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I can see how that would lead to an illusion of continuous subjective awareness, but I don't think it supports the notion that subjective awareness is entirely

I can see how that would lead to an illusion of continuous subjective awareness, but I don't think it supports the notion that subjective awareness is entirely illusory. I think therefore I am, the existence of qualia [1], etc. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

naasking 7y ago
"I think therefore I am" assumes the conclusion. "This is a thought, therefore thoughts exist" is the valid, non-circular version. The attention schema theory addresses the specific problem of how we apparently infer first-person subjective facts when no such concept exists in physics, the latter of which consists entirely of third-person objective facts. The answer is that we erroneously conclude that the facts we perceive are first-person, but this perception is a sensory trick, similar to an optical illusion. The question of qualia is larger than this specific question, but subjectivity was probably an important problem to overcome for a materialist explanation of consciousness. Dennett has long held that what we call "consciousness" is very likely a bunch of distinct phenomena that all get muddled together, and the fact that we have started to pick it apart hints suggestively that he was right.
- hackinthebochs 7y ago
  >"I think therefore I am" assumes the conclusion. But the thought is self-referential. The thought is about itself thinking, and so the thought instantiates the sufficient case for a subject. And so there is no question-begging. >The answer is that we erroneously conclude that the facts we perceive are first-person But as long as these facts are presented or represented as being first-person, the sufficient case for first-person acquaintance has been established. Whether these first-person facts are ultimately grounded in third-person descriptions or phenomena doesn't make them illusions.
  - naasking 7y ago
    > But the thought is self-referential. The thought is about itself thinking, and so the thought instantiates the sufficient case for a subject. You just assumed the existence of a subject again. Where is the proof that a thought requires a subject? One that isn't vacuous or doesn't just assume its own conclusion? > Whether these first-person facts are ultimately grounded in third-person descriptions or phenomena doesn't make them illusions. It does for the technical purposes of the consciousness debate. The terminology we're using, like "illusion", has a technical meaning for the debate between materialists and antimaterialists, wherein antimaterialists argue that a first-person fact cannot be reduced to third person facts, even in principle. Obviously even materialists speaking informally would still use first person language and speak normally about their experiences.
    - hackinthebochs 7y ago
      >Where is the proof that a thought requires a subject? I'm not sure what you're asking. If the thought is self-referential, then the subject is inherent in the self-reference of the thought, namely the thought itself. I am not assuming some kind of conscious subjectivity here. Merely that the content of the thought is instantiated in the case of self-reference. If this were not the case, then the thought could not self-reference. >has a technical meaning for the debate between materialists and antimaterialists I'm familiar with the usual suspects in this debate (e.g. Dennett, Frankish), and I don't find their usage of illusion particularly "technical". They use it to mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist or isn't real. But its this very usage that I take issue with.
      - naasking 7y ago
        > If the thought is self-referential, then the subject is inherent in the self-reference of the thought, namely the thought itself. [...] If this were not the case, then the thought could not self-reference. What property of self-reference do you think entails the properties of a "subject"? Does a self-referential term in a programming language also have a subject? I suspect you would deny they do, so why does a self-referential thought entail a subject when self-reference in other domains does not? Because the only answers I can come up with either amount to special pleading on behalf of thoughts, or admitting a superfluous concept into every self-reference that makes no useful distinctions and conveys no useful properties that I can see. > They use it to mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist or isn't real. And what do you think they mean by "isn't real" or "doesn't exist"? Because in this setting, such a claim to me means that phenomenal consciousness is not ontologically fundamental. That's a pretty technical meaning. Dennett certainly didn't mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist as a concept deserving a philosophical or scientific explanation; clearly it does or he wouldn't have written about it.
- david_w 7y ago
  naasking, as I see it, Dennett (in Consciouness Explained) engages in a sleight of hand. He redefines consciouness as "a bunch of distinct phenomena that gets muddle together", but that doesn't touch the mystery of qualia, it tries to just deny that there is anything to explain, owing to the fact (Dennett claims) that the problem is mischaracterized from the start.
  - naasking 7y ago
    And your mind plays sleight of hand all the time, which Dennett clearly establishes in his work. Or do you actually see the physical blind spot that's a fundamental feature of your eyeball? So why would you trust your direct perception over the mountains of evidence that clearly demonstrates that we can't trust our perceptions?
    - david_w 7y ago
      No literate scientifically minded person disputes your point, but it doesn't address my point. My point is this- qualia as a phenomena exists. Even if I think a red thing is blue, I am still experiencing some color and the experiencing itself- aside from its accuracy- is what needs explaining. So experience, aka qualia as a phenomena unto itself is in need of explaining, not any particular qualia and not the presence of absence of any correlation between the qualia and objective reality, i.e. the "truthfullness" or "accuracy" of the qualia.
      - naasking 7y ago
        > My point is this- qualia as a phenomena exists. Even if I think a red thing is blue, I am still experiencing some color and the experiencing itself- aside from its accuracy- is what needs explaining Dennett wouldn't deny that either. He would simply say that we have no reason to think the qualitative experience of our perceptions are anything other than a cognitive trick with a functional purpose. Certainly how this trick works should absolutely be explained, and I don't think any materialist would deny that.
        7y ago
- md224 7y ago
  > we erroneously conclude that the facts we perceive are first-person this doesn't make sense... the perceiving itself is what makes something first-person, not the object of perception
  - naasking 7y ago
    That's not the technical meaning in the consciousness debate. I invite you to read about Mary's room for an introduction to the distinction I was describing.
    - md224 7y ago
      Oh okay... I thought you were denying the reality of first-person subjective experience as commonly understood, not a narrowly-defined technical term. That seems more reasonable then (though also less interesting).
      - naasking 7y ago
        It's still pretty interesting! Mary's room thought experiment is pretty short and simple, but it'll make you think pretty hard.
        iainmerrick 7y ago
        I hadn’t heard of that one before. As a real human story, it would be fascinating. As an abstract philosophical thought experiment, it seems close to worthless. How is it actionable? Why bother with a thought experiment, when there are real world examples? The book Fixing My Gaze is a great place to start, written by someone whose eyes were out of alignment as a child and only gained true stereoscopic vision as an adult.
        naasking 7y ago
        These intuition pumps are useful philosophical tools to test the limits and cohesiveness of a particular idea. Mary's room is intended to challenge materialism because it's very difficult to exlain using materialism how Mary could not learn something new upon seeing red for the first time, even in principle. So it's about the logical cohesiveness of the whole theory. That said, there are plenty of strong refutations of Mary's room, but intuition pumps typically just confirm your own biases, so materialists accept these refutations and antimaterialists are not convinced by them.
- ardy42 7y ago
  > The answer is that we erroneously conclude that the facts we perceive are first-person, but this perception is a sensory trick, similar to an optical illusion. I'm extremely skeptical of answers that involve labeling difficult challenges to a theory as "illusions."
  - naasking 7y ago
    > I'm extremely skeptical of answers that involve labeling difficult challenges to a theory as "illusions." So calling [1] an optical illusion warrants skepticism because it's attempting to dismiss the challenge of having to explain how water can physically break and magically reconstitute pencils? Don't you see the problem with this sort of argument? The point is that integrating all of our knowledge leaves no room for first person facts. Additionally, every time we've tried to ascribe some unique or magical property to humans or life (like vitalism), we've been flat out wrong. No doubt there are plenty of challenges left to resolve in neuroscience, and no one is claiming that a materialist account of qualia is unnecessary. [1] http://media.log-in.ru/i/pencilIn_in_water.jpg http://media.log-in.ru/i/pencilIn_in_water.jpg
    - ardy42 7y ago
      > So calling [1] an optical illusion warrants skepticism because it's attempting to dismiss the challenge of having to explain how water can physically break and magically reconstitute pencils? Don't you see the problem with this sort of argument? Yeah, but that's a bit of a straw man. The kinds of claims-of-illusion that warrant particular skepticism are the ones that deny fundamental observations in defense of some particular (usually sectarian, for lack of a better word) philosophical perspective.
      - naasking 7y ago
        What makes an observation "fundamental"?
- cscurmudgeon 7y ago
  "This is a thought, therefore thoughts exist" is the valid, non-circular version. Let us cast this argument in formal logic. What are the axioms? What is the conclusion? https://isabelle.in.tum.de https://isabelle.in.tum.de

naasking 7y ago

"I think therefore I am" assumes the conclusion. "This is a thought, therefore thoughts exist" is the valid, non-circular version. The attention schema theory addresses the specific problem of how we apparently infer first-person subjective facts when no such concept exists in physics, the latter of which consists entirely of third-person objective facts. The answer is that we erroneously conclude that the facts we perceive are first-person, but this perception is a sensory trick, similar to an optical illusion. The question of qualia is larger than this specific question, but subjectivity was probably an important problem to overcome for a materialist explanation of consciousness. Dennett has long held that what we call "consciousness" is very likely a bunch of distinct phenomena that all get muddled together, and the fact that we have started to pick it apart hints suggestively that he was right.

hackinthebochs 7y ago
>"I think therefore I am" assumes the conclusion. But the thought is self-referential. The thought is about itself thinking, and so the thought instantiates the sufficient case for a subject. And so there is no question-begging. >The answer is that we erroneously conclude that the facts we perceive are first-person But as long as these facts are presented or represented as being first-person, the sufficient case for first-person acquaintance has been established. Whether these first-person facts are ultimately grounded in third-person descriptions or phenomena doesn't make them illusions.
- naasking 7y ago
  > But the thought is self-referential. The thought is about itself thinking, and so the thought instantiates the sufficient case for a subject. You just assumed the existence of a subject again. Where is the proof that a thought requires a subject? One that isn't vacuous or doesn't just assume its own conclusion? > Whether these first-person facts are ultimately grounded in third-person descriptions or phenomena doesn't make them illusions. It does for the technical purposes of the consciousness debate. The terminology we're using, like "illusion", has a technical meaning for the debate between materialists and antimaterialists, wherein antimaterialists argue that a first-person fact cannot be reduced to third person facts, even in principle. Obviously even materialists speaking informally would still use first person language and speak normally about their experiences.
  - hackinthebochs 7y ago
    >Where is the proof that a thought requires a subject? I'm not sure what you're asking. If the thought is self-referential, then the subject is inherent in the self-reference of the thought, namely the thought itself. I am not assuming some kind of conscious subjectivity here. Merely that the content of the thought is instantiated in the case of self-reference. If this were not the case, then the thought could not self-reference. >has a technical meaning for the debate between materialists and antimaterialists I'm familiar with the usual suspects in this debate (e.g. Dennett, Frankish), and I don't find their usage of illusion particularly "technical". They use it to mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist or isn't real. But its this very usage that I take issue with.
    - naasking 7y ago
      > If the thought is self-referential, then the subject is inherent in the self-reference of the thought, namely the thought itself. [...] If this were not the case, then the thought could not self-reference. What property of self-reference do you think entails the properties of a "subject"? Does a self-referential term in a programming language also have a subject? I suspect you would deny they do, so why does a self-referential thought entail a subject when self-reference in other domains does not? Because the only answers I can come up with either amount to special pleading on behalf of thoughts, or admitting a superfluous concept into every self-reference that makes no useful distinctions and conveys no useful properties that I can see. > They use it to mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist or isn't real. And what do you think they mean by "isn't real" or "doesn't exist"? Because in this setting, such a claim to me means that phenomenal consciousness is not ontologically fundamental. That's a pretty technical meaning. Dennett certainly didn't mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist as a concept deserving a philosophical or scientific explanation; clearly it does or he wouldn't have written about it.
david_w 7y ago
naasking, as I see it, Dennett (in Consciouness Explained) engages in a sleight of hand. He redefines consciouness as "a bunch of distinct phenomena that gets muddle together", but that doesn't touch the mystery of qualia, it tries to just deny that there is anything to explain, owing to the fact (Dennett claims) that the problem is mischaracterized from the start.
- naasking 7y ago
  And your mind plays sleight of hand all the time, which Dennett clearly establishes in his work. Or do you actually see the physical blind spot that's a fundamental feature of your eyeball? So why would you trust your direct perception over the mountains of evidence that clearly demonstrates that we can't trust our perceptions?
  - david_w 7y ago
    No literate scientifically minded person disputes your point, but it doesn't address my point. My point is this- qualia as a phenomena exists. Even if I think a red thing is blue, I am still experiencing some color and the experiencing itself- aside from its accuracy- is what needs explaining. So experience, aka qualia as a phenomena unto itself is in need of explaining, not any particular qualia and not the presence of absence of any correlation between the qualia and objective reality, i.e. the "truthfullness" or "accuracy" of the qualia.
    - naasking 7y ago
      > My point is this- qualia as a phenomena exists. Even if I think a red thing is blue, I am still experiencing some color and the experiencing itself- aside from its accuracy- is what needs explaining Dennett wouldn't deny that either. He would simply say that we have no reason to think the qualitative experience of our perceptions are anything other than a cognitive trick with a functional purpose. Certainly how this trick works should absolutely be explained, and I don't think any materialist would deny that.
      - 7y ago
md224 7y ago
> we erroneously conclude that the facts we perceive are first-person this doesn't make sense... the perceiving itself is what makes something first-person, not the object of perception
- naasking 7y ago
  That's not the technical meaning in the consciousness debate. I invite you to read about Mary's room for an introduction to the distinction I was describing.
  - md224 7y ago
    Oh okay... I thought you were denying the reality of first-person subjective experience as commonly understood, not a narrowly-defined technical term. That seems more reasonable then (though also less interesting).
    - naasking 7y ago
      It's still pretty interesting! Mary's room thought experiment is pretty short and simple, but it'll make you think pretty hard.
      - iainmerrick 7y ago
        I hadn’t heard of that one before. As a real human story, it would be fascinating. As an abstract philosophical thought experiment, it seems close to worthless. How is it actionable? Why bother with a thought experiment, when there are real world examples? The book Fixing My Gaze is a great place to start, written by someone whose eyes were out of alignment as a child and only gained true stereoscopic vision as an adult.
        naasking 7y ago
        These intuition pumps are useful philosophical tools to test the limits and cohesiveness of a particular idea. Mary's room is intended to challenge materialism because it's very difficult to exlain using materialism how Mary could not learn something new upon seeing red for the first time, even in principle. So it's about the logical cohesiveness of the whole theory. That said, there are plenty of strong refutations of Mary's room, but intuition pumps typically just confirm your own biases, so materialists accept these refutations and antimaterialists are not convinced by them.
ardy42 7y ago
> The answer is that we erroneously conclude that the facts we perceive are first-person, but this perception is a sensory trick, similar to an optical illusion. I'm extremely skeptical of answers that involve labeling difficult challenges to a theory as "illusions."
- naasking 7y ago
  > I'm extremely skeptical of answers that involve labeling difficult challenges to a theory as "illusions." So calling [1] an optical illusion warrants skepticism because it's attempting to dismiss the challenge of having to explain how water can physically break and magically reconstitute pencils? Don't you see the problem with this sort of argument? The point is that integrating all of our knowledge leaves no room for first person facts. Additionally, every time we've tried to ascribe some unique or magical property to humans or life (like vitalism), we've been flat out wrong. No doubt there are plenty of challenges left to resolve in neuroscience, and no one is claiming that a materialist account of qualia is unnecessary. [1] http://media.log-in.ru/i/pencilIn_in_water.jpg http://media.log-in.ru/i/pencilIn_in_water.jpg
  - ardy42 7y ago
    > So calling [1] an optical illusion warrants skepticism because it's attempting to dismiss the challenge of having to explain how water can physically break and magically reconstitute pencils? Don't you see the problem with this sort of argument? Yeah, but that's a bit of a straw man. The kinds of claims-of-illusion that warrant particular skepticism are the ones that deny fundamental observations in defense of some particular (usually sectarian, for lack of a better word) philosophical perspective.
    - naasking 7y ago
      What makes an observation "fundamental"?
cscurmudgeon 7y ago
"This is a thought, therefore thoughts exist" is the valid, non-circular version. Let us cast this argument in formal logic. What are the axioms? What is the conclusion? https://isabelle.in.tum.de https://isabelle.in.tum.de