Daniel Dennett on Deflating Consciousness

34 thoughts on “Daniel Dennett on Deflating Consciousness”

1. I agree to some extend, yet I find it VERY hard to converse with a stone in a meaningful way. May be I should switch drugs? 😉

2. The True Randomicity ™ will be an illusion then, and evolution (Evolution) will stick to it's local five sided dices which are part of the "determine this" functionality of the World 🙂

3. Dont judge a book by its cover. I'm not trollin'. I love hearing what most philosophers have to say. Dan is just hell best on taking the mystery out of things and he fails to deliver any true wisdom, IMHO, of course.

4. Yep, the prerequisite for the Magic of new misteries… wouldn't you agree? 🙂

   [ I could tell you how he helped me but that's another story. Basically he pulled the plug of this bottom line called life yadda yadda yadda 😉 Love long and Prosper ]

5. If he has helped you then that's always a good thing. There was a stage where I can say he, along with Richard Dawkins,Chris Hitchens,Sam Harris ect helped me too.I learned a lot from them all.Don't stop searching for truth dude and try not to fall into the trap of fundamentalism,no matter whether it's religious based or material based.That's all my original comment was based upon.At the end of the day I encourage all free thought in relation to this puzzle of life that we have been born into.

6. Ah! Don't worry I, admire them as much as you probably do (i guess so), books and everything. The trouble is, you start liking them too much and Idolizing them as if they are machines (which I don't really can reconsile with my organic understanding. think waves vs. particles.)

   [ I am a Virian -> check out church of Virus, you will like it. Excuse me for my word by my proffession is computer programming and I was in a Holly quest for seeking Honesty on the internet. k ] bye

7. Well said. Truly free thought is not encouraged in the western world in my experience; it's something you make a *conscious* decision to do and something that improves with practice, no doubt. My feeling is that therein lies the clue to the true nature of the human condition and how that relates to existence. Dennett would deny this I'm guessing.

8. Maybe hate is too strong a word – it bothers the hell out of him that we don't have anything near a satisfactory description of the nature of consciousness though.

9. I don't see why you should equate non-physical with 'magical' or why consideration of the former is an admission that you've run out of ideas (are ideas 'physical'?). If consciousness turned out NOT to be a physical construct then there would be no point in wishing it was physical so that we could 'test/understand it'. Science has to deal with actuality and there's a good deal of evidence that the concept of 'matter' falls short in a satisfactory explanation of what is.

10. 'by magic, I actually mean a physical effect with no physical cause.'
    But that's exactly what QM is telling us. Materialism (physicalism) does not successfully describe existence. That doesn't mean you resort to 'magic' as an explanation.

11. You don't need a Nobel prize to read a paper. What's your point? That materialism is correct?

12. It's not that it's controversial it's more that they can't quite believe it. It seems a laughable notion that the universe as we understand it isn't there when it's not being observed. If you want to call it 'magic' then that's up to you I guess – personally I'm only interested in reality.

13. But you presumably accept that consciousness (or the introduction of observation or measurement which serves as a function of consciousness) is required to to collapse the wave function of a particle?

14. Well because without consciousness there would be no measuring apparatus. It is the advent of the conscious act that causes collapse of the wave function. You don't disagree with that surely?

15. Give me an example.

16. So in your opinion, the nature of the apparatus has a bearing on whether 'irreversible interactions' occur which cause collapse independent of any conscious intervention? Is that why you're asking for an example of the apparatus used?

17. Why?

18. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at – you will be aware that the type of experiment we're talking about is one of the most oft repeated in science and detailed descriptions are all over the net. You will also know that the debate is not whether or not the so-called measurement problem exists, but rather the exact nature and implications of the phenomena. The apparatus, in so far as it must be scientifically valid, is a side issue.

19. So that's your way of saying you can't give me an example of 'irreversible interactions' that happen 'naturally'. If you could, the measurement problem wouldn't be a problem. In any case I was thinking more of Zeilingers work –
    physicsworld(dot)com/cws/artic­le/news/2007/apr/20/quantum-ph­ysics-says-goodbye-to-reality
    We have to rethink 'matter' and how it arises. This obviously has implications for consciousness no matter how much Dennett dislikes it.

20. What are you getting at? That some factor like interaction with photons due to the nature of the apparatus would be responsible for these effects? Is that why you're asking me for details of an apparatus that you yourself say you can't find 'a single reference to?'

21. The reason I didn't notice the change in that fucking picture example is because I was admiring the beauty of the fucking painting. It wasn't that I was being dumb and couldn't see it. Instead I was using my awareness of the self to experience the painting, not just study it for every detail.

22. any reference to 'consciousness' should be outlawed in real science. it's just  a meaningless buzzword. Don't waste your time with this . Study neuroscience aand A.I. instead.

23. While it is true that we see in detail only the spot our attention is on, it doesn´t mean everything else is black, like it was hinted here. The theatre-spotlight metaphor is a joke. Anyone, can see that with their own eyes. You don´t have colorful round spot and black outskirts in your visual field.
    We have the central field of vision AND the peripheral field of vision, which is fuzzy yes, but not black.
    Yes, we usually have the illusion, that we see in detail the whole visual field. But once you become aware the disticntion of central and peripheral visual fields, you can subjectively experince them as such first hand, when you concentrate on it.
    Dennet blurs up things. Although we may not be conscious of as much as we think. It doesn´t take away the subjective experience at any given moment, whatever it is like. And that IS the explanandum in the modern study of consciousness.

24. Reminds of a joke: There was an old, tired lion; who already had trouble hunting. One day he saw an old fat bull, and new right away its an easy catch. So, he did. The lion hunted the bull down and ate it. Feeling very full, he roared mightily, like in the good old days. Some hunters heard the old lion roar, tracked him down, and shot him dead.
    The morale of the story: When you´re full of bull, you should keep your mouth shut:)

25. old bitter man

26. consciousness just isnt there?who the fuck are you talking to then?i think he needs a carer and secure environment

27. Dan is wrong.

28. What is it that he is denying? Consciousness? If so, that's just ridiculous!

29. this is a prime example ladies and gentlemen of why atheism a mental illness , materialism/atheism is a personality disorder, next thing he's gonna die and see everything and say oh sh!t im hallucinating

30. It amazes me how stupid seemingly very intelligent people can be. The fact that we don't notice the change in the picture says nothing about consciousness. You can have a piece of software which analyses the difference between two pictures much better than we can… does that mean that the software is more conscious than us? Of course not. People like this guy don't even know what they're looking for!

31. I've watched videos of Dennet talking about this a few times now and I seem to be missing the point. We have a subjective experience, we are aware of thoughts sensations and perceptions, and that's what we call "consciousness". Dennet seems to do little more than flatly deny the existence of our subjective experience. Or is he simply saying that our subjective experience (consciousness) is nothing more than the physical processes in the brain? If this is the case he owes us an explanation of how purely physical processes can produce the subjective experience that we all have. It's not good enough to simply deny the existence of the subjective experience and leave it at that.

32. is Daniel Dannet thinking his consciousness is a cognitive abilty for quiting information together? since as far as i know, you don't need to recgognize a pattern in order to be aware of it, only recgonize a pattern to understand it.

33. I have a problem with this arguments. I'm not arguing for 'Free Will' (Logically the concept of Free Will doesn't even seem to have a coherent definition)…

    But none of Dennett's arguments explain the root sense of awareness we experience. If my mind is mechanically equivalent to a computer or a car, but is simply order of magnitudes more complex, then how does that explain this internal sense of experience or awareness? Does a computer then have that sense of awareness? (Intuitively this seems very unlikely) If it does, then does a car have such a sense of awareness?

34. daniel dennnet is a p-zombie

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