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> he's not eliminative with consciousness Feel like he is though, second only to maybe Michael Shermer, or AI investors (zing!) The definition: > Eliminative

by _akhe 2y ago

> he's not eliminative with consciousness Feel like he is though, second only to maybe Michael Shermer, or AI investors (zing!) The definition: > Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist. There's no way I'll find the video, but he said at one point in some interview almost exactly this: That most of the mental states we think we have don't really exist. I think it's also in his book Consciousness Explained (1991), but I didn't read it so can't be sure. I always thought this is what upset people so much about Dennett - the apparent total denial of experience. Yet this is an incredibly slippery slope! Anyone familiar with Chalmers' Hard Problem should intuit that there are "primitives" of experience that when put together make up the total experience. I agree that the Hard Problem is an accurate assessment of the issue, but given this "primitives" concept I agree with eliminativism in that "most" of the mental states we believe we have never existed, we were somehow "filled in". I'll namedrop 3 more philosophers: John Searle (Berkeley), Donald Hoffman (Irvine), Colin McGinn (London, Oxford) - all of whom have excellent content on YouTube that will blow your mind, and these are maybe the best I've heard from on the subject.

pdonis 2y ago
> he said at one point in some interview almost exactly this: That most of the mental states we think we have don't really exist. I think it's also in his book Consciousness Explained (1991), but I didn't read it so can't be sure. I can't speak about whatever interview you saw, but in the book Consciousness Explained he does not say what you are describing. He says the same thing he says in one of his papers, I think it's "Real Patterns", which appeared in one of his later collections: Real consciousness does exist, but it is not like what many people think it is like. It does not have all of the properties that many people think it has. He does say that things with those properties don't exist--because nothing with those properties can exist. But he does not say that consciousness does not exist--just that it doesn't have those properties. > the apparent total denial of experience He doesn't say this either, although many of his opponents misdescribe him as saying that--because they cannot understand what he is actually saying. The only concept of consciousness they can grasp is the magical concept they have in their heads--I call it "magical" because it cannot exist if consciousness is a physical process working according to physical laws. And the latter kind of consciousness, the physicalist kind, is the kind Dennett describes and the kind he believed existed. So for opponents of his who can't even grasp that there is such a concept of consciousness, the only way they could interpret what Dennett was saying was that he was denying that consciousness existed. But that is a gross misrepresentation of his views: he was not saying that people don't have experiences or thoughts. He was just saying that those real things, when you actually do the hard work of figuring out how they work in accordance with physical laws, turn out not to have some of the properties that people thought they had before that hard work was done. This is no different from any other concept once we try to build an actual scientific understanding of it. > John Searle Whose Chinese Room thought experiment was debunked in The Mind's I (though that's hardly the only rebuttal that has been published), and I suspect that chapter in the book was written largely by Dennett, since he published other similar rebuttals later on.
- _akhe 2y ago
  > he does not say what you are describing Starting to think you don't know Dennett, this is what he was all about haha. > John Searle debunked You're starting to reveal your lack of experience here. It's not something that can be debunked, it's just an observation and one that is widely considered foundational :) Not only that, but that's like from his youth, he's done a lot more interesting stuff since Chinese Room - this seems like you just quickly googled. I wish this was a better conversation, brush up!
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > Starting to think you don't know Dennett Starting to think you haven't read very much of him, or haven't bothered to actually engage with what you've read. > You're starting to reveal your lack of experience here. It's not something that can be debunked Tell that to all the people who have written articles debunking it. > I wish this was a better conversation, brush up! I'm having the same thought about you. So I doubt we're going to make much progress.
    - _akhe 2y ago
      > debunking I don't even agree with Dennett, just pointing out what his stance is in response to your weird attack. A stance that everyone knows except you apparently, didn't even know it was argued. He is eliminative of consciousness, and is basically famous as a philosopher for it, second to the religious stuff.
      - pdonis 2y ago
        > I don't even agree with Dennett That's obvious. But I do. However, it's also obvious that the Dennett I agree with is not the Dennett that you disagree with. And what's more, it's obvious that we're not going to resolve that here. We agree he's a famous philosopher. That's enough for here.
- _akhe 2y ago
  This pdonis is a jackass - here are direct quotes from Dennett: - "There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory)." - from Consciousness Explained, page 132. On page 113 he says: - "Unlike mental states taxonomized folk psychologically, "content-fixations" are each precisely locatable in both space and time". ^ he is saying mental states are not locatable in space and time. Page 138: - "There are no fixed facts about the stream of consciousness independent of particular probes" An interview: - "The reason [consciousness] is so puzzling is that people think they ought to be able to study it from the inside, using pure phenomenology, those give you hints but they are illusory. That's not what's really going on." Source for this interview (New Scientist): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm8M_xQrgCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm8M_xQrgCk From David Rosenthal's Content, Interpretation, and Consciouness: - "There is good reason, in any case, to construe Dennett's pandemonium model as positing only subpersonal events of content fixation, rather than full-fledged intentional states. Thus he writes: "We replace the division into discrete contentful states-beliefs, meta-beliefs, and so forthwith a process that serves, over time, to ensure a good fit between an entity's internal information-bearing events and the entity's capacity to express (some of) the information in those events in speech. [10] 10: Dennett speaks throughout Consciousness Explained of such nonconscious, subpersonal events Wikipedia on Multiple Drafts: - "Dennett argues that [consciousness theories] share a common error in supposing that there is a special time and place where unconscious processing becomes consciously experienced, entering into what Dennett calls the "Cartesian theatre". A couple more Dennett quotes: - "There does not exist ... a process such as 'recruitment of consciousness' (into what?), nor any place where the 'vehicle's arrival' is recognized (by whom?)" - "the Multiple Drafts model goes on to claim that the brain does not bother 'constructing' any representations..." I could go on forever because this was his main jam. I find it hilarious this pdonis person has such a high karma/score/whatever on this site after such awful takes. I won't even get into Searle who pdonis just Googled for the first time, bringing up Chinese Room (1980) as if it's a scientific theory. What a joke, I wish he could be downvoted.

by _akhe 2y ago

pdonis 2y ago

> he said at one point in some interview almost exactly this: That most of the mental states we think we have don't really exist. I think it's also in his book Consciousness Explained (1991), but I didn't read it so can't be sure. I can't speak about whatever interview you saw, but in the book Consciousness Explained he does not say what you are describing. He says the same thing he says in one of his papers, I think it's "Real Patterns", which appeared in one of his later collections: Real consciousness does exist, but it is not like what many people think it is like. It does not have all of the properties that many people think it has. He does say that things with those properties don't exist--because nothing with those properties can exist. But he does not say that consciousness does not exist--just that it doesn't have those properties. > the apparent total denial of experience He doesn't say this either, although many of his opponents misdescribe him as saying that--because they cannot understand what he is actually saying. The only concept of consciousness they can grasp is the magical concept they have in their heads--I call it "magical" because it cannot exist if consciousness is a physical process working according to physical laws. And the latter kind of consciousness, the physicalist kind, is the kind Dennett describes and the kind he believed existed. So for opponents of his who can't even grasp that there is such a concept of consciousness, the only way they could interpret what Dennett was saying was that he was denying that consciousness existed. But that is a gross misrepresentation of his views: he was not saying that people don't have experiences or thoughts. He was just saying that those real things, when you actually do the hard work of figuring out how they work in accordance with physical laws, turn out not to have some of the properties that people thought they had before that hard work was done. This is no different from any other concept once we try to build an actual scientific understanding of it. > John Searle Whose Chinese Room thought experiment was debunked in The Mind's I (though that's hardly the only rebuttal that has been published), and I suspect that chapter in the book was written largely by Dennett, since he published other similar rebuttals later on.

_akhe 2y ago
> he does not say what you are describing Starting to think you don't know Dennett, this is what he was all about haha. > John Searle debunked You're starting to reveal your lack of experience here. It's not something that can be debunked, it's just an observation and one that is widely considered foundational :) Not only that, but that's like from his youth, he's done a lot more interesting stuff since Chinese Room - this seems like you just quickly googled. I wish this was a better conversation, brush up!
- pdonis 2y ago
  > Starting to think you don't know Dennett Starting to think you haven't read very much of him, or haven't bothered to actually engage with what you've read. > You're starting to reveal your lack of experience here. It's not something that can be debunked Tell that to all the people who have written articles debunking it. > I wish this was a better conversation, brush up! I'm having the same thought about you. So I doubt we're going to make much progress.
  - _akhe 2y ago
    > debunking I don't even agree with Dennett, just pointing out what his stance is in response to your weird attack. A stance that everyone knows except you apparently, didn't even know it was argued. He is eliminative of consciousness, and is basically famous as a philosopher for it, second to the religious stuff.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > I don't even agree with Dennett That's obvious. But I do. However, it's also obvious that the Dennett I agree with is not the Dennett that you disagree with. And what's more, it's obvious that we're not going to resolve that here. We agree he's a famous philosopher. That's enough for here.
_akhe 2y ago
This pdonis is a jackass - here are direct quotes from Dennett: - "There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory)." - from Consciousness Explained, page 132. On page 113 he says: - "Unlike mental states taxonomized folk psychologically, "content-fixations" are each precisely locatable in both space and time". ^ he is saying mental states are not locatable in space and time. Page 138: - "There are no fixed facts about the stream of consciousness independent of particular probes" An interview: - "The reason [consciousness] is so puzzling is that people think they ought to be able to study it from the inside, using pure phenomenology, those give you hints but they are illusory. That's not what's really going on." Source for this interview (New Scientist): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm8M_xQrgCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm8M_xQrgCk From David Rosenthal's Content, Interpretation, and Consciouness: - "There is good reason, in any case, to construe Dennett's pandemonium model as positing only subpersonal events of content fixation, rather than full-fledged intentional states. Thus he writes: "We replace the division into discrete contentful states-beliefs, meta-beliefs, and so forthwith a process that serves, over time, to ensure a good fit between an entity's internal information-bearing events and the entity's capacity to express (some of) the information in those events in speech. [10] 10: Dennett speaks throughout Consciousness Explained of such nonconscious, subpersonal events Wikipedia on Multiple Drafts: - "Dennett argues that [consciousness theories] share a common error in supposing that there is a special time and place where unconscious processing becomes consciously experienced, entering into what Dennett calls the "Cartesian theatre". A couple more Dennett quotes: - "There does not exist ... a process such as 'recruitment of consciousness' (into what?), nor any place where the 'vehicle's arrival' is recognized (by whom?)" - "the Multiple Drafts model goes on to claim that the brain does not bother 'constructing' any representations..." I could go on forever because this was his main jam. I find it hilarious this pdonis person has such a high karma/score/whatever on this site after such awful takes. I won't even get into Searle who pdonis just Googled for the first time, bringing up Chinese Room (1980) as if it's a scientific theory. What a joke, I wish he could be downvoted.