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Dennet's reasoning is essentially: "I can't see or don't know anything beyond this line, so therefore nothing can exist beyond this line." While attractive, it
by cscurmudgeon 8y ago
Dennet's reasoning is essentially: "I can't see or don't know anything beyond this line, so therefore nothing can exist beyond this line."
While attractive, it is not logically valid
- naasking 8y agoI think it's more like, "there is no reason to suppose there is anything beyond this line because everything can be explained without crossing it", which is logically valid.
- danharaj 8y agoThere are for sure things of this world that are not explicable, even in principle.
- naasking 8y agoSuch as?
- sgt101 8y agoIf I were to adopt this approach I would be dishonest - because every second of which I am aware shows me that there is something beyond the line. DD may be different...
- cscurmudgeon 8y agoThat is not what DD is claiming though. It is more along the lines of: "If X exists it is beyond this line. I can't explain anything beyond the line, so X is an illusion." That is what DD claims. Maybe DD is a true zombie.
- naasking 8y agoI disagree with your paraphrase. Why not cite a specific quote or passage from Dennett where he makes such a ridiculous claim.
- cscurmudgeon 8y ago"makes such a ridiculous claim" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/ In another well-known article, “Quining Qualia” (1988), Dennett challenges not just our conception of pain, but all of our different notions of qualitative states. His argument focuses on the apparently essential features of qualia, including their inherent subjectivity and their private nature. Dennett discusses several cases—both actual and imaginary—to expose ways in which these ordinary intuitions about qualia pull apart. In so doing, Dennett suggests our qualia concepts are fundamentally confused and fail to correspond with the actual inner workings of our cognitive system. X (qualia, what we don't know) does not correspond to Y (cognition, what we understand), so X does not exist. Yes. It is this ridiculous. :)
- naasking 8y agoYeah, that's still incorrect. We have no reason to suppose X because Y can explain X as an illusion. It's the exact same process that happens in every other science: you don't expand your axiomatic basis unless you have to.
- cscurmudgeon 8y ago> Yeah, that's still incorrect. Saying it does not make it so. > We have no reason to suppose X because Y can explain X as an illusion. But Y does not really explain X. That is core point. Saying Y explains X is just igoring the question. It is just Dennett claiming "Y explains X" with a flawed argument. > It's the exact same process that happens in every other science: you don't expand your axiomatic basis unless you have to. Btw, when talking about axioms, there are rigid formalized versions of physics and math (look up Mizar). Unless Dennet proves his claims with a formal theorem with rigidly defined axioms, I am not buying his arguments. Too much fluff in philosophy when dealing with important problems. Just the word "illusion" can have n different definitions and maybe the illusion itself is an illusion :D
- taurine 8y ago"The line we placed there was arbitrary. The division it creates is the very cause of the problems of consciousness. Science experiments show that it is likely at the wrong location, no matter how confident we were when we drew it. I will attempt to solve these artificial problems of consciousness by showing that it is a miscategorization and not-well-justified to draw the line in the first place."