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Does anyone actually agree with Daniel Dennett that consiousness is an illusion?

Brian2

Veteran Member
Value, like meaning and purpose, are qualities assigned to phenomena by the conscious observer; so it seems to me that everything of value is lost in the process of this form of reductionism.

It's not just emotion or sentiment that we discard if we dismiss the fundamental importance of qualitative experience as an aspect of consciousness; if we eliminate experience, we eliminate everything, from the human perspective. Without experience, nothing is left to us. Experience is literally all that we have, and all that we are.

Something to listen to while contemplating the posts.

 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
I think philosopher Dennett, like physicist Lawrence Krauss and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, is one of a number of experts in one field using the platform of that reputation to rattle people's chains with seemingly outrageous claims which exceed the limits of the field on which they are qualified to speak with any authority: "consiousness is an illusion"; "everything from nothing"; "selfish genes". Minus the assumed expertise anyone would think they were nuts. In case you can't tell I disagree strongly with Dennett and frankly wonder what his motivation is for saying something so outlandishly foolish.
I'd cut the ad homs if I were you, given you probably couldn't match any of these in discussion, and I've read both of From Bacteria to Bach and Back and Consciousness Explained, even if I've forgotten the details of both and never take notes (being an old geezer). I've also read much of Dawkins too, and he comes across as quite reasonable too even if he upsets many non-atheists. I think the point is that Dennett and others are just saying that consciousness seems to arise from brain processes and as such is not so mysterious as it seems. We might have to await for further evidence before such can be proven however. And isn't philosophy supposed to be looking at such things?
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Yep completely agreed. So if there is any illusion it is that our conscious minds (CMs) are in charge and the most important part of us. For Jonathon Haidt in The Righteous Mind regarding our moral volition, our intellect (CM) is like the Mahout sitting atop an elephant. We think we are in charge but most of our efforts go into making excuses for what the elephant does. This probably part of what leads some (but not me) to question free will. We have as much as we earn by creating a good relationship with that elephant. But if free will is thought of as unfettered force of will on the part of the Mahout, of course that doesn’t exist.



That is further than I would go but then I resist the idea that anything is just something else but especially the idea that the ‘material’ explains the phenomenon. Can you tell me why this move seems justified here or why it appeals to you?

Because the material has been able to find a reasonable explanation for everything that has occurred to this point supported by independently verified evidence.

Whereas a supernatural explanation could be anything since validation is not possible so not required. So I could create a supernatural explanation with no evidence to support it which would be as valid as any other supernatural explanation.

Supernatural explanations are as easy as breathing and more infinite than air so so why bother investing belief in any one of them?
I bet I can come up with more creative supernatural explanations than you can. Or maybe not, but I'm pretty creative.

So why invest belief in this one instead of that one when both are as likely to be valid or invalid?
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
Because the material has been able to find a reasonable explanation for everything that has occurred to this point supported by independently verified evidence.

Whereas a supernatural explanation could be anything since validation is not possible so not required. So I could create a supernatural explanation with no evidence to support it which would be as valid as any other supernatural explanation.

Supernatural explanations are as easy as breathing and more infinite than air so so why bother investing belief in any one of them?
I bet I can come up with more creative supernatural explanations than you can. Or maybe not, but I'm pretty creative.

So why invest belief in this one instead of that one when both are as likely to be valid or invalid?


Supported and verified where, if not in the consciousness of the observer?
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Supported and verified where, if not in the consciousness of the observer?

Which in the individual can be wrong. That is why you take the observation of many individual consciousness, independent from your own for reliability.

Sure they could still all be 100% wrong but if a majority of them observe the same evidence and haven't come up with a way to disprove the conclusion then that conclusion has shown itself in fact to be more reliable.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
Which in the individual can be wrong. That is why you take the observation of many individual consciousness, independent from your own for reliability.

Sure they could still all be 100% wrong but if a majority of them observe the same evidence and haven't come up with a way to disprove the conclusion then that conclusion has shown itself in fact to be more reliable.


Yeah, that's objectivity arrived at through consensus; which is as close to a true perception of objective reality as we can ever hope to come. But the whole process still occurs within the consciousness of the various observers. Not within any collective consciousness though, unless the participants have mastered telepathy.

The point is, knowledge is arrived at through experience, and confirmed (as far as it can be confirmed) when multiple observers testify to a common experience. Without experience, there is no knowledge, and without consciousness there is no experience, therefore the experience of consciousness is fundamental to all understanding and explanation. Indeed, without consciousness, reason wouldn't exist, and there would be no reasonable explanation for anything at all.
 

Whateverist

Active Member
Value, like meaning and purpose, are qualities assigned to phenomena by the conscious observer;

I’d prefer to say “discerned by the conscious observer” because that makes it sound less arbitrary - and I don’t think it is. We can get it wrong but we can’t choose what those will be, though we often must live from operational hunches until matters become clearer.
 

Whateverist

Active Member
I'd cut the ad homs if I were you, given you probably couldn't match any of these in discussion, and I've read both of From Bacteria to Bach and Back and Consciousness Explained

Saying those statements I quoted sound nuts is an ad hom to you? I’m a geezer too so I apologize if I raised your BP but I still think imputing volition to DNA, denying direct experience as consciousness and claiming everything sprang from nothing are deliberately misleading. I used to say consciousness was to brains as digestion is to the GI system but now that just seems glib to me and unhelpful as an answer to the hard problem.
 

Whateverist

Active Member
Whereas a supernatural explanation could be anything since validation is not possible so not required. So I could create a supernatural explanation with no evidence to support it which would be as valid as any other supernatural explanation.

The supernatural is not the only alternative to material reductionism, both are vacuous.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
The supernatural is not the only alternative to material reductionism, both are vacuous.

Yes, well I am referring to the physical nature of the universe. So the only thing not contained by the physical structure of the universe is the supernatural.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Yes, I do.

That is not to say that I believe that metacognition, awareness, or wakefulness do not exist.

However, the concept of "consciousness" is vague and often given traits that I do not believe accurately reflect reality. I think the "hard problem of consciousness" can only exist in reference to a form of consciousness that has no relationship with reality.

I am conscious right now, meaning that I am awake and self-aware. There is nothing inherently special about these features, though, in the way that the "hard problem of consciousness" proposes. I do not believe that phanerons "exist" or that qualia "exist." They are abstractions of patterns of activity in our nervous systems. What we call "red" is not a distinct qualia but how our eye reacts to a certain wavelength, the signals our eyes send to our brains, and how our brains react to those signals.

It can be understood, broadly, as a form of biochemical computation.

Questions about precisely when we can say that an artificial intelligence has gained consciousness or if they even can are, in my opinion, devoid of real meaning. Questions about whether "consciousness survives after death" can only be coherent when we conceive of consciousness as something other than a name for neural processes like metacognition, awareness, wakefulness, memory, identity, language, rational thought, etc.

Consciousness is a convenient metaphor or shorthand for real, physical processes but, in my opinion, it carries with it a variety of misleading baggage. This is quite in line with what Dennett has said on a number of occassions.

I think the quote you have given here attacks a straw man of Dennett's position.

The question is about reductive vs eliminative materialism, not about whether human beings are capable of mental processes.
Can you experience a red apple? If yes then the experiential qualia of redness exists. To say it does not exist will be ridiculous.
Next, does this experiential qualia of redness identical with a specific neurochemical pattern in the brain which arises during the qualia experience? The physicalists will say yes. But this seems dubious. To claim that two entirely different seeming things...a red experience and a neural voltage pattern...are the same, one needs to develop a model showing that they are in fact the same. For example it can be mathematically shown that all relations and characteristics that the physical variable pressure has can be replicated from the mean collision momentum transfers of gas molecules. Hence pressure IS identical with collisional momentum tranfer rates of molecules.
Nothing like that has been shown between red qualia and the neural voltage pattern. There is Zero idea so far as to how this can ever be attempted. Unless one can uniquely derive and predict the existence and uniqueness of various experiential qualia types from neural signals using first principles...no such identity theory can be justified.
Science usually ignores problems until there is a way to tackle it. Hard problem is one such. But just because science is silent on the problem does not mean it is not there.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
I’d prefer to say “discerned by the conscious observer” because that makes it sound less arbitrary - and I don’t think it is. We can get it wrong but we can’t choose what those will be, though we often must live from operational hunches until matters become clearer.


Yeah, I can see that. 'Discerned' implies that qualities are inherent to the observed phenomena, whereas 'assigned' suggests they originate in the consciousness of the observer. So to the idealist assigned is more appropriate, but to the realist, discerned works better. And to the monist, it's all one anyway.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
Saying those statements I quoted sound nuts is an ad hom to you? I’m a geezer too so I apologize if I raised your BP but I still think imputing volition to DNA, denying direct experience as consciousness and claiming everything sprang from nothing are deliberately misleading. I used to say consciousness was to brains as digestion is to the GI system but now that just seems glib to me and unhelpful as an answer to the hard problem.
Doesn't bother me, but you won't be taken seriously (by me) - as others won't who use terms like 'dunce' or 'simpleton' when they want to refer to others with differing beliefs. :D Just no need to use such terms.
 

Whateverist

Active Member
Can you experience a red apple? If yes then the experiential qualia of redness exists.

May I quibble? When I experience a red apple I think what I see is the redness of the apple in front of me, not something called qualia in my head. I'm not sure why it matters to impute a mental counterpart to link the outer to the inner. I think our senses actually do connect us to the world at large and that we are fully embodied in the world. I don't imagine that what we are is centered in our craniums where 'we' access the sensory displays made possible by our cognitive processing. We are present in our bodies as a unified being, where all the necessary processes take place to connect us to the world. Do you differentiate a body and a mind and if so which do you think is you, both? I just intuit that we are looking at this differently -entirely okay of course- but I am curious.

I see I responded too soon and should have read on:

does this experiential qualia of redness identical with a specific neurochemical pattern in the brain which arises during the qualia experience? The physicalists will say yes. But this seems dubious. To claim that two entirely different seeming things...a red experience and a neural voltage pattern...are the same, one needs to develop a model showing that they are in fact the same. For example it can be mathematically shown that all relations and characteristics that the physical variable pressure has can be replicated from the mean collision momentum transfers of gas molecules. Hence pressure IS identical with collisional momentum tranfer rates of molecules.
Nothing like that has been shown between red qualia and the neural voltage pattern.

Your answer is more extensive but I think we are in accord.
 
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Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
What I find interesting about this is where substance materialists will conclude consciousness is an illusion as a result of their axioms, the same conclusion can be reached with non-materialist maps of the territory.

In animism, it's understood that humans are only "conscious" because the world we emerge from is also "conscious" - or rather, the experience of life and living can be understood as a product of relationships between various actors and their circumstances in a way that is greater than the sum of its constituent parts. As "I" observe the "sky" there is a connection and relationship and a sharing happening between "I" and "Sky" that is experienced as "consciousness." It's hard to explain in words. I don't use the word "consciousness" myself anyway - it is a messy word that doesn't make sense to me because whatever it covers is inherently part of living in an enspirited world.
 

Whateverist

Active Member
Doesn't bother me, but you won't be taken seriously (by me) - as others won't who use terms like 'dunce' or 'simpleton' when they want to refer to others with differing beliefs. :D Just no need to use such terms.

Actually my use of crazy was to describe their statements -not their beliefs- which I think are probably deliberate attention getters. I doubt they think they have any belief at stake either in their statement or in my objection. Dawkins has said elsewhere that he regretted using 'selfish gene' as a metaphor so I don't think he really does think that is where our volition comes from while we ourselves are zombies. I think he is just being provocative for the attention. I don't like that.

I have never belittled anyone's beliefs nor would I. Just once while writing frankly about my own beliefs I precipitated the de-conversion of Christian Brit who was clearly miserable after. Now I am pro- everyone's faith. I think we all have faith in something, that is, operational beliefs which we hold without interpersonally sound justification. Some of us know we do and others are oblivious about where their faith lies.
 
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sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
May I quibble? When I experience a red apple I think what I see is the redness of the apple in front of me, not something called qualia in my head. I'm not sure why it matters to impute a mental counterpart to link the outer to the inner. I think our senses actually do connect us to the world at large and that we are fully embodied in the world. I don't imagine that what we are is centered in our craniums where 'we' access the sensory displays made possible by our cognitive processing. We are present in our bodies as a unified being, where all the necessary processes take place to connect us to the world. Do you differentiate a body and a mind and if so which do you think is you, both? I just intuit that we are looking at this differently -entirely okay of course- but I am curious.
There is no such thing as redness or blueness out there in the world. While a range of pure frequency do correspond to a color qualia, the phenomenon of metamerism shows that this is not so. It is quite clear from the science of the brain that the world that we see is just an useful model dynamically created in the mind/brain and is loosely correlated with the reality out there. So no...there is consensus that what we experience are brain created mental models rather than direct physical world as it is.
Metamerism (color) - Wikipedia
How the Brain ‘Constructs’ the Outside World
 
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