Definitely not speech or writing. Hmmmm...I just can't seem to find a good example that illustrates thought that doesn't involve language. — Merkwurdichliebe

One simple example I gave earlier was a visual artist thinking in terms of shapes, relationships of shapes, etc.

I recall one change blindness experiment changed a sign in a photo from yellow to grey (or something like that) and no one noticed. — Forgottenticket

What does not noticing that have to do with qualia?

Also from the Frankish paper, he says that Dennett makes an analogy of consciousness to computer graphical user interface "illusions," where he says that Dennett says it's a "metaphorical representation of real neural events." If Dennett doesn't think that the metaphorical representation is a real neural event, what the heck does he think it is?

In the Frankish paper, he says, "For example, quasi-phenomenal redness is the physical property that typically triggers introspective representations of phenomenal redness. There is nothing phenomenal about such properties--nothing 'feely' or qualitative."

What the heck is he talking about? How could you have a non-phenomenal, non-qualitative introspective representation of phenomenal redness??

All the perception stuff Dennett shows in his videos is to show people can't be sure about their qualia and if they can't be sure about that then how can they commit to it being real. — Forgottenticket

All it shows is that consciousness doesn't accurately report the external world 100% of the time, but no one ever claimed it did. It wouldn't suggest any problem for qualia as qualia--that is, mental phenomena qua mental phenomena.

Well, if someone can figure out a way to make the notion of a nonphysical something/anything coherent, that would be a start. ;-)

So first, there are going to be stances that are at least functionally foundational in a given context for an individual. These are behaviors that people approve or disapprove of, categorically as stated, where they're not based on other stances. All morality starts from that.

And you have already rejected the notion of the relationship as being between two self-sufficient substances.

Unless I am missing something, you avoid the Cartesian nightmare by being a non-Cartesian, i.e., you are a materialist. — Arne

Correct. I'm a materialist/physicalist.

If the conventional focus on time with respect to appointments, schedules, deadlines, etc. causes you a lot of stress, why not make it a primary focus of your career goals to avoid jobs where you need to think about time that way?

A few examples of jobs that can offer an escape from the normal focus on time/scedules/ "the daily grind" so to speak:

* Be a freelance writer or novelist
* Go into businesses for yourself where you supply product to others without needing to personally supervise a retail or manufacturing environment. For example, if you were to hand-make some sort of high-end fashion item that you supply to select retailers
* Go into a scientific area that involves long-term, on-site field research. For example, biological surveys of wilderness areas, archaeological digs, etc.

Those are just a few examples. The right fit for you will depend on your exact interests, skills, etc., but it's important to think about these sorts of things when choosing career paths. Different things will be important to different people. Some people may hate the idea of being stuck in an office, some may hate traveling, some may hate not having a routine and a relative guarantee of a regular paycheck, etc. You need to think about your dispositions and what are the most important versus more anxiety-inducing things for you and make plans accordingly.

I cannot think for you. — I like sushi

Likewise, obviously.

There's the water at any rate. (for Baden, too.)

1. The very notion of "objective" is rooted in substance ontology, i.e., the subject/object distinction. — Arne

Whether it's historically/etymologically rooted in that or not doesn't matter. The distinction can (and typically does) simply refer to mental versus nonmental phenomena, which is a distincrion between a subset of brain function and things that aren't a subset of that particular brain function.

I disagree. — Arne

Okay . . . If only that were any help in making anything "transcendent." ; -)

Philosophy's value is primarily methodological. Its progress is primarily methodological.

All that does is beg the question as to where the "magic" occurs. — Arne

There's no "magic." Mentality is simply a subset of brain functions from the reference frame of being the brain in question. There's no "transcendence."

None of what you say comes even close to explaining how a non-physical thought — Arne

There's no such thing as a nonphysical anything. The very notion of that is incoherent. Thoughts are physical. They're brain states.

Unless you are suggesting that your thoughts are physical, in which case you are rejecting the notion of an external reality — Arne

Say what? Thoughts are physical. They're brain states. There are things external to brain states. That's external reality.

As I said above, "[It's] like saying that refrigerators aren't part of a refrigerator-independent world, but they're part of a world that mostly consists of refrigerator-independent stuff." It's just instead of refrigerators, we're talking about brains. We could talk about suitcases, bookshelves, guitar amplifiers--anything else instead. There's that thing and then there are the things that are outside of that thing.

Cannibals in Papua New Guinea can be falsely portrayed, and have been, as blood thirsty savages who kill people to eat them. — I like sushi

If someone is asserting something in a nonfiction context, and you believe they're wrong about it, then you just assert what you take to be the correct claim in counterdistinction to it. What's the big deal? People claim things people believe are wrong all the time, about everything it's possible to make claims about. You just state your counter-claim.

If it's a fiction context, "falsely portrayed" doesn't apply. It's fiction.

Because of the kind of misunderstandings as above such views of cannibal activity can be misapplied to others who practice cannibalism for various other reasons. — I like sushi

That doesn't make any sense to me. What's the "misapplication"?

3) Misuse is simple enough. This is by misnaming/misrepresenting a cultural item or tradition. There are multiple examples of this you can probably think of yourself. — I like sushi

So misuse isn't actually another idea? It's just another term for "misrepresentation"?

Yet it's being used as a comical outfit and the culture is deprecated and not respected with improper use of the costume. — ssu

Miss Finland was wearing it in a comical context? (Just curious--was she in a comedy movie, a comedy skit show, something like that?)

Also, it makes no sense to say that something is being deprecated and not respected just because it's set in a different context and/or it's not made by particular people/in a particular way.

If we’re talking about misuse, misapplication and misrepresentation of other cultures fair enough. — I like sushi

I don't think there's anything fair about that. You can't "misuse" or "misapply" a culture, and no one has a responsibility to represent a culture in any particular way. That seems related to what I call the "realism fetish" in aesthetics, which I hate especially when it comes to fictions.

And yeah, some of this seems related to the stupid arguments that people have been forwarding about intellectual property.

Even if people can make the conundrum seem a little less absurd by claiming you can interact with a mind independent world, they will nonetheless end up being unable to explain adequately the process by which such interaction is even possible. (they have been trying for 400 years and yet here we are.). — Arne

I don't believe there's anything difficult to it. As I explained earlier, you have a thought that amounts to wanting to type the word "word," and so your brain, via the rest of your nervous system, sends a signal that activates tendons/muscles that enable you to move your arm to the keyboard and move your finger to push the "w" key.

again, you are in the same circle. I consistently used the word "ALL" each and every time I used the word object. — Arne

No. Pause for a moment. Dusty wrote, "If we formulate existence as a property of objects."

I confused you and Dusty, but I was responding to a comment that began, "If we formulate existence as a property of objects."

If he had instead written, "If we formulate existence as a property of all objects," then there's no either/or to it. Very noncontroversially, "all objects exist," because we just stipulated as much in our formulation.

Actually, by the way, there's a reading on which "If we formulate F as a property of objects, then we must either admit that all objects have property F, or we must allow objects that have property not-F into our ontology" is innocuous for all properties, but typically in a philosophy context folks are suggesting something Meinong-like for the second half.

You seem to be going in the same circle. If existence is a real predicate that applies to all actual objects, — Arne

You wrote a sentence constructed like this: "If we formulate F as a property of objects, then we must either admit that all objects have property F, or we must allow objects that have property not-F into our ontology."

"If we formulate F as a property of objects" is different than stipulating that all objects have property F, " as you seem to be trying to sneak in with "If existence is a real predicate that applies to all actual objects."

It’s immoral that the Federal Government sanctions what supposedly free individuals can or cannot put into their bodies. — tim wood

Probably because that's more or less a foundational moral disposition for him: it's immoral to legally control what people can choose to do with their own bodies.

And some in the Sami community (and others people supporting them) have argued that only Sami ought to use the costume — ssu

Just curious what the heck their argument would be for that.

This sort of thinking is the exact opposite of my disposition. I dont think that only category x ought to do anything. I hate ageism (only people of age (range) x ought to do y) sexism/genderism (only people of gender x ought to do y), etc. I'm fine with anyone doing whatever the fuck they want to do (anything that we allow some people to do). The big evil in my view is trying to control/restrict what other people can choose to do.

When it comes to something like clothing restrictions, the only thing I can see having some merit is clothing restrictions for practical reasons, such as only police officers being allowed to wear police uniforms of the locale in question, or clothing and other items necessary for hygienic purposes--for example, I can see restricting someone from bleeding all over public places.

misapplications or appreciate the importance of others' cultural behaviours, practices, symbols, and artefacts and their vulnerability to abuse. — Baden

No one is obligated to "see the importance" of anything, especially since importance is subjective. Likewise no one is obligated to conform to what anyone feels is the "proper application" of anything.

Do you agree with the idea that in a mind-independent world, minds are part of that world? — leo

Minds aren't technically part of the mind-independent world, but they're part of a world that mostly consists of mind-independent stuff.

That's like saying that refrigerators aren't part of a refrigerator-independent world, but they're part of a world that mostly consists of refrigerator-independent stuff.

Then do you agree with the idea that in a mind-independent world, there are constraints to how things can move and what minds can do? — leo

Yes, but I'm not actually a realist on physical laws; at least not as physical laws are usually characterized.

in which everything behaves according to laws including the minds. — leo

"Mind-independent world" doesn't imply realism about laws, and it doesn't imply strong determinism.

If it is a mistake, nobody has succeeded in showing how you can explain the subjective in terms of the objective, which is what the hard problem is about. See Nagel. — Marchesk

The first thing we need to tackle is that we don't have a very good analysis of what explanations are/just what makes something count or not count as an explanation.

No one really seems to care about that. They just plow ahead making comments about whether we have explanations anyway.

No. It is just showing how all that is said of supernatural invisible gods is B.S. and lies. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I'm an atheist. I agree that none of the claims are true. But there's not at all a single reason or motivation for the claims being made.

First off, there is no objective quality in that value sense of the term. The dish that someone feels is inferior someone else might feel is superior. There's not a right answer there as to which is the better-quality dish. It's just whatever one an individual prefers.

Secondly, "a culture being proud" is a very loose way of speaking at best. Cultures do not have unified minds. They're comprised of individuals and different individuals in the culture feel different ways about various things.

Dennett, like Chalmers, Searle, etc. thinks that consciousness can't be fit into a physicalist explanation of the world. — Marchesk

If they'd just realize that this is a mistake . . .

1. Assume we belong to a mind-independent world
2. Then that world doesn't depend on our minds (that's a tautology)
3. So our minds don't have an influence on it — leo

"There is a mind-independent world" is another way of saying that there are things that exist aside from our minds. It's not saying that we can't influence the mind-independent world.

C'mon. You've got to be capable of coming up with a better argument than one that depends on a ridiculous interpretation of language.

I disagree as I see religions as con games and they are usually well thought out. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

You can see it that way, but it's ridiculous to. It's basically positing religion as a conspiracy theory.

Beliefs in things like Gods develop in a very messy, haphazard way. There's no single motivation to it. Even a particular individual will have multiple reasons for believing in something like a God. And certainly different individuals will have different reasons, different motivations.

My point is is that food can be a very vital and proud expression of one's culture, and if someone finds that someone is treating a culturally important cuisine haphazardly or indifferently, people, across cultures and ethnicities, can rightly get upset. — Maw

It's normative enforcement with a dose of purism/conservatism (in the sense of "resistance to change") to it, without the realization that there are no factual norms--no facts about what people should be doing, how they should behave. It's an endorsement of over-the-top peer pressure, as if that's unquestionably positive.

Exactly, it doesn't make much sense. And whenever I've seen Dennett talk about this stuff, he tends to ramble on about various, rather mundane optical illusions, in the traditional sense, as if that has some implication for claiming that consciousness itself is an illusion, but he never actually explains how consciousness is supposed to be an illusion.

Here's an example re a short bit of a TED talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness/transcript?language=en#t-240977

No one is claiming anything even remotely similar to "there are no optical (or other similar sensory) illusions." I don't know why Dennett is so fascinated with them, or why he thinks that rambling on about them, while doing nothing at all to say what the broader philosophical implications are supposed to be, while doing nothing at all to tie the examples together into any sort of philosophical theory or argument at all, is interesting. Dennett, to me, tends to come across as someone who kind of regrets his career choice, where he'd prefer to be doing research into perception, and specifically the various ways that the brain fills in information when it comes to perception, the various ways that we can get things wrong when it comes to perception, etc.

A more charitable interpretation would be that Dennett's not actually claiming that consciousness/experience/etc. itself is an illusion, but he does seem to be saying that, and apparently even the name of this talk was that. (Or, another possible charitable interpretation is that he's simply denying a view of what consciousness is, while saying that consciousness is really something else instead, but it's not clear just what the view he's denying is, just who would hold the view in question/just how universal that view would be, and both Dennett and well-known commentators on him, such as Nagel, Searle, etc. often do seem to be saying that Dennett is effectively asserting that there is no consciousness or that it's an illusion period.)

And it seems like people go, "Dennett says consciousness is an illusion. He showed us some optical illusions. So he must be right." It makes no sense.

Would it be considered being offended if one got upset when others got offended? — Coben

If one's offended when others are offended. Equating "upset" with "offended" is questionable. "Upset" is broader than "offended," as, for example, one is upset when one is worried about one's health, or when one is sad, but neither makes much sense to characterize as "offense."

They can jsut be as offended as loudly and emotionally as they like, since this also would no longer be offensive. — Coben

If you're trying to not be offended, then sure, ideally that wouldn't be offensive to you. It's not that no one is going to be offended, but why don't we try not to be, and also not treat it as taboo when someone offends the offendable?

Re some of the comments here, I don't agree, outside of humor discussions, that it's wrong to express vitriol, hatred, disrespect, either.

That's not to say that I'd endorse everything that anyone would say in any context, but "either you endorse it or it's wrong" is a false dichotomy.

Some on the right will be offended by someone wearing priest outfits, going as Jesus, wearing certain military uniforms if they are not earned, burning a flag, wearing the flag as part of an outfit, going as certain historical figures (per se or if there is something mocking about it) and so on. Hell, you can get beat up for wearing what is considered weird or the wrong clothes by conservatives. — Coben

How about if we (a) try to not be offended by anything, and (b) don't treat it as taboo to offend the offendable?

I wouldn't say that values "emerge through" interaction. They're just influenced by interaction. But they emerge from an individual's brain.

Also, what counts as "flourishing" is subjective , at least insofar as we're attaching value connotations to "flourishing."

You're talking about our relationship to things that aren't ourselves --the idea that we can get something outside of us wrong via our perceptual faculties. That's not at all what Dennett is saying.