But there could in principle be a super AI that can understand both human and bat experiences.

Re: Daniel Dennett: 'Where Am I?'

#94

Post by altruios »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #83
altruios wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've give it a read. But if it's just rehashing John Locke's prisoner dilemma of perceived choice vs actual choice... I'm talking about objective reality, not subjective experience. The free will I'm interested in knowing if it exists or not is one we (in theory) could possible eventually measure (a difference in what physical processes say we should do and what we actually do). I'm interested in 'actual' free will,…

IMO, Dennett's book is a tour de force review of many others' writing about free will combined with what he considers his own contributions to the philosophical ideas around it. It is a relatively easy read, but also profound, and (again, IMO) he dispenses with your "The only free will that matters is: can we defy physics..." quite thoroughly and effectively. Reading the back cover is certainly not an adequate way to…

I'll put it in my reading list and get to it soon. But these are ideas that I have been looking at for a long time... and previous refutations of 'free will' as 'actually it's just these feed-back systems and we shouldn't think or worry about John Locke's locked door', have been unsatisfactory.

Also - having read the short story - 'Where Am I' relies heavily on the author's incredulity to make their arguments... which is unconvincing to me. Not being able to conceive of something is different than the reality of that thing. It's a story about confusing subjective experience with objective reality. The reality of the 'self' is different than your own point of view of what that self is. Your subjective experience is just that: subjective and not objective...

He also makes dubious claims in that story like 'the self can move faster than the speed of light'... That's going to need some evidence to claim something that fantastical...

It is a fantastic story, fun and fantastical, and asks interesting questions...

Re: Daniel Dennett: 'Where Am I?'

#95

Post by andoando »

jhickok wrote: post #85
andoando wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. Do you understand what they mean by "normative" pain? I cant make sense of it. The first argument given for illusionism is merely stating physical processes are strongly anagaolous to mental pheneomena. Ok agreed, but this is equivalently supports a panpsychic view. It just states "if one adds anomalousness as a premise for illusion, and then further assumes that illusionism is a possibility, the…

>Thanks for the link. Do you understand what they mean by "normative" pain? I cant make sense of it. Normative pain means there are a set of beliefs and actions that are attached to certain states that carry connotations of goodness, badness, etc. I would consider this usage the cousin of projectivism, where we project moral properties onto physical states of affairs. >The first argument given for illusionism is mere…

Chalmers has given arguments for panpsychism so I dont think hes totally opposed to the idea.

And Im not so sure materialism necessitates reduction of consciousness. It entirely depends on what one considers to be "material". I would hold for example, that if consciousness were a fundamental property of all matter, it would fit any functional meaning of the term "material" as it relates to scientific inquiry.

By "materialism" what we really seem to mean here is "a conservatory position on what constitutes material". If one accepts consciousness as a property of matter, then it becomes a materialist view, no?

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