Daniel Dennett – Why is Consciousness so Baffling? (Part 1/2)

47 thoughts on “Daniel Dennett – Why is Consciousness so Baffling? (Part 1/2)”

1. Everything is baffling. Anything that exists is baffling.

2. Couldn't it be that what we call consciousness is really the blood of the universe so-to-speak? What do I mean by that? It stands to reason that the universe is a source of creation with all the billions of stars and galaxies that it is composed of and to have all of it connected, consciousness is the invisible thread that holds it all together. Human beings, with their extraoridinary brains tune in to a broader wave-length of the universal consciousness than animals or birds etc. Consicousness makes life what it is: rich in every way imaginable. Morevoer, every living thing tunes into the universe in its own way and this is why all insects, birds and animals follow their consiousness map in their own way. A preying mantis tunes into the universe and follows what it percieves as its daily routine by being tuned into the universe with its specific capabilites. To recap: I think consicousness is the ether of the universe: it is the wisdom.

3. easily the best monologue by David Letterman

4. this is a pretty old interview. was it uploaded again?

5. How does anyone know that all the other things could exist without the feeling of it? I mean, do you really think you could have a conversation about what consciousness entails if nobody was conscious? Isn't consciousness the thing that's really hard to explain if you aren't conscious, and therefore even talking about it can't happen if you aren't?

6. Because you are immersed in consciousness, you cannot depart your experience to escape yourself and become objective as an outside observer might be to assess your condition. This is also why we cannot see God or know if there is God, because there is a parable of duplicity in the consciousness where in you are not alone as a single identity, you have a companion spirit enabling you to have a dialog with a second or third person within your own mind, to wit, if you believe then you are experiencing the rational reason of cause , why we believe in God. The God within us, argues for God to be outside of us as well. It is sort of a trigonometry solution, the inside angle is congruent and attached to the outside angle. If we were not alive as conscious persons, we would never think about God. But we think about God , proving we are conscious in fact.

7. Creature

8. He is explaining the Dahma. Same explanation that Gotoma gave in 300 BC.

9. "The qualia only make sense if you have an inner witness"

   No, Dan. The qualia are the inner witness. The qualia are the experience. They don't require some extra thing to be experienced. That's just nonsense.

10. At Dennett's deepest level of consciousness he knows without any shadow of doubt that he is completely, absolutely, irrevocably 100% full of pure nonsense.

11. Santa has it all figured out it seems.

12. But just like most of Dennett's other discussions I actually have been a part of, he does very little – actually nothing- to explain how sentience actually arises except to say it's an illusion. Just like his book "Consciousness Explained" there is very little of the "how" offered except to say it's all an illusion…which has prompted many of us deep consciousness thinkers to redub his book "Consciousness Explained Away". Anybody can make a claim of anything being an illusion but this statement adds nothing to what this actually means.

13. Thinking and thinking an thoughts all seen by consciousness. Because you see your thoughts. Who sees the thoughts? What sees the thoughts. Consciousness is the eye that never can see it self. It is before anything else. The things this man talks about is endless words who have only the quality of words, like the word tree has not one of the qualities or properties of the quality or properties of a real tree. The description is not the de scripted.

14. Consciousness is the result of a loop of neurons acting as a generator. It works the same way as when you turn up an amplifier too high and the loudspeaker begins to make its own sound in a loop between the microphone, the amplifier and the loudspeaker. When this "generator loop" is running, all the involved neurons are activated again and again creating this "inner feeling" which is Qualia.

15. I always wonder is a Dime a flat disc or really slices of a Sphere or Cylinder!? Substitute “Conscious for Dime”!? And we are the Observer getting a share!?

16. Despite the many inroads, mankind is enslaved

17. Is the whole more then the sum of its parts? Well, DD used pitch in music as an example. But music is so much more than whether it's 'in tune' or rhythmically correct. When a listener hears a totally committed performance of a masterwork by a concert artist, they are responding to the qualia of the musician. And very often it is a mass phenomenon. Thousands of listeners have agreed on this 'correspondence' and many recorded performances have become iconic over the century. They often listen in the privacy of their living room, so it's not mass psychosis. DD's notion of perception as presented here doesn't seem to account for this.

18. Again, who or what is experiencing the illusion?

19. it isn't baffling

20. I have heard all your podcasts on conciousness from various experts you have visited .
    You will get complete and satisfying answer to your life long quest in bhagvat Gita as it is by a. C bhaktivedenta swami prabhupad .
    Millions of people have .

21. Dennett seems to confuse consciousness with its content.

22. The center of narrative gravity, is just an abstraction.

23. At this point it is hard to believe Dennett even believes what he's saying. It's almost like he's trying not to laugh. The reasons as to why he'd keep up a charade would be of interest. If of course, he is even keeping up a knowingly false narrative. He might just actually believe it, poor guy. Well, we love ya' anyway Dan.

24. Seems like its a matter of mind…

25. “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” Stephen Hawking

26. If it just happened to be true, that as Stephen Hawking believed, the universe always existed, then consciousness also always existed.

    People in religion won't believe that, because they are certain that only if a conscious creator exists, can any living being be conscious.

27. Because it’s observed by unconscious masquerading as consciousness.

28. All those Bibles have the answers, homies and yet they never opened one during this talk. Curious.

29. I like how when they can't figure it out, they labeled it as an "illusion".

30. It baffling when we try to understand it through a materialist lens because it's fundamental to reality.

31. You're only going to get so far then you hit the wall of the conscious conscious and the unconscious of the other side you're never going to be able to achieve what I achieved I stand alone….. I have the unconscious consciousness plus the conscious consciousness which makes a hole all you can describe is the half

32. I myself declare that I feel I am nothing but an abstraction. Said I.

33. I wish more people would talk to each other like this.

34. 1.30 …er seems to sounds a bit like, we can't find it, so it doesn't exist?

35. Interviewer: You're super smart. Please, enlighten us to your life's work.

    Dan: Could we meet at my place?

    Interviewer: No, i'd like you to twist your 80-year-old spine backwards on a wood bench with bad back support in a house of worship you think is bullshit.

36. Vision +audio + smell = consciousness Hahahahahahahaahaha I do not think so.

37. 4:22 '' only humans have narrative gravity '''!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!—————————–How do you know that??????????????————————Only democrats have sense for justice. Is that It??????????????????????????

38. hhjh

39. Gravity is an illusion. Especially since the Earth is as the Bible describes it. Round. flat, solid firmament, immovable. How foolish the PHDs will look when God opens.their eyes to what is mostly foolishness the way they lean on lies.

40. gosh, you know, daniel dennett is so smart. and i feel i should believe his account, but when robert gave the argument from subtraction at the end, i found dennett's answer so baffling

    the fact is there is something left over. that's what's shown, i think convincingly, by mary's room. one can't just say "oh there's nothing there" because one can't account for the inner experience under question in one's system. that's cheating!

41. baffling location choice

42. Materialists….

43. Why does anyone take the opinion of somewhat has not studied consciousness through meditation, drugs, or other direct avenues seriously is beyond me. It is like talking to a fish who does not know the waters in which it swims. A zoologist who has never examined a real animal.

44. I think consciousnes is a signal or some form of energy whose presense allow us to decode/encode our experiences, including illusions which are also experienced that were decoded/encoded incorrectly based on lack of adequate sensory signals or experiences to interpret these signals.

    If consciousness is a result of a part of our brain and if it is matter, then it means that it dies with us, but if it is a form of energy (quantum of course) then how/if this energy is conserved is interesting to think through

45. Make it reductive if you do not understand it. Avoid seeing it as fundamental as that is a bridge too far. This is just a whole lot of shooting the breeze, nothing more. It no more explains consciousness than the tooth fairy explains the tooth.

46. Yet theres not a sniff of life anywhere in our Galaxy and according to Dennett we’re superficial and consciousness is one big illusion and spoof. Cosmic joke.
    It’s all guess work.

47. Like the knowledge you gained from many years spent in an ivory tower, it was just an abstraction.

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