We assume consciousness is a substance, an entity, when it may be a nothingness

I read the article. All Dennet is saying is that consciousness cannot be fundamentally understood by our own perception of it. In other words, the act of experiencing one's own qualia is not a fundamental or mechanical explanation as to what is going on.

This is further backed by the quote Strawson gives on Dennet from his 1993 expert, "“The idea that there is something like a ‘phenomenal field’ of ‘phenomenal properties’ in addition to the informational/functional properties accommodated by my theory” of consciousness “is shown to be a multi-faceted illusion, an artifact of bad theorizing,”"

Basically Dennet is shooting down the idea that you can have consciousness apart from the mechanical processes of the brain. Dennet believes consciousness is a result of informational and functional properties. There is no "consciousness" that is independent of this. It is not that Dennet doesn't think we call things pain, pleasure, etc,. What he's saying is these are the results of functional processes.

The way I view it is like a fire. A fire is the result of chemical processes combining with the wood and oxygen. There is no independent "fire" without these processes. Dennet is not denying fire exists, he's just saying that fire alone does not explain the fundamental cause of the flame, or the underlying process that we look at as a whole and abstractly call, "fire".

I would have to say that his point is best captured by his first sentence. That the other person is wrong. Lol.

Now to examine both statements and provide commentary on each including the individual perspective of both is another matter. Which I will attempt to do shortly. First we have to define what each concept (concepts that have been debated for millennia) "means" or rather what each party determines them to mean, respectively.

Strawson's view, as Dennett points out as inconsistent with his own, determines perceiving everything perceived or able to be perceived is consciousness. Which generally makes sense. You're reading this post from myself, and I've read and am now replying to a post from the OP. Hard to argue with that.

However, Dennett, from my interpretation, seems to hint that all that glitters is not gold, in a sense. Rather, we breathe depth and life into things that inherently don't have either. My best understanding of being "directly acquainted" with "fundamental properties" works out to a sort of "innate intelligence" which in my attempts to avoid the spiritual or metaphysical would be something along the lines of something inherently inside us all that differentiates our interactions with one another from the interactions of natural forces or elements ie. magnets, gravity, combustibility, cellular functions, etc. Which is technically by all available information just as plausible.

We interact positively with someone who we like or makes us feel good or at least doesn't possess any of the opposite traits or qualities, we interact poorly with those who do. So do animals. And beyond that so do the cells in both humans and animals with other cells. Where does one draw the line? Sure, we can create fancy machines and eloquent conversation with those we get along with or understand, but translating all that to a scenario where each of us are just tiny one-celled organisms or cells in a larger structure, are the things and actions they're responsible for not as remarkable as our own?

"No, we Deniers do not say this. We say that there isn’t any conscious experience in the sense that Strawson insists upon. We say consciousness seems (to many who reflect upon the point) to involve being “directly acquainted,” as Strawson puts it, with some fundamental properties (“qualia”), but this is an illusion, a philosopher’s illusion." - Dennett [bold mine] — Olivier5

Dennett's point is that Strawson has a mistaken model of conscious experience. Strawson then takes Dennett's denial of his model as being an instance of his model. But Strawson, and others who accept that model, are themselves subject to an illusion, since their model is mistaken.

That an illusion of consciousness isn't necessarily consciousness.

Put the two side-by-side; there’s more than a single point of contention involved here.

Strawson, to which Dennett replied:

https://web.ics.purdue.edu/%7Edrkelly/StrawsonDennettNYRBExchangeConsciousness2018.pdf

That an illusion of consciousness isn't necessarily consciousness. — bongo fury

Then he is wrong, since an illusion of pain is indeed a pain.

But is it? You've never had a dream where you felt extreme shock or pain essentially? Being asleep, how could you know there was a real physical pain responsible?

Strawson, and others who accept that model, are themselves subject to an illusion, since their model is mistaken. — Andrew M

What I’d like to know is how, in Dennett’s model, there can be ‘an illlusion’ as an illusion is ‘ an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience.’ What is it that is ‘wrong’ or ‘mistaken’, if not consciousness? What error does Dennett want to set straight in all his writings?

Interesting how Strawson writes by quotation. The Consciousness Deniers.

Yes, it is. A pain in a dream is still a pain.

Your use of "know" is curious. Do you require a justified true belief in order to "know" you are in pain? What is going on there?

Sure, and pleasure or satisfaction from a dream is still as it seems. But it wasn't real. Was it?

...real... — Outlander

...a signpost pointing up the philosophical garden path.

Real as opposed to what?

It's a real painting or coin as opposed to a forgery.

It's a real pool as opposed to a mirage,

It's a real flower as opposed to an artificial one.

It's a real pain as opposed to...?

What I’d like to know is how, in Dennett’s model, there can be ‘an illlusion’ as an illusion is ‘ an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience.’ What is it that is ‘wrong’ or ‘mistaken’, if not consciousness? What error does Dennett want to set straight in all his writings? — Wayfarer

The error is the "ghost in the machine" model of consciousness, with its presumptions of qualia, sense data, zombies and what not. To reject that model is not the same as rejecting consciousness, which has an ordinary usage independent of that model.

What I’d like to know is how, in Dennett’s model, there can be ‘an illlusion’ as an illusion is ‘ an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience.’ — Wayfarer

but this is an illusion, a philosopher’s illusion — Dennett

I don't think Dennett is defending something rather like "we think we're thinking but we're not". It would appear to be the philosophical theory that's at issue.

heh, crossposted with @Andrew M

Dennett actually studied under Ryle, IIRC, but he updated the "ghost in the machine" to the "Cartesian theater"

Consider standard philosophical examples of “qualia”—intense pain, orgasm, visual experience of Times Square at midnight. In Consciousness Explained, Dennett allows that it really seems to us that we have such qualia, but insists that it doesn’t follow that we really have them. I argued that this is a false move, because to seem to have qualia is necessarily already to have qualia...

(from Strawson's reply...)

Strawson has surely made his point here; much as I dislike use of the term qualia, there is a difference between having a pain and not having a pain... And in so far as Dennett concludes that this difference is an illusion, his view is dissonant with something very apparent to each of us.

I think Dennet is saying that qualia is substance -less. It is not in a simple soul and not a power coming out of the body. Feelings are nothingness felt by biological cells. Powers don't emerge from these cells like a magic soul of matter. What do you guys think?

I think Dennet is saying that qualia is substance -less. — Gregory

What?

What do you guys think? — Gregory

Do you mean that he reifies qualia? Treats them as if they were more concrete than theyare?

Less concrete. He sounds like a Zen Buddhist to me

The error is the "ghost in the machine" model of consciousness, with its presumptions of qualia, sense data, zombies and what not. To reject that model is not the same as rejecting consciousness, which has an ordinary usage independent of that model.
4 hours ago — Andrew M

Qualia is a jargon term that is only ever encountered in this context. The only place in the English speaking world where you will hear the term is in relation to discussions by our about Dennett and his philosophical confreres. And I think this is because it’s a contrived way of denying the undeniable, which is the qualitative nature of experience. Because Dennett beliefs that the entire domain of philosophy and science can be described in quantitative terms, which can’t accomodate the qualitative dimension of experience. So the tactic is, define in it terms which only other academics will respond to, and then argue it in those terms.

As for ‘sense data, zombies and what not’, this again is simply repetition of the standard arguments that Dennett, Chalmers, Churchlands, etc, have been hashing out for 50 years or so.

The reason Chalmers called his essay Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness is because he’s saying that there is something that has to be acknowledged - faced up to - about consciousness, that is, its irreducibly first-person nature. If anything at all can be shown to be irreducibly first person, then Dennett’s project fails. Predictably, Dennett then asserts that there is no hard problem - in other words, refuses to acknowledge anything to face up to. Dennett’s entire argument is that everything we know about human nature can be known objectively, i.e. in the third person.

On the face of it, the study of human consciousness involves phenomena that seem to occupy something rather like another dimension: the private, subjective, ‘first-person’ dimension. Everybody agrees that this is where we start. What, then, is the relation between the standard ‘third-person’ objective methodologies for studying meteors or magnets (or human metabolism or bone density), and the methodologies for studying human consciousness? Can the standard methods be extended in such a way as to do justice to the phenomena of human conscious- ness? Or do we have to find some quite radical or revolutionary alternative sci- ence? I have defended the hypothesis that there is a straightforward, conservative extension of objective science that handsomely covers the ground — all the ground — of human consciousness, doing justice to all the data without ever having to abandon the rules and constraints of the experimental method that have worked so well in the rest of science. — Daniel Dennett

https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/JCSarticle.pdf

Thomas Nagel says in review of Dennett’s most recent book:

Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”

Dennett has done a great service by showing the obvious self-contradiction at the basis of materialism, although he of course won’t see it that way.

Thanks for that link.

:smile:

Dennett has done a great service by showing the obvious self-contradiction at the basis of materialism, although he of course won’t see it that way. — Wayfarer

I agree. This idea that consciousness and qualia are illusions is simply absurd.

Rather, materialism is an illusion.

don't think Dennett is defending something rather like "we think we're thinking but we're not". — Srap Tasmaner

That's exactly what he is saying, though. It's an attempt to deny the cogito.

Interesting how Strawson writes by quotation. The Consciousness Deniers. — Banno

He writes well for a philosopher. I like for instance the argument that "consciousness is not only pizza".

Context is important, so fortunate to find a workaround for the subscription requirement.

All Dennet is saying is that consciousness cannot be fundamentally understood by our own perception of it. — Philosophim

I doubt that this is what Dennett is saying. If consciousness cannot be understood by our perception of it, then what does that say about our other perceptions of the world? Dennett ends up pulling out the rug from under centuries of observable science.

"I don’t deny the existence of consciousness; of course, consciousness exists; it just isn’t what most people think it is, as I have said many times."
It appears to me that Dennett is actually saying that consciousness exists, and then goes on about explaining that our interpretation of it is wrong, and that is what an illusion is.

A mirage is an illusion only when it is misinterpreted. It doesn't make the mirage not real. Eventually we are able to work out what the mirage really is, and then it becomes what you expect to perceive as a product of refracted light interacting with your visual system.

So I agree with Dennett in that science has barely begun to scratch the surface of what consciousness really is to the point where you can predict it's emergence based on prior conditions, like you can do with predicting that you will see a mirage given the proper environmental conditions.

The illusion lies more in how we interpret how the world actually is compared to how we observe it. Naive realism is the illusion - believing that how you perceive the world is how the world actually is, rather than how your consciousness is when observing the world.

The ultimate question that needs to be answered is how is it that evidence for my consciousness from my perspective is different than evidence for my consciousness from your perspective. I don't need to observe my brain or my behavior to know that I am conscious, but you do. Who has better evidence of me being conscious? If we cannot understand it by our own perception, which perception is he talking about - my perception of my consciousness, or your perception of my consciousness?

If consciousness cannot be understood by our perception of it, then what does that say about our other perceptions of the world? — Harry Hindu

To clarify, he is not saying we cannot understand consciousness from observation. Its there, it exists. We observe it, and we have our own opinions on it. But it doesn't explain what it is FUNDAMENTALLY.

Check my fire example for one. Another example is the screen you are observing right now. Does the light of this forum post explain the fundamental mechanical process that is letting you observe it right now? No. That is all Dennet is saying. Underlying the screen is a series of small pixels that are being turned into RBGY colors based on 1's and 0's on your machine. We don't see that. We see, "the illusion" of the entire process constructed into something more manageable and meaningful for us.

Perhaps Dennet's word of "illusion" is a poor choice. He doesn't mean the screen you're seeing isn't real. He's just saying that the underlying fundamentals are not the screen you "see". Without those underlying fundamentals, you would not be able to "see" the screen. But the "seeing" of the screen is not what's actually creating the screen.

And that's all I believe Dennet is saying about consciousness. The thing that we "see" is the result of the mechanical processes of the brain. But the end construction itself is NOT a fundamental, it is the result of the entire process. But I think we both understand this, we're just having a symantix disagreement.

The ultimate question that needs to be answered is how is it that evidence for my consciousness from my perspective is different than evidence for my consciousness from your perspective. — Harry Hindu

I don't think that's what Dennet is trying to address here.

‘Magic, Illusions, and Zombies’: An Exchange
By Daniel C. Dennett, reply by Galen Strawson — Olivier5

Dennett is saying that the dualist conception of consciousness is an illusion. Basically Strawson holds that consciousness is this magical thing that directly reveals reality to us, contrary to all knowledge about how we become conscious of things (e.g. how the human eye works). Dennett says that this direct awareness is an illusion, and he is right. We are unconscious of the mediators between reality and perception, therefore we perceive that we perceive things directly.

The main point Dennett is making is that rejecting the dualist consciousness is not the same as saying consciousness itself is an illusion. Consciousness is very real, it just isn't what Strawson thinks it is. Strawson's fallacy is that disagreeing with him about what consciousness is means that it doesn't exist. It's basically the same argument that Christians often use about morality.

magical thing — Kenosha Kid

Okay so if Dennet doesn't understand something, it cannot exist. Therefore Dennet's ignorance is magical: if he ignores a phenomenon, the phenomenon disappears by magic.

Okay so if Dennet doesn't understand something, it cannot exist. Therefore Dennet's ignorance is magical: if he ignores a phenomenon, the phenomenon disappears by magic. — Olivier5

That's basically Strawson's argument, yes.