Philosophy Overdose
A clip of Daniel Dennett discussing consciousness and what he famously calls the Cartesian Theater. This comes from a 2015 documentary on Dennett.
#Philosophy #Dennett #Consciousness
Source
The Illusion of the Cartesian Theater (Daniel Dennett)
Fantastic.
Nobody who understands Dennett's thought would listen to him.
The existence of subjective experience is undeniable, yet he tries to deny it. This is absurd and unintelligible. In his defence though, he does have a lovely house.
Only one of the four horsemen of new atheism could come up with a philosophical position as moronic as the nonexistence of consciousness.
Hint: if you think that Dennett makes some obvious mistake here, then you haven't though about this hard enough. Don't believe those who smugly dismiss him, they don't know any better. Try harder.
Get so frustrated at all the illusions perpetrated as facts, by majority and the establishment
Then I get this Dennett nugget and I’m good again for a while. Thanks
Daniel Dennett has been one of the most important philosophers of mind in the last 50 years. One can only bow to the dedication this man put into such a long career completely built on uttering bullsh*t about "consciousness is an illusion" and other contradictory catchphrases.
Somebody please summarize Dennett in one sentence for me and then summarize debunking Dennett in the next.
If anyone is interested, this is essentially Noam Chomsky's response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wyH-Tfz92U . This issue is far from settled imo, and can't just be "divided through".
Let's try to understand the Cartesian dualism with a new angle. The nature of consciousness is to misunderstand it when you are trying to use it consciously. It is apparent that there is distinctive demarcation line in the middle of the consciousness. non-intelligential consciousness and intelligential consciousness. Intellectural human beings will get lost inevitably by nothing but intelligent itself. The nature of intelligence is to invent some puzzlling boxes first and then playing around inside it. Languages, abstractive concepts, are good examples for such boxes.
It never ceases to amaze me that Dennett "managed" to get rid of consciousness but couldn't manage to get rid of free will ..
that was very inarticulate!! "they would.. and then they woooow.. but they shouldn't"
What a load.
How can consciousness not be important? Consciousness is what assigns importance.
Illusionism denies the obvious
i can’t say explaining himself is his strength (at least here). this is a muddle of metaphors & levels of analysis that never clarify.
I remember somebody saying that his book "Conciousness explained" should be rather called "Conciousness ignored".😂
Dennett is a wannabe evolutionary scientist, poser that smuggles his pseudo intellectual poetic prose under philosophy. After being a "philosopher" for 50+ years, this guy still never proposed a sound or even valid argument, or even argument at all. In his attempt to "explain" consciousness, all he does is, he presupposes that consciousness is generated by brain and voila! Now he goes on to show how certain parts of the brain are active when we are conscious, and how certain parts of the brain correlate to certain mental activity, and how there are some wrong intuitions about some other events, and how all of that means that there is no "us", there is no "I", there is only a mesh of neural activity that is being played in the background, while distorted senses finally result in the organization of the feeling of self identity. These are monstrous claims that need some coherent argumentation to support them, and it is easy to see why nobody yet, including Dennett, did so.
I don't think dennett has ever really had a clue what he is on about, listened to him a few times here and there and he seems to have a total lack of any grasp about what is ment by "consciousness".
Nothing but speculation.
Person who don't believe consciousness is not real goes on to prove his argument to me why he is absolutely right.. hmmm 🤔🤔
If consciousness is not real why don't he go to nearest wall and convince it. 😂
Our core self is not consciousness – it is awareness. Pure awareness uses the body and consciousness to be aware of itself and its life. The 'infinite regress' is a fallacy because the stream of perception terminates at awareness. The reason why it's so difficult to define is because, awareness cannot be anything of the things that it can be aware of.
I find Dennett conflates different sorts of positions in a way that confuses discussing consciousness. People don’t have to be perfect. His main argument is commonsense claims about consciousness is just plain wrong. And he has a repertoire of illusions to back up such claims. I find the existence of such unreal experiences in consciousness hardly convincing concerning knowing the real world. I have to know this world. How does pointing out unrealness in the human awareness of the world offers up an alternate practice that works better? Then Dennett conflates qualia which he knows is like saying we can never know what consciousness is with discussions about the realness of Cartesian theatre claim. One can’t both argue the realism character of consciousness and swing about the concept of qualia which says these discussions are unknowable.
Meh. He doesn't really say much of any interest or importance.
Physicists thought heat was transferred from a hot body to a colder one by a substance called “phlogiston “. And then discovered you don’t need “phlogiston “… heat is the kinetic energy of molecules. Then they thought that lightwaves travelled through and via the “luminiferous ether “.
Then discovered that lightwaves and all electromagnetic waves propagate through space… No Ether. Now Dennett proposes “experience “. Not a “self possessing experience “. Buddha said so.
Hume said so. Well I’ll be darned… they’re right.
Yes I agree, consciousness might be is a byproduct of neural reactions, and not the other way around, but that doesn't mean that the theatre isn't real. it's obviously happening. Maybe we can conclude that we are less free than we think, but everyone with an education knows that, so what's the problem here?
Also just because you're only electrochemical reactions, I don't think it necessarily means we are 100% conditioned
All of Dennets arguments rely on an inductive reasoning error that if there is something about our experience that is iluusional than everything must be illusional. It's a form of slipery slope fallacy of the type where you point to some animal species that eat meat, than say this proof that all eat meat which in turn proofs that the universe devours itself which means it can't be existing. Next he uses the word of illusion in a very contradictionary way. The word itself is useless if there is not something that is real and that it can be distinguished from, and sometimes he uses it this way (when claiming scientific insighs are true, but this are all filtered through qualia first) and sometimes he uses it in a sense that is different and selfcontradictionarily saying that basically everything we experience is an illusion. Next he conflates the meanings of "illusional" with "non-existing" to claim our experience of mind is non-existing and we hence can ignore qualia. The rest are just postulations that resonate well with a certain statistically measured human bias to think that other people are "delusional". And to lecture them about that. And to compartmentalize away that this would affect all ones own logic too. I am nevertheless happy to have watched several interviews Dennet through so that I can have a clear impression now on just how bad atheist phillosophy is. I always thought that maybe the fans of such philosophers got it wrong in the discussions I had with them, but the problem is in their leaders themself. I can not believe that such massive amounts of people can be fuled by such easy to see through faulty reasoning for such long amounts of time.
What a fool