6 ms·

Daniel Dennett, Author of ‘Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking’

54 points by krg 13y ago

Symbol 13y ago
Makes me wish I had taken a class with him while at Tufts. It's a hard truth that you can usually plot a good course through your university experience AFTER you are finished.
- whtrbt 13y ago
  I got to see him speak in Melbourne last year, he has a very enjoyable speaking manner. If I recall correctly, it covered looking at things from a teleological perspective (as a tool for thinking, not as proposed fact) and then free will and morality in relation to that. I'm not certain, but I think there was the suggestion that believing we have free will is useful because it makes us act as though we have free will!
fluidcruft 13y ago
It's interesting because I'm from a neuroscience training and have traditionally and reflexively and argumentatively sided with the idea that things like consciousness and free will are emergent illusions. However, I've recently had a crisis of confidence when for some reason I tried to think about the fact that my experience of consciousness and color and etc does actually exist somehow inside the universe and that others seem to experience it similarly. Of course there's a similarity of physical structure that's common to brains that have those experiences. But more from the point of view of if you stumble upon some complex object for example, you could wonder whether it is experiencing the illusion of free will. If that's all purely emergent from known physical laws, we should be able to determine whether a particular object possesses/produces the illusion, right? So, that got me wondering what is the minimal hardware/spatial configuration that could produce this sort of illusion and are illusions actually "something"? It seems like it's presupposing that certain arrangements of matter generate "illusions" and yet we seem to want to insist that at some level these "illusions" don't really exist. How far down do illusions go? Some people are born blind or deaf/have strokes, so the illusion of color vision or sound can be isolated and removed from the illusion of consciousness. Do "and gates" experience some sort of atomic illusion of "and"? Can the presence of illusion be tested? Anyway, not sure I'm making a cogent statement, I'm still not entirely clear on what's bothering me about this, but something "feels" intuitively wrong/missing to me about the purely physical emergent neuroscience approach now.
- manicbovine 13y ago
  Have you read any of David Chalmers' work? He attempts to provide a framework for thinking analytically about qualia in "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory." [1] Nearly all of his papers are accessible via his website. [2] [1] http://consc.net/books/tcm/ http://consc.net/books/tcm/ [2] http://consc.net/papers.html http://consc.net/papers.html
  - fluidcruft 13y ago
    Thank you for the book recommendation. I have not read David Chalmers' work, but I have seen his name mentioned often. I've been trying to figure out where to get started with learning about the current understanding of the mind-body problem and keep getting recommendations to start back with the Greeks and work forward (which seems both quite daunting but also baroque given lack of influence from modern neuroscience). I think I'll start reading there. Thanks again!
    - momerath 13y ago
      I would also recommend The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger.
  - nessus42 13y ago
    I second Chalmers' book. It's an excellent introduction to how contemporary philosophers think about these issues.
- gradys 13y ago
  You might find The Mind's I [1], co-edited by Dan Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter, to be valuable. In particular, a piece called "Prelude... Ant Fugue" [2], written by Hofstadter, covers some of this territory. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I [2] - http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-fugue.html http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-...
- VLM 13y ago
  "If that's all purely emergent from known physical laws, we should be able to determine whether a particular object possesses/produces the illusion, right?" Lets talk about if a computer program, given some pretty simple physical and logical rules, halts, and is there any easier way to prove if all programs halt and what it's answer will be, other than pretty much letting it run and see what happens? So if I wrote an AI and asked it if it would end, it would not really have much to say beyond the mundane (when you yank the power cord or whatever). You can probably twist that into a free will argument somehow. Will asking it if it can prove it has free will (or consciousness) ever complete that program? It doesn't look like that program ever halts with biological processors and there seems to be no good answer.
vinceguidry 13y ago
> The elusive subjective conscious experience — the redness of red, the painfulness of pain — that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion. I wonder if the qualia debate isn't just an elaborate exercise in missing the point. Experience doesn't work the same way as matter, you can't subdivide it until you get the "experiential atom". Divide an experience into parts, what you get is separate experiences, each unique in their own right. What if, instead of trying to define the "fundamental experience", we instead acknowledged all experiences as unique, subjective to context and underlying biology, and moved from there? Someone's experience of red will depend on his rod/cone balance and his neuro-chemistry. He can think about a "abstract, ultimate red" but that will be an experience of thinking about red, not an actual ultimate red.
- mjgoins 13y ago
  That's pretty much Dennet's position.
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    Right, I was hoping someone more familiar with the debate would offer the other side of it. Intuitively, qualia is an attempt to get to the fundamental nature of experience. But its endless divisibility seems to indicate that there is no such animal. Does the debate exist simply because some can't grasp the notion of a concept without underlying fundamentals? Or am I missing something?
    - manicbovine 13y ago
      What in the world do you mean by "endless divisibility"? In your previous post, you said that everyone may have a different experience of red, which is more like "endless variation."
    - vinceguidry 13y ago
      > What in the world do you mean by "endless divisibility"? In your previous post, you said that everyone may have a different experience of red, which is more like "endless variation." A qualia is, according to Wikipedia, an "individual instance of subjective, conscious experience." Individual means you can't subdivide it any more and still call the divisions experience. The canonical example is the "redness of red". So, you'd look at a sunset, and divide that experience up into qualia, individual instances of experience. You might come up with [redness of sky, yellowness of sun, roundness of sun] The question is, can you get to a point where you can't subdivide anymore, are there absolute elements of experience?
raldi 13y ago
Could the title be edited so that it doesn't sound like an obituary?

54 points by krg 13y ago

Makes me wish I had taken a class with him while at Tufts. It's a hard truth that you can usually plot a good course through your university experience AFTER you are finished.

whtrbt 13y ago
I got to see him speak in Melbourne last year, he has a very enjoyable speaking manner. If I recall correctly, it covered looking at things from a teleological perspective (as a tool for thinking, not as proposed fact) and then free will and morality in relation to that. I'm not certain, but I think there was the suggestion that believing we have free will is useful because it makes us act as though we have free will!

fluidcruft 13y ago

It's interesting because I'm from a neuroscience training and have traditionally and reflexively and argumentatively sided with the idea that things like consciousness and free will are emergent illusions. However, I've recently had a crisis of confidence when for some reason I tried to think about the fact that my experience of consciousness and color and etc does actually exist somehow inside the universe and that others seem to experience it similarly. Of course there's a similarity of physical structure that's common to brains that have those experiences. But more from the point of view of if you stumble upon some complex object for example, you could wonder whether it is experiencing the illusion of free will. If that's all purely emergent from known physical laws, we should be able to determine whether a particular object possesses/produces the illusion, right? So, that got me wondering what is the minimal hardware/spatial configuration that could produce this sort of illusion and are illusions actually "something"? It seems like it's presupposing that certain arrangements of matter generate "illusions" and yet we seem to want to insist that at some level these "illusions" don't really exist. How far down do illusions go? Some people are born blind or deaf/have strokes, so the illusion of color vision or sound can be isolated and removed from the illusion of consciousness. Do "and gates" experience some sort of atomic illusion of "and"? Can the presence of illusion be tested? Anyway, not sure I'm making a cogent statement, I'm still not entirely clear on what's bothering me about this, but something "feels" intuitively wrong/missing to me about the purely physical emergent neuroscience approach now.

manicbovine 13y ago
Have you read any of David Chalmers' work? He attempts to provide a framework for thinking analytically about qualia in "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory." [1] Nearly all of his papers are accessible via his website. [2] [1] http://consc.net/books/tcm/ http://consc.net/books/tcm/ [2] http://consc.net/papers.html http://consc.net/papers.html
- fluidcruft 13y ago
  Thank you for the book recommendation. I have not read David Chalmers' work, but I have seen his name mentioned often. I've been trying to figure out where to get started with learning about the current understanding of the mind-body problem and keep getting recommendations to start back with the Greeks and work forward (which seems both quite daunting but also baroque given lack of influence from modern neuroscience). I think I'll start reading there. Thanks again!
  - momerath 13y ago
    I would also recommend The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger.
- nessus42 13y ago
  I second Chalmers' book. It's an excellent introduction to how contemporary philosophers think about these issues.
gradys 13y ago
You might find The Mind's I [1], co-edited by Dan Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter, to be valuable. In particular, a piece called "Prelude... Ant Fugue" [2], written by Hofstadter, covers some of this territory. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I [2] - http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-fugue.html http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-...
VLM 13y ago
"If that's all purely emergent from known physical laws, we should be able to determine whether a particular object possesses/produces the illusion, right?" Lets talk about if a computer program, given some pretty simple physical and logical rules, halts, and is there any easier way to prove if all programs halt and what it's answer will be, other than pretty much letting it run and see what happens? So if I wrote an AI and asked it if it would end, it would not really have much to say beyond the mundane (when you yank the power cord or whatever). You can probably twist that into a free will argument somehow. Will asking it if it can prove it has free will (or consciousness) ever complete that program? It doesn't look like that program ever halts with biological processors and there seems to be no good answer.

vinceguidry 13y ago

> The elusive subjective conscious experience — the redness of red, the painfulness of pain — that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion. I wonder if the qualia debate isn't just an elaborate exercise in missing the point. Experience doesn't work the same way as matter, you can't subdivide it until you get the "experiential atom". Divide an experience into parts, what you get is separate experiences, each unique in their own right. What if, instead of trying to define the "fundamental experience", we instead acknowledged all experiences as unique, subjective to context and underlying biology, and moved from there? Someone's experience of red will depend on his rod/cone balance and his neuro-chemistry. He can think about a "abstract, ultimate red" but that will be an experience of thinking about red, not an actual ultimate red.

mjgoins 13y ago
That's pretty much Dennet's position.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  Right, I was hoping someone more familiar with the debate would offer the other side of it. Intuitively, qualia is an attempt to get to the fundamental nature of experience. But its endless divisibility seems to indicate that there is no such animal. Does the debate exist simply because some can't grasp the notion of a concept without underlying fundamentals? Or am I missing something?
  - manicbovine 13y ago
    What in the world do you mean by "endless divisibility"? In your previous post, you said that everyone may have a different experience of red, which is more like "endless variation."
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    > What in the world do you mean by "endless divisibility"? In your previous post, you said that everyone may have a different experience of red, which is more like "endless variation." A qualia is, according to Wikipedia, an "individual instance of subjective, conscious experience." Individual means you can't subdivide it any more and still call the divisions experience. The canonical example is the "redness of red". So, you'd look at a sunset, and divide that experience up into qualia, individual instances of experience. You might come up with [redness of sky, yellowness of sun, roundness of sun] The question is, can you get to a point where you can't subdivide anymore, are there absolute elements of experience?

raldi 13y ago

Could the title be edited so that it doesn't sound like an obituary?