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42 thoughts on “Daniel Dennett: (Big Thinker video?)”

  1. CORRECTION
    You're not your…
    I hate typos enough to spam your comment page with my corrections…I wish I did not have the compunction to do that…too much grad school!

  2. You're wrong, Dennett would, and already has, said that our creativity is ultimately part of the evolutionary process, a function of the algorithm in this environment. Check out Dennett on the "intentional stance."

  3. @valhala56 What are the properties of that illusion? Why is it called an illusion? We say the mind and everything else is just a mechanical robotic process but then somewhere along the way the "illusion" came forth but we know it's not really what we think it is? What you're really saying is nature evolved art, science and everything else. None of it was created even if we think it was. The emergent layers of our minds and reality are forgotten. They still haven't been accounted for.

  6. @2bsirius "just yesterday, MIT Researchers published their work on successfully creating an ‘analog’ chip which mimics brain synapses, and receptors."

    And only a few months ago. IBM came out with SyNAPSE, part of IBM's Cognitive Computing Project :

    watch?v=agYJSdMWXYQ

  9. @valhala56 If you ever defy the law of gravity, you would prove it wasn't a physical law. The law of gravity doesn't state that no amount of force can make an object leave planet earth so flying or jumping does not defy gravity even temporarily.

  10. As to your comments on Descartes' thinking subject, I'd suggest a little Hegel to empty out that previously substantial subject. The barred subject cut off from itself by symbolic reduction (hegemonic interpellation, subjectification) creates the very parameters within which the object, its excess remainder, exists. In other words, the emptied subject is the space which allows for the object to reside within it. Universal truth is possible only from a partial, subjective position.

  11. /part one/
    imho saying that consciousnesses is explained by some algorithmic activity of the brain is like saying that Mozart's symphony is explained by its musical score. "See, that's what it is: no magic, just algorithms".
    It seems to me that naturalists want to claim definitive answers for very complicated phenomena by dismissing some questions (why) as wrong, turning a blind eye at the same tie on the fact that even the right questions don't prevent but even provoke more questions.
    /tbc./

  12. /part two – cont./
    Only by dismissing the why question are naturalists able to claim the purported final solutions. So who's talking about hubris now?

  13. @valhala56 So, "overcome Earth's gravitational pull" is what you are now saying is what you really meant. But I don't see how that is an example that proves any point in your discussion with coaxx, which is why I assumed that wasn't what you meant. It wasn't because I was trying to troll you, so chill.

  14. 2:22 Because somebody says "create" instead of "evolve" therefore we must conclude there exists some great distinction between these two words? You seem to imply that these AI peoples neglect incorporating evolution into their designs and theories, which is absurd.

    13:50 You assert that what really matters for sentience/consciousness is the constituents of our body, not just its functionality. Care to substantiate this claim? Can you even conceive of any way to go about establishing this?

  16. Dennett is an idiot.

    He asserts many things that are not proven. He calls himself a philosopher but he seems to mindlessly believe in scientism and physicalism. He seems to completely fail to question the foundations of his metaphysical framework. His advocacy of a unproven hypothesis borders on dogmatic.

  17. Dennet doesn't only explain (self)consciousness he also creates and transforms it. He is a revolutionary part of an evolving process. For sober Dennet there is no God but he helps nature as an "human all too human" 'creationist'. Content in our minds are social embedded: cultural software is underestimated by some Big Hardware Thinkers. Gratitude as warm attitude
    is important function in our cool society. With language we program ourselves, without it connections neurons change or… die.

  18. @ja524309 This was also my question as to why there is any great divide between create and evolve, or why evolution would be seen as "blind" or "random." When I engineer a new design I often go through many prototypes which fail and succeed in unexpected ways, and so "naturally" I select successful designs even when their type of success was surprising or annoying. At some point natural selection becomes faster and more efficient & we call it consciousness & creativity.

  20. In Dennet's arguments I see to much of the pink elephant logic fallacy. setting up a long point of view on a system on nature/science only to hear in the back of my head – "but elephants aren't pink". observation often trumps reductionist logic. The purpose of reductionism is not to prove the universe is elegantly simple or operates in simple patterns – the universe operates in ever increasing levels of complexity,…

  21. @Afterfauve007 Half way through any reductionist video on brain function I usualy cringe having followed the Charlie Rose series on the brain & often finding the 2 views in conflict.- it goes beyond sinapses, chemicals and bio-mechanisms – it goes into algorithms and electro impulse patterns, brain elasticity, consciousness, thought processes, and each aspect uncovers yet even more questions.

  22. @Afterfauve007 If you have watched the Charley Rose series on the brain and seen how careful the speakers are talking about what thought and consciousness are you come to the realization that anything we can assume from these words associated with brain function don't exactly mean what we thought they did, and Dennett's arguments really begin to look pathological.

  23. We come into an odd case of having to decide how we identify ourselves. Without the entire universe and its history, I would no longer be- so then am 'I' comprised of the universe?

    If we identify things by what they are reducible to, that would have to be the case. But there is another possible paradigm that we are probably more intuitively using (which only can be applied to people): what am I aware of as being aware? That would be the part of me that is self-aware.

  24. I disagree with your distinction between the robot's awareness and our own. If the robot's mind functions the same way ours does (as in it performs the same awareness processes even though they are run through a different medium or configuration), then it would be aware of itself just as we are aware of ourselves. The only way it would know that it was created was if we told him that was so and convinced him of it.

  26. It is more difficult to design a bird than it is to design a poem, but it is more difficult to evolve a poem than it is to evolve a bird. Finally, it is exceedingly more difficult to design an intelligence that can design a poem than it is to design a bird.

  28. I doubt Dennett would deny any of the mechanisms you mention, but when he is talking about consciousness he is talking about the first person experience of being an agent. Not about the causal process that produced that agent. It's possible to disagree with that definition of course, but then you're just talking about something else. He's also not talking about reproducing every aspect of human consciousness, merely producing self aware agents.

  29. Dennett is not a philosopher, he's a professional academic. He will fade in history. He is like most 'true believers' – he is just interested in building an airtight religion rather than in genuine inquiry. He is so patently and shamelessly incoherent that he is not even worth wasting breath on…so I guess we are both fools.

    Everyone knows the mind has a heck of a lot to do with the brain – this is not something anyone should be rewarded for noting. The full story is far more subtle.

  31. Where is Dennett smuggling in this "creator" mind from if he had already established that it didn't exist? Why wouldn't we just look at potential A.I. as yet another new type of mind (potentially) that evolved in tandem with our own? That is, a further symbiosis (this time between the monkey and silicone). I think you're dead right that Dennett isn't actually a materialist in so far as he maintains this hidden dualism.

  33. The mind isn't just a neuro-chemical mechanism, rather a neuro-chemical reflection of its dependance on larger environmental relations.

  34. I need to make a whole full blown response video to this because I have so many things to say. But just to start out – that video is far too short to explain the book **Consciousness Explained** They totally left out the whole thing about UNWITTING FICTION, which is like the entire core of the book!

  35. Second — this thing about Dennett denying materialism because he sneaks in functionalism. Dennett himself is aware of this problem, and that is why he calls himself a **Hetero-phenomenologist**. To be more precise, Daniel Dennett argues that the human social condition is one of "hetero-phenomenology", rather than he himself taking that position. A recognition of a cluster of personal phenomenologies existing among a human group puts one outside that group (per se).

  40. Surely 'created by science' resolves to 'evolved by nature'? In the same way that parakalpita resolves to paratantra – buddhist terms for describing the nature of consciousness.

  41. I watched it.  I am certain that Touring could have eliminated and replaced Dennet's mind with something insentient with no problems.  Science/scientific method could do nothing else. In fact I suspect that is just what we are witnessing here – a "wonderful lifelike mental world…" that looks and sounds like Dan Dennet.  Touring got the condescension factor just right too.  Very convincing.  Thanks for the heads-up.

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