Noam Chomsky on Daniel Dennett

29 thoughts on “Noam Chomsky on Daniel Dennett”

1. Full Noam Chomsky Episode is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNXqAaF_cxU

2. There’s a lot talk about the hard problem of consciousness but little discussion about hardest problem of all – our seeming individuality. Why would electricity in my head create my consciousness and electricity in your head create your consciousness? Why am I, I and you, you? As well as not being able to explain any specific qualia materialist theories cannot explain this, the most important thing. Why do I seem to be a specific, individualized consciousness associated with a specific body while you seem to be a different specific, individualized consciousness associated with another body? Why am I, I and you, you? There were billions of bodies around before this one showed up so what changed that I should suddenly find myself to be looking out of the eyeballs of this particular body and no other? When it comes to understanding consciousness this is the most important question that must be asked and answered but it is rarely even acknowledged. When the ontologies purporting to explain consciousness are examined critically it becomes obvious that all materialist/reductionist strategies fail completely in attempting to address this question. What is the principled explanation for why:
   A brain over here would generate my specific consciousness and a brain over there would generate your specific consciousness?
   Integrated information over here would generate my specific consciousness and integrated information over there would generate your specific consciousness?
   Global workspace over here would generate my specific consciousness and global workspace there would generate your specific consciousness?
   Orchestrated quantum collapse in micro-tubules over here would generate my specific consciousness and orchestrated quantum collapse in micro-tubules over there would generate your specific consciousness?
   A clump of conscious atoms over here (panpsychicism) would generate my specific consciousness and a clump of conscious over there would generate your specific consciousness?

   Materialism already fails since it cannot find a transfer function between micro-volt level sparks in the brain and any experience or qualia. In addition it’s not even possible for materialistic ontologies to address this question of individuality since no measurement can be made that could verify my consciousness vs your consciousness and therefore no materialist ontology could make any coherent statements about the subject.

3. Thats a dangerous destructive human being

4. How old is this interview? Surprised there is no current interview about the events of Oct 7th. Hopefully Noam is ok.

5. We experience matter through consciousness so maybe matter is a representation or image of 'other' consciousness

6. Dennett's book is clearly extremely poor, if you're not fooled by the word games in the writing. Philosopher meant "lover of wisdom" and the multitude of modern pretenders like him are none such. (Socrates would roll in his grave…)

   You need to appreciate what understanding truly is: it's a web of relations that we're able to conceptualize. So Chomsky doesn't get this right: we have only a very primitive understanding of consciousness, because we haven't been able to demonstrate (precisely/consistently) how it interrelates with the large web of phenomena it observes.
   🌌🌱🦋

7. Because so much of the content of our consciousness is memory, and memories are self-referential, specific to the organism that lived them.

8. It wouldn't surprise me if it's a particle physicist, that discovers the origin of consciousness.

9. I have to disagree with Chomsky, matter seems fairly well defined, or as well as can be expected. We have the ability to characterize it under a microscope, even down to the atomic level we can see it using transmission electron microscopy. And we definitely know that the subatomic particles exist – electrons, protons, because we can see the effects these things have in various experiments in nuclear physics. There might be a symposium about the structure of an electron for example because they're trying to understand the exact structure instead of treating it as a point particle which it obviously isn't, but that won't tell us anything more about consciousness or whether matter has consciousness, because consciousness is poorly defined. You wouldn't know what to look for. You may as well ask whether an atom has dark matter. Again, it is a pointless question because no one knows what "dark matter" is, so what are we even looking for (though at least you could check for "missing" gravity)?

   All we can say is how it feels like to be aware. But this is like defining fire on the basis that it feels hot. It is not a real definition for what is actually transpiring beneath our sense perception. If we can define it as say the generative output of N neurons connected in a group, then it would be crystal clear whether matter has those properties or not. But learning more about the fundamental nature of an electron, or any other point particle in the standard model? I really don't see how that could possibly suggest anything about consciousness.

10. Ask him if he still believes the US deserved to be attacked on 9/11? I was in New York on that day and I happen to disagree.

11. @1:50 speak for yourself Bertrand. "We" want to explain consciousness in "material terms" only if we blindly adhere to a doctrine of materialism. Plenty do not, the great Kurt Gödel among them. Worth pointing out if physical materialism is a false doctrine, then bets are off as to what exactly gives rise to conscious qualia, since then it need not necessarily be matter moving in spacetime. Only a correlation of these is required. There are many ways to account for correlations, most of them in this context would be metaphysics, not exact science.
    Which is again, Gödel: if we can mathematize our understanding of physics, then that understood physics is necessarily incomplete, if it is consistent.

12. Consciousness was not part of philosophy? What post modernist elitist nonsense. This aged Numbty Dumpty is a good example of an NPC soul that thinks they are "smart" because their narrow-minded programming has brought matetialist success. Happy Karma, Noam! You will be remembered as a noble fool

13. Does anybody know what happened to Chomsky? Because since the start of the genocide of the Israeli I didn't see any new video

14. Its not actually that complex. Here is how it works. People at not actually searching FOR the answer or truth, they are "searching" for ways to get as close to the answer or truth, but not close enough where it becomes clear. Thinkers aren't stuck, they kinda got to as close as you can without collapsing into it. Some call it edge of chaos, some event horizon, some will bring up ikarus, some tower of babel, some will think of the sirens calling sailor with truth, some bring up the apple of wisdom. Truth can be thought of as the thermal equilibrium, or laminar flow, the ultimate reduction of gradients that create the turbulence of life. Our consciousness our thoughts our future states and selves are the energy stored in electrochemical bonds, our free will us the composite algorithm for entropy minimization that is derived from state space mapping/encoding/ storing energy. We are constantly balancing stored potential and kinetic moving through. We have a single goal, maximize dissipation of energy in the universe, not just around us, but throughout, our very function is to facilitate shortest path to universe's next era of black holes. However this, as every other theory only makes sense for those who can connect it to a mechanism to implement it, if you don't have a mechanism then a feeling of "no free will" kicks in, and a person feels bad for 1 second before wiggly rejecting it, and settling into a phase space where "free will" can be experienced as each person keeps fulfilling that single goal of energy dissipation at max efficiency and max power… so, don't over think it…😂😂

15. He never let's me down

16. When was this recorded? I haven't seen any Chomsky interviews since june..

17. 95 years old with a mind as sharp as a razor

18. Chomsky fails to learn the lesson taught to us by Wittgenstein. Materialism/physicalism does not need a definite description which exactly captures a lofty metaphysical conception. No, materialism/physicalism derives its meaning from its use: Materialism is what is meant in these best scientific theories, and so on. Chomsky gets trapped in a Russellian linguistic confusion because he thinks the terms need to represent reality isomorphically. This metaphysical approach is wrongheaded and it won't get us anywhere. We know what materialism means and it is enough to satisfy what Dennett correctly means by consciousness.

19. XD man everytime i hear Dennett i cringe a lil , that dude is obtuse and willfully ignorant , never understood how he became so famous XD

20. Agree, all the gap of the gods consciousness idealists and fundamentalists work with a vulgar notion of materialism or physicalism (even when they're quantum-savvy, it's regarded as mere matter), which is why they reject it and think that consciousness must be fundamental, some extra thing that we haven't discovered yet. Chomsky isn't saying that, he's saying "we don't know", which is absolutely honest. The god-gappers also want to make the universe meaningful, which has nothing to do with science or reality but everything to do with human psychology and projection.

21. Quantum mechanics wasn’t a major issue in physics until relatively recently…..

22. the question, to me, is not what consciousness is (which we have an idea, as Chomsky says), but how it’s caused by such as living tissue. Maybe one reason the question is new is that longer ago, people weren’t as taken by physicalist world views. We don’t know what matter is, but have a theory of how it produces, say, electricity. So how does it produce awareness?

23. Tell us how great Russia is, Mr Chomsky

24. What journal of quantum mechanics he is referring to? Can’t find it 🙁

25. From Chomsky the gray to Chomsky the white!

26. “I think it leaves consciousness where it was” is the politest put down I have ever heard 😂

27. I don’t really but this theory and it almost sounds panpsychist to me. We understand DNA replication, evolution, and how coffee is made, even though supposedly “ we don’t understand matter “.

28. we don't know if all matter has consciousness? Come on, Chomsky, now he is pushing for panpsychism?
    we don't know if all matter have "universal grammar".
    we don't know if all matter sings songs very quietly. I can continue, but I hope you see the point

29. Hope Chomsky lives forever

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