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Another comment with emphasis on the word "magic" so I guess let's dive in. > Is it a magical little light that goes on inside some entities but not others? I
by _akhe 2y ago
Another comment with emphasis on the word "magic" so I guess let's dive in.
> Is it a magical little light that goes on inside some entities but not others?
Instead of magic, just say "consciousness", and let's identify it as things like: The aroma of coffee, the taste of chocolate, the sound of a drop of water, the feeling of warmth on your arm... those sensations are not nerve cells. Nerve cells are nerve cells. As you already know nerve cells are tiny biological structures that can pass on or mitigate electrical transmission in the body like in muscles and the brain. That's what a nerve cell is. None of that electrochemistry in a nerve cell is the aroma of coffee.
> Searle and Chalmers, among others, believe it's the former
Searle doesn't, and has said many times "it's a biological phenomenon". Chalmers went off the deep end with panpsychism - but since neither Chalmers or Dennett can tell the difference between conscious/unconscious I guess they ended up in mostly the same boat, didn't they?
> Searle hasn't bothered to look at the research
> according to Searle, is some kind of magical "causal powers"
Just a joke, worth a call out that you think this of Searle, but not worth a response
I mean bad take after bad take, it's too bad you don't brush up on this stuff, you seem interested in it.
> Dennett never denied that we have experiences. He just didn't think they are magic.
Nobody said it's magic, Searle specifically said it's not magic, and that it's a biological phenomenon (see his TED talk "I move my arm and the damn thing goes up" - that one).
- pdonis 2y ago> Instead of magic, just say "consciousness", and let's identify it as things like: The aroma of coffee, the taste of chocolate, the sound of a drop of water, the feeling of warmth on your arm... those sensations are not nerve cells Of course not. Your voice is not vocal cords, but it is produced by them. Similarly, consciousness is not nerve cells, but it is produced by them. At least, that's what a physicalist like Dennett or myself says. Either you agree with that or you're not a physicalist. I don't really care at this point which it is, but I'm curious why you haven't said which. > "it's a biological phenomenon" Which is just a cop-out. It's the same as saying it's magic. Sure, it's a true statement in the sense that conscious beings, or at least all the ones we currently know about, are biological beings. But it tells us nothing at all useful about how consciousness works or how biological beings can have it. > I move my arm and the damn thing goes up Ok, but how does this happen? That's the important question. Dennett spent his career working on it. Searle, as far as I can see, has spent zero time working on it. As far as the bare statement itself, Dennett has never denied it, and it's perfectly consistent with physicalism and with everything Dennett says about consciousness. So I have no idea why Searle thinks it's some sort of knock-down refutation of anything.