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> I'm a fan of Dennett Then please don't misrepresent what he's actually saying. In the video you linked to, for example, he is not saying that your conscious

by pdonis 3y ago

> I'm a fan of Dennett Then please don't misrepresent what he's actually saying. In the video you linked to, for example, he is not saying that your conscious experience of looking at the blue door doesn't exist. He's not saying that your mental state when you perceive the blue door doesn't exist. He's saying that what underlies that conscious experience and that mental state is not some magical "phenomenal quality of blue" in your brain but functional processes in your brain that represent blue (and a host of other concepts) in a functional way. In the video he even calls himself a "functionalist" with respect to "mental properties" like blue--those properties are functional properties, not "phenomenal" properties. But functional properties exist, and so do the conscious experiences and mental states they underlie. Why does Dennett say that "phenomenal properties" don't exist? Because, to put it as briefly as possible, they're magic. Your mention of Christian apologists among his critics is quite apt, because, to a physicalist like Dennett (and like me), the Christian apologist's view of how minds work in general is magic. Why do you experience blue? Because God endowed you with a magical "mind" and "soul" that experiences blue--blue is a "phenomenal property" of your mind/soul. Whereas Dennett, as a physicalist, spent his career talking to experimentalists in cognitive science who were actually figuring out the physical processes that go on inside brains when people are experiencing blue (or anything else), and explaining them in functional terms. If you go back to Dennett's earlier work in the late 1960s and 1970s, you find that he actually tried to use terms like "phenomenal qualities" (and "qualia", another term that pops up a lot in his writings) to mean functional properties--i.e., he tried to say something like: yes, "phenomenal qualities" exist, but they're functional properties, they're not magical. But he found that whenever he tried to do this, people would object: they would read his description of what functional properties are and say, No! That's not what "phenomenal properties" and "qualia" are! And they would go on to list properties that, to them, "phenomenal properties" and "qualia" must have--and they were properties that no physical process, no non-magical entity, could possibly have. So eventually Dennett decided that it was pointless to try to convince people to use terms like "phenomenal properties" and "qualia" to mean functional properties--they just wouldn't accept that. And that is what led him to take the line he took in his more recent work, and in the video you referenced, where he just says point blank that "phenomenal properties" and "qualia" don't exist--by which he means what I have just described, that no physical process, no non-magical entity, could possibly have the properties that proponents of "phenomenal properties" and "qualia" insist that those things must have. But that doesn't mean conscious experiences and mental states don't exist; it just means they are "made of" functional properties of brains, not "phenomenal properties" or "qualia". In short, Dennett decided that the best place for him to draw a line in the sand was not at the meaning of terms like "phenomenal properties" and "qualia"--he found no useful alternative to simply letting proponents of those terms define what they mean and accepting their definitions, however useles he found them. He decided that the place to draw the line in the sand was at the claim that "phenomenal properties" and "qualia" are what underlie our conscious experiences and our mental states: no, he said, that's not what underlies them. Our conscious experiences and our mental states are not magic. What underlies them is functional processes in our brains. Those processes, and the conscious experiences and mental states they underlie, are perfectly real. They just aren't "phenomenal properties" or "qualia" as proponents of those terms insist on defining them.

_akhe 3y ago
Interviewer: "This is the difference between having a phenomenal quality of blue instantiated in my brain and having the quality of blue represented by my brain" Dennett: "The latter exists and the former doesn't" Has nothing to do with God or theism - you can be an atheist like myself and still recognize that we see things in the way a camera doesn't, that there's a difference between unconscious detection and conscious experience - and importantly that we don't know what it is. Doesn't have to be God or magic. As Searle says, "it's a biological phenomenon", we just haven't solved it. And as Chalmers says, "To deny that we have an experience is to ignore the datum of consciousness". Anyway the larger point is that Dennett was definitely eliminative of consciousness, not sure why you argue that so passionately when it's what he's known for and he's happy to admit it and argue for it. Your last few sentences... he never said they are "perfectly real" and he said the opposite several times.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > you can be an atheist like myself and still recognize that we see things in the way a camera doesn't, that there's a difference between unconscious detection and conscious experience Sure--but what kind of difference is it? Is it a binary, yes/no, all or nothing difference? Or is it a difference of degree? Is it a magical little light that goes on inside some entities but not others? Or is it a physical process that can occur in varying degrees? Denett believed it was the latter--on the basis of spending decades looking at actual research in cognitive science. Searle and Chalmers, among others, believe it's the former--on the basis of nothing except their bare assertion. > we don't know what it is. I understand why people like Searle and Chalmers take this position--because they simply haven't bothered to look at all the research that has been done to investigate what consciousness is and how it works, by looking at the underlying neural mechanisms. It's easy to believe we know nothing about a topic when you haven't actually looked at what we know. Dennett spent his career looking at such research and building his views on it, so he understood that, while we don't know everything about what consciousness is, we do know a lot of things about it. > As Searle says, "it's a biological phenomenon" Which, according to Searle, is some kind of magical "causal powers" that human brains have. Which he can't describe at all, can't say anything about, except that bare assertion. Which, as above, ignores all the things we do know about how brains work and how they do various things. > as Chalmers says, "To deny that we have an experience is to ignore the datum of consciousness". And in saying that he misrepresented Dennett's position, because Dennett never denied that we have experiences. He just didn't think they are magic. Searle's and Chalmers's positions, when you boil them down to their essence, are basically that consciousness is magic (but they use words like "causal powers" and "datum" to obfuscate what they are actually saying). > not sure why you argue that so passionately Because, as I've said multiple times now, you are misrepresenting Dennett's actual position. And the people you reference, Searle and Chalmers, did the same thing. And since Dennett is no longer around to defend himself against such misrepresentation, those of us who agree with him about these points need to do it.

by pdonis 3y ago

_akhe 3y ago

Interviewer: "This is the difference between having a phenomenal quality of blue instantiated in my brain and having the quality of blue represented by my brain" Dennett: "The latter exists and the former doesn't" Has nothing to do with God or theism - you can be an atheist like myself and still recognize that we see things in the way a camera doesn't, that there's a difference between unconscious detection and conscious experience - and importantly that we don't know what it is. Doesn't have to be God or magic. As Searle says, "it's a biological phenomenon", we just haven't solved it. And as Chalmers says, "To deny that we have an experience is to ignore the datum of consciousness". Anyway the larger point is that Dennett was definitely eliminative of consciousness, not sure why you argue that so passionately when it's what he's known for and he's happy to admit it and argue for it. Your last few sentences... he never said they are "perfectly real" and he said the opposite several times.

pdonis 3y ago
> you can be an atheist like myself and still recognize that we see things in the way a camera doesn't, that there's a difference between unconscious detection and conscious experience Sure--but what kind of difference is it? Is it a binary, yes/no, all or nothing difference? Or is it a difference of degree? Is it a magical little light that goes on inside some entities but not others? Or is it a physical process that can occur in varying degrees? Denett believed it was the latter--on the basis of spending decades looking at actual research in cognitive science. Searle and Chalmers, among others, believe it's the former--on the basis of nothing except their bare assertion. > we don't know what it is. I understand why people like Searle and Chalmers take this position--because they simply haven't bothered to look at all the research that has been done to investigate what consciousness is and how it works, by looking at the underlying neural mechanisms. It's easy to believe we know nothing about a topic when you haven't actually looked at what we know. Dennett spent his career looking at such research and building his views on it, so he understood that, while we don't know everything about what consciousness is, we do know a lot of things about it. > As Searle says, "it's a biological phenomenon" Which, according to Searle, is some kind of magical "causal powers" that human brains have. Which he can't describe at all, can't say anything about, except that bare assertion. Which, as above, ignores all the things we do know about how brains work and how they do various things. > as Chalmers says, "To deny that we have an experience is to ignore the datum of consciousness". And in saying that he misrepresented Dennett's position, because Dennett never denied that we have experiences. He just didn't think they are magic. Searle's and Chalmers's positions, when you boil them down to their essence, are basically that consciousness is magic (but they use words like "causal powers" and "datum" to obfuscate what they are actually saying). > not sure why you argue that so passionately Because, as I've said multiple times now, you are misrepresenting Dennett's actual position. And the people you reference, Searle and Chalmers, did the same thing. And since Dennett is no longer around to defend himself against such misrepresentation, those of us who agree with him about these points need to do it.