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I think elimitavists like Dennett don't deny that things go on, just that consciousness, in he form of this magical thing, doesn't exist. The demonstration of t
by lmcinnes 10y ago
I think elimitavists like Dennett don't deny that things go on, just that consciousness, in he form of this magical thing, doesn't exist. The demonstration of that being that many of the things people believe about consciousness that make it so magical and hard to explain simply aren't true. People are often mistaken about their own consciousness, so perhaps the remarkable mysterious thing that we can't explain doesn't exist. Instead there could be something much simpler and explainable, much in the mold of explanations that Dennett gives. The catch being that many people simply claim that the thing that Dennett can explain isn't consciousness because it doesn't do the magical things they think consciousness does.
- stcredzero 10y agoBut he puts it like this: "Consciousness is an illusion." I guess he's just clickbaiting us. What you're saying is that he actually means is: "Our culturally inherited notion of consciousness is incomplete and in some ways misguided." Well of course. You can say that for physics and various sciences.
- lmcinnes 10y agoYes, his 'Consciousness is an Illusion' in clickbait is a sense. Mostly he is trying draw attention to the fact that the thing he is trying to explain is not the thing other people are saying is unexplainable. The commonly accepted notion of what consciousness is ... he doesn't believe that exists. But that's just because he thinks we are deluding ourselves about what we are actually experiencing as consciousness -- the thing we think about when we talk about consciousness? That's just an illusion, and the real workings are just mundane, and you'll just say "that's not really consciousness" if I explain them.