Aesthetic judgements switch at the drop of a news cycle, or the newest gadget, or supposed slight from a passer-by; — Mww

discursive judgements are bound by the knowledge relative to the times. — Mww

And what are the background discursive , valuative conventions ( knowledge relative to the times, as you put it) that makes such things as ‘news cycles’ and ‘technological gadgets’ comprehensible in the first place?

You are aware that an entire movement within the arts argues that what art is in the first place is cultural critique. Not that it should be but that whatever an artist for their own ostensive reasons decides to create of aesthetic value addresses and in some sense differentiates itself from a set of culture conventions., whether that is what they have in mind or not.
Every aesthetic or other kind of judgement that we make, no matter how trivial, gets its sense form a larger set of shared social values, and at the same time reinterprets those values.

Of course , I didn’t have in mind trivial aesthetic judgements , but the range of artistic expressions that you will likely to find if you walk into your local modern art museum or gallery. If you talk to those artists, you will find all sorts of complex underlying assumptions they share with the larger scientific community and which inform and direct their work.

Wouldn’t matter either way; it’s beside the point. — Mww

You mean it wouldn't matter if panspychism were true or that it wouldn't matter whether we thought it to be true?

Of course they do. Aesthetic judgements switch at the drop of a news cycle, or the newest gadget, or supposed slight from a passer-by; discursive judgements are bound by the knowledge relative to the times. Two different kinds of cycles of independent change. — Mww

Some likes and dislikes may change overnight just like some ill-considered opinions (I won't deign to call such opinions "discursive judgements", just as I wouldn't call such fickle likes and dislikes "aesthetic judgements").

Of course , I didn’t have in mind trivial aesthetic judgements , but the range of artistic expressions that you will likely to find if you walk into your local modern art museum or gallery. If you talk to those artists, you will find all sorts of complex underlying assumptions they share with the larger scientific community and which inform and direct their work. — Joshs

:up:

Do you see the distinction now? — Janus

I've never not seen it.

the reality of a perception-independent environment — Janus

I'm questioning the coherence of the idea of anything being 'perception independent'.

Despite your assertion I doubt you do grasp it, because if you did you would have no reason to erroneously contend that Dennett claims consciousness is an illusion.

Consciousness is real. Of course it is. We experience it every day. But for Daniel Dennett, consciousness is no more real than the screen on your laptop or your phone.

The geeks who make electronic devices call what we see on our screens the "user illusion". It's a bit patronising, perhaps, but they've got a point.

Pressing icons on our phones makes us feel in control. We feel in charge of the hardware inside. But what we do with our fingers on our phones is a rather pathetic contribution to the sum total of phone activity. And, of course, it tells us absolutely nothing about how they work.

Human consciousness is the same, says Dennett. "It's the brain's 'user illusion' of itself," he says.

It feels real and important to us but it just isn't a very big deal.

"The brain doesn't have to understand how the brain works". — BBC

Why you keep defending him, I will never understand but it's tiresome to keep having the same pointless argument over and over, so I promise not to say anything more about it.

I'm not defending him against anything but being misunderstood. I actually addressed @TheMadFool because he or she repeated that same strawman attributed to Dennett.

You may disagree with Dennett's assertion that our introspection-based intuitive assessments of what consciousness is are not reliable, and you may disagree that science will ever be able to answer the question of what consciousness is and how it originated, and I have no argument with your right to hold such opinions, my objection is to misrepresenting Dennett or any philosopher.

I actually disagree with the latter opinion myself, because I think the questions "what is consciousness?" and "how is it possible for consciousness to emerge from the physical?" are ill-formed and based on ill-informed views. Those kinds of questions seem to me like asking similarly ill-formed questions such as 'what is matter?' and 'how is it possible for material objects to exist'.

And yet these questions keep getting asked again and again. It reminds me of Heidegger's response to Kant's well-quoted lament:

“It still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us … must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.” Critique of Pure Reason, B519. "

"The “scandal of philosophy” is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again."

This is not an argument that is tiresome; what is tiresome is to have to keep correcting the same misunderstanding over and over. And re the quote from the BBC; whoever said that obviously shares the same misunderstanding. If you are going to quote something quote something from the horse's mouth to support your apparent view that saying our misunderstanding of what consciousness is is an illusion, and saying that consciousness itself is not real are one and the same.

You'll enjoy this, I'm certain. ;)

https://www.academia.edu/37649217/Dunking_Dennett

I don't agree with Strawson's claim that Dennett is denying the existence of consciousness on the grounds that he uses the word in a way that "excludes what the word actually means", but at least he attempts to argue his case.

Smells like ordinary language philosophy. :chin:

Well, if you can tell me what Dennett says consciousness is, then there's no issue. Dennett takes Strawson to be his most vocal critic and said that Strawson would have been a good candidate to include in Consciousness Explained:

"I thank Galen Strawson for his passionate attack on my views, since it provides a large, clear target for my rebuttal. I would never have dared put Strawson’s words in the mouth of Otto (the fictional critic I invented as a sort of ombudsman for the skeptical reader of Consciousness Explained) for fear of being scolded for creating a strawman. A full-throated, table-thumping Strawson serves me much better. He clearly believes what he says, thinks it is very important, and is spectacularly wrong in useful ways."

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/04/03/magic-illusions-and-zombies-an-exchange/

Strawson clearly states what he thinks consciousness is: ."..experience that has a certain qualitative experiential character."

Dennett says this is not true.

It's a part of it. But all he's saying is that Dennett is using the word "consciousness" in such a way that it excludes what most people take consciousness to be.

The difference between saying "I am seeing the blue sky" and saying "it seems like as if the sky you're looking at is blue, but in reality it's "bad theorizing" " is a huge difference.

Dennett is using the word "consciousness" in such a way that it excludes what most people take consciousness to be. — Manuel

Most people don't think about consciousness the way philosophers do. And I think it's wrong to insist on a "usual definition".

Depends on which philosopher you have in mind. But let's grant that.

By granting it, you are going to have to justify why you are using the (now) technical word "consciousness" to mean something else besides the usual meaning of the word.

This is what physicist do when they use terms like "energy", "mass", "velocity", etc.

If you can't do that, then I don't see why we should use a technical definition, because it doesn't modify on our usual way of using the word, so it doesn't really serve a purpose.

By granting it, you are going to have to justify why you are using the (now) technical word "consciousness" to mean something else besides the usual meaning of the word. — Manuel

I don't believe we have to justify the way we express ourselves. How does one go about doing that? :yikes:

If you can't do that, then I don't see why we should use a technical definition, because it doesn't modify on our usual way of using the word, so it doesn't really serve a purpose. — Manuel

There are also different ordinary definitions of consciousness. Do we also need justification for one definition over the other?

As I understand it Dennett favors a functionalist view of consciousness. On that kind of view consciousness emerges because of "causal or other functional relations among sensory inputs, internal states, and behavioral outputs". *

Dennett denies that zombies are possible or even conceivable, so Strawson's assertion that Dennett really thinks we are all zombies is not accurate. What he does say is that there is no coherent distinction between us and zombies, because anything that was physically constituted as we are would experience the same as we do.

"Can we really imagine zombies? Daniel Dennett thinks those who accept the conceivability of zombies have failed to imagine them thoroughly enough: ‘they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition’ (1995, p. 322. Marcus 2004 makes a related point; see also Woodling 2014). Given his broadly functionalist model of consciousness, he argues, we can see why the ‘putative contrast between zombies and conscious beings is illusory’ (325. See also his 1991; 1999). Consciousness is ‘not a single wonderful separable thing … but a huge complex of many different informational capacities’ (1995, 324. Cottrell 1999 supports this approach).*

*From here

From the Strawson paper:

“Are zombies possible?” Dennett asks. “They’re not just possible”, he replies, “they're
actual. We're all zombies” (1991: 406). Here his view seems very plain. His view is that
we’re not conscious at all in the ordinary sense of ‘conscious’. He adds a footnote—“it
would be an act of desperate intellectual dishonesty to quote this assertion out of
context!” (1991: 406)

I take Dennett to mean that if we accepted for the sake of argument that zombies are possible, then we would all be zombies (just because they are physically identical to humans). And that's what he means by saying it would be an act of intellectual dishonesty to take this out of context (in other words to claim that he believes zombies are really possible, and that we are all zombies).

Strawson says that Dennett's view is that we are not conscious "in the ordinary sense of conscious"; which I think should be taken to mean not in the sense of being conscious that we intuitively (and by implication, naively) believe in, and of course there is no problem accepting that is Dennett's view, since he explicitly endorses it..Just as naive realism is prereflectively common, so it goes with naive idealism too.

I don't believe we have to justify the way we express ourselves. How does one go about doing that? — Wheatley

Not for every single word. That would take forever an be pointless. No, in philosophy we try to clarify or elucidate the phenomenon in question: free will, idealism, compatibilism, psychic continuity, etc.

That's why we have these topics being discussed, we want to understand them better.

There are also different ordinary definitions of consciousness. Do we also need justification for one definition over the other? — Wheatley

We not infrequently say what we mean by consciousness: we say we mean personal experience, of the fact that it allows us to see qualia, etc.

For the ordinary usage of a word, we usually don't introduce clarifications, that's why it's ordinary usage. It doesn't mean that we are using the word optimally. But in ordinary usage, we usually get what the other person is talking about. Not always, of course. But, often enough.

It's true, but the fact that it's true won't make any difference to those who wish not to accept it.

We had a thread on Strawson's panpsychism a little while back, which I'm also highly sceptical of.

My position is very simple - mind is real and immaterial. Therefore materialism is false.

Strawson's assertion that Dennett really thinks we are all zombies is not accurate — Janus

OK then, if not zombies, how about robots?

“I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn't make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions,” he said. “Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?”

- Daniel Dennett speaking with The New York Times

Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable? I think it's perfectly obvious. Science is inherently restricted or limited to what can be objectively known. And, as subjects of experience, humans are out of scope for science.

Given his broadly functionalist model of consciousness, he argues, we can see why the ‘putative contrast between zombies and conscious beings is illusory’ — Janus

It's true that experience covers many areas.

The one area in which it is not prone to doubt, for most people anyway, is that we have experience, we experience things: colours, sounds, smells, novels, movies, music, etc.

A zombie wouldn't have these capacities, it would just behave as if it experienced these things. But we can do that with AI, it's says nothing about experience, because behavior is only data, not a theory.

in other words to claim that he believes Zombies are really possible, and that we are all zombies — Janus

If he doesn't accept it, good. If he does and he says that we are indistinguishable from Zombies, then the single most important aspect of being a human being is rendered illusory.

to mean in the sense of being conscious that we intuitively ( and by implication, naively) believe in, and of course there is no problem accepting that is Dennett's view, since he explicitly endorses it.. — Janus

Correct. But I don't see how any theories offer a more accurate account that our intuitions, in this case.

It's true, but the fact that it's true won't make any difference to those who wish not to accept it. — Wayfarer

Which would be fine, if it made any sense.

We had a thread on Strawson's panpsychism a little while back, which I'm also highly sceptical of. — Wayfarer

This paper has nothing to do with panpsychism at all. I agree with you, I don't think it holds up.

My position is very simple - mind is real and immaterial. Therefore materialism is false. — Wayfarer

I agree that mind is real. And that "materialism" is false if it implies scientism.

We can put immaterialism aside for now.

Anyway, I'm off, it's kind of late here. We may continue talking this if you wish. Or not.

It's all good.

I mean, there is a clear distinction between zombies and humans, though. We can't be zombies. We have a special spark of life that makes us not-horrifically-uncanny to each other.

But I digress, dipshit talking here, carry on.

That said, I'd posit experience, or qualia, is primary and all thought is just gymnastics. You can't explain consciousness as it utterly defines itself through experience rather than logic.

OK then, if not zombies, how about robots? — Wayfarer

I don't think Dennett means we are robots in the sense of lacking any experience. He thinks experience and consciousness are real, and are functions of organisms such as ourselves that are unimaginably complex molecular machines. What he does deny, as far as I understand him, is qualia. We experience things, and those things have qualities or better, are qualitative, but there is no quale over and above that.

Much of the way we think about these things depends on the way we habitually talk about things. For example, we taste beer, that tasting is the experience; there is no experience of the taste of beer apart from that. The fact that we can talk about the taste without talking about the beer doesn't entail that there is some quale "the taste of beer" over and above tasting beer, just as there is no redness apart from red things.

Another common example is that we all talk about having a body and having a mind; which fosters the notion that there is soul independent of the body (and of the mind?). ( That said we someimes even talk about having a soul; what's up with that? :chin: ). It is simpler and seems more accurate and less problematic to say that we are embodied minds or enminded bodies.

Just as naive realism is prereflectively common, so it goes with naive idealism too. — Janus

We have a special spark of life that makes us not-horrifically-uncanny to each other. — theRiddler

That 'special spark' is exactly what is being denied:

Dennett summarized his position in an interview in The New York Times
in 2013: 'The elusive subjective conscious experience - the redness of red, the painfulness of pain - that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion.'

----

I don't think Dennett means we are robots i — Janus

You don't think Dennett means anything he says, because if you thought he did mean anything he actually says, then you would flee screaming from it. :lol:

Make no mistake - Dennett seems a nice person, civil, educated, and so on, but his "philosophy" so called is utterly soul-destroying and a symptom of "the decline of the West".

Not for every single word. That would take forever an be pointless. No, in philosophy we try to clarify or elucidate the phenomenon in question: free will, idealism, compatibilism, psychic continuity, etc.

That's why we have these topics being discussed, we want to understand them better. — Manuel

hmm... This seems very similar to the discussion I had with @Banno earlier. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/607745 I guess it's just a matter of discussing philosophy the right way. (conduct? :chin: ) Thanks for your time. :smile:

Maybe, for some, if they get an inkling of the implications of the existence of the personality, it's easier to deny it as an illusion. It just seems less fanciful. But how do you put into words the universe that is implied by the existence of our very real personalities.

I don't think Dennett means we are robots i — Janus


You don't think Dennett means anything he says, because if you thought he did mean anything he actually says, then you would flee screaming from it. :lol:

Make no mistake - Dennett seems a nice person, civil, educated, and so on, but his "philosophy" so called is utterly soul-destroying and a symptom of "the decline of the West". — Wayfarer

C'mon Wayfarer, taking what I said out of context like that is "an act of desperate intellectual dishonesty".

But, in any case I don't flee screaming from the idea that we are unimaginably complex molecular robots, and I could never take seriously the idea that we don't experience anything ( which I know Dennett does not espouse) so nothing to flee from there. I expect nothing from this life other than the challenges and joys presented by the living of it. I neither affirm nor deny there is an afterlife; I am profoundly indifferent to the question; I like to cross my bridges when I come to them or fail to cross them when I don't. :wink: I disagree that Dennett's philosophy is soul-destroying to anyone who doesn't feel a need to believe in an immortal soul.

Also I think the "decline of the West" is political, social, economic and ecological, and hence a spiritual decline in a certain sense, but definitely not in the way you mean it. I think Dennett is an important subtle and creative thinker, even though I don't agree with all aspects of his thought (those that I am familiar enough with to have an opinion about, of course). You should try reading his work some time. Even if you feel you hate his ideas, remember the old adage "keep your friends close and your enemies closer": it pays to know really well what you seek to oppose, and who knows, if you maintain an open mind, you may even find you agree with him about certain things.

I actually addressed TheMadFool because he or she repeated that same strawman attributed to Dennett. — Janus

It isn't a strawman. Dennett went on record to say that consciousness is an illusion. I find that interesting by the way. It gets my juices flowing, not that I have anything to show for it.

And I say I’m not the one misunderstanding him. I’ll leave it there except for this review.

Dennett went on record to say that consciousness is an illusion. I find that interesting by the way. It gets my juices flowing, not that I have anything to show for it. — TheMadFool

Of course it's an illusion. In the litteral sense. An illumination inside of matter. He thinks it's an illusion in the sense that it's not real. That it's all matter and we are deceiving ourselves in claiming it to be real. That it's just a necessary aid in a complex structure like the brain with which we interact while engaging in the physical world. How can a dog be unconscious when searching for a lost bone? She can't. He is a materialist though, claiming there is nothing more than matter. And in that sense, consciousness is an illusion. But who says this is true? Luckily, not for me!

And I say I’m not the one misunderstanding him. I’ll leave it there except for this review. — Wayfarer

And typically nothing directly from Dennett to support your claim. Reviews of Dennett by others are not definitive in establishing just what it is he wants to say. I don't take your view on the matter seriously on account of the fact you haven't read him apart from anything else, and the fact that even mention of his name sends you into an hysterical attitude of self-righteous dismissal doesn't help.

Dennett went on record to say that consciousness is an illusion. — TheMadFool

If you want to support that assertion then quote directly from Dennett.

Not that this is very surprising. After five decades, it would be astonishing if Dennett were to change direction now. But, by the same token, his project should over that time have acquired not only more complexity, but greater sophistication. And yet it has not. For instance, he still thinks it a solvent critique of Cartesianism to say that interactions between bodies and minds would violate the laws of physics. Apart from involving a particularly doctrinaire view of the causal closure of the physical (the positively Laplacian fantasy that all physical events constitute an inviolable continuum of purely physical causes), this argument clumsily assumes that such an interaction would constitute simply another mechanical exchange of energy in addition to material forces. — David Bentley Hart

I think Hart has misunderstood the problem of causation for mind-body dualism as first set forth by Elisabeth of Palatinate. It's not that only that the laws of conservation of energy would be violated but that physical theories are sufficient to explain phenomena, including the mental. An immaterial mind would be as unnecessary as God was to Laplace's theory as immortalized in his statement "I had no need for that hypothesis", a reply to Napoleon's query "where is God in your theory?"