Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Consul]

Do we believe that neuroscientists are on the verge of solving the "hard problem", with current models being correct, with only a few details needed to work it all out? Or do we think it more likely that there will be surprises in store for future researchers. I lean towards the latter view but, boringly, only time will tell.

The important point in this thread is that the scientists have succeeded in identifying the natural place and source of phenomenal consciousness/subjective experience in the universe: animal brains!

[Gee]

But what bothered me the most was his dismissal of phenomenal consciousness (qualia) because of political and social reasons. It is the first step that must be taken before denying a person their human rights. The Nazis did it when they called the Jews "dogs", the Christian Churches did it when they called tribal people "soulless heathens", and the American plantation owners did it when they called their black slaves "high level trainable animals".
Oh yes. Dennett's ideas are very dangerous.

No, he doesn't intend to dehumanize people in any way by denying phenomenal consciousness; and the reasons for his denial aren't political but philosophico-scientific ones. Comparing him to the Nazis is ludicrous!

I did not mean to imply that that was his intention. Maybe I should restate my comment. His dismissal of phenomenal consciousness (qualia) bothered me because of MY thoughts about the potential political and social consequences.

And let us be perfectly frank here, the people who learned how to split the atom were not trying to blow up Japan. The fact remains that denying phenomenal consciousness (qualia) in people is dehumanizing, and it is a tool that is frequently used in racism and when people choose to eradicate other people. It is also why we refuse to admit that other species are phenomenally conscious -- because we kill and eat them.

I did not compare him to Nazis, but I am sure that the Nazis would have liked the idea. What would be ludicrous would be comparing Dennett to the Christian Church as Dennett hates religion. We are not talking dismissive of religion, or dislikes religion, we are talking vehement hatred.

Regardless, Dennett's idea that he can deny phenomenal consciousness in humans is ridiculous. Do you want to know why? It is because Dennett would never deny his own rights, his own subjectivity, and his own experience/qualia. We always, always, deny other people's.

Gee

[Sy Borg]

Do we believe that neuroscientists are on the verge of solving the "hard problem", with current models being correct, with only a few details needed to work it all out? Or do we think it more likely that there will be surprises in store for future researchers. I lean towards the latter view but, boringly, only time will tell.

The important point in this thread is that the scientists have succeeded in identifying the natural place and source of phenomenal consciousness/subjective experience in the universe: animal brains!

Animal brains are clearly deeply involved with the consciousnesses of which we are aware. Brained animals are the easiest for us to relate to, being very similar to us, aside from some molluscs.

[Gertie]

Do we believe that neuroscientists are on the verge of solving the "hard problem", with current models being correct, with only a few details needed to work it all out? Or do we think it more likely that there will be surprises in store for future researchers. I lean towards the latter view but, boringly, only time will tell.

The important point in this thread is that the scientists have succeeded in identifying the natural place and source of phenomenal consciousness/subjective experience in the universe: animal brains!

When you have a Theory of Consciousness which can tell us the necessary and sufficient conditions for phenomenal experience, then we're talking.

Right now what we have is observation of correlation with human brains, so we know they have the right ingredients, though current science wouldn't have predicted that, and can't explain it. Because we don't even know the necessary and sufficient conditions. And assumptions based on behaviour and similarity with human brains.

With no clear path to how to get further, except studying the correlated physical parts in ever greater detail hoping something will pop up.

[Sculptor1]

The important point in this thread is that the scientists have succeeded in identifying the natural place and source of phenomenal consciousness/subjective experience in the universe: animal brains!

When you have a Theory of Consciousness which can tell us the necessary and sufficient conditions for phenomenal experience, then we're talking.

Right now what we have is observation of correlation with human brains, so we know they have the right ingredients, though current science wouldn't have predicted that, and can't explain it. Because we don't even know the necessary and sufficient conditions. And assumptions based on behaviour and similarity with human brains.

With no clear path to how to get further, except studying the correlated physical parts in ever greater detail hoping something will pop up.

One thing is clear, that brain and consciousness are more than simple correlation, as without a brain there is no consciousness.
This renders the entire thread null and void.

[Atla]

Same thing with consciousness. Dennett was literally denying the existence of phenomenal consciousness. Which may be the most profoundly ridiculous stance in all of philosophy, so it didn't even occur to his followers that that's what he's really saying. So they criticize the critics of Dennett.

This is why this guy is so dangerous. He creates more and more insanity and people don't even realize it, he's the most successful charlatan of our time.

Don't mean to butt in, but I had to state that I seriously agree with you. Some of your earlier posts helped me to better understand why I was so uncomfortable with some of Dennett's ideas, but even I had no problem finding his denial of phenomenal consciousness very disturbing. Some philosophers renamed his book Consciousness Denied, or Consciousness Explained Away.

Dennett is a brilliant man, who actually understood the complexity of the idea of "self", but in order to resolve it, he simply dismissed it. Problem solved! If we dismiss the idea of 'self' and doubt qualia because it is impossible to prove, things become problematic. My subjectivity is based upon my experience (qualia) of being me (self), so this puts subjectivity into doubt. Since truth is subjective, without subjectivity there is no truth, without subjectivity there is no objectivity because objectivity is a consensus of subjective opinions. Without objectivity and truth, there are no facts!

But what bothered me the most was his dismissal of phenomenal consciousness (qualia) because of political and social reasons. It is the first step that must be taken before denying a person their human rights. The Nazis did it when they called the Jews "dogs", the Christian Churches did it when they called tribal people "soulless heathens", and the American plantation owners did it when they called their black slaves "high level trainable animals".

Oh yes. Dennett's ideas are very dangerous.

Gee

Well I think that this one is a really good example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Dennett was focused on dismantling ideas like the mind-body dualism, the Cartesian theatre, and that qualia is some non-physical supernatural fairydust.

And once he achieved this, he claimed that there's nothing really left. It only might "seem" like that there's some unexplained consciousness left, but there really isn't. And his eliminative materialist followers tend to think that people who claim otherwise are just crazy.

But many of his critics already knew that the mind-body dualism, the Cartesian theatre and the supernatural version of qualia are porbably hogwash. Well duh.
But they also knew that there is some unexplained consciousness left anyway. Whether it's an individual self, or something bigger, leads to further debates. But this kind of consciousness might be the one thing in all of philosophy that we can't ever deny.

[Atla]

Regardless, Dennett's idea that he can deny phenomenal consciousness in humans is ridiculous. Do you want to know why? It is because Dennett would never deny his own rights, his own subjectivity, and his own experience/qualia. We always, always, deny other people's.

And yeah, it's much easier to exploit/hurt/torture/kill others and all the other organisms on the planet, if we don't believe that they are actually internally experiencing any of that. Just turn off your empathy, go sadistic psychopath mode, and torture them for fun. It may look like that they are suffering, but they aren't really, so no harm done anyway.

[Terrapin Station]

On my view there's not really anything to argue about because the notion of nonphysical existents is incoherent. What we should be doing is focusing our attention on better figuring out just what brain states amount to just what mental states, as well as experimenting, a la artificial intelligence, with (a) initially building artificial brains that are as as close as we can possibly make them to real brains--the same sorts of materials, structures, etc., and then (b) figuring out just what and how much we can change in the construction and functioning of those artificial brains so that they still seem to be conscious.

"Debating" dualism versus monism is a waste of time, because dualism is such an absurd set of misconceptions.

[Steve3007]

the same sorts of materials, structures, etc.

Interesting that you say the same sorts of materials as well as structures. Whether we need the same sorts of materials depends on the sense in which we want to replicate naturally occurring brains. Functionally or materially. If the former, then we don't need the same sorts of materials.

Neural networking software goes some of the way towards functional replication (although there's a long way to go). But the materials are very different. Much less squidgy. At least in the current generation of computer hardware.

[Terrapin Station]

the same sorts of materials, structures, etc.

Interesting that you say the same sorts of materials as well as structures. Whether we need the same sorts of materials depends on the sense in which we want to replicate naturally occurring brains. Functionally or materially. If the former, then we don't need the same sorts of materials.

Neural networking software goes some of the way towards functional replication (although there's a long way to go). But the materials are very different. Much less squidgy. At least in the current generation of computer hardware.

The idea is this:

We don't know whether substratum independence (that is, consciousness arising out of different sorts of materials) works.

We know that brains, made out of the materials they're made out of, structured as they are, functioning as they function, amount to consciousness.

So, why not start by attempting to build artificial brains as literally as possible? The closer we can make an artificial brain to a natural brain, the more we can be sure that we've created something capable of consciousness. We might as well remove any source of uncertainty that we can regarding whether we've artificially built something that's conscious. Then once we've done that, we can experiment with just what we can change, to just what extent, where it still seems to be conscious. It's simply a matter of controlling our variables as much as we can. Begin with what we're sure works. Then gradually try changing different variables to different extents.

[Faustus5]

This is simply not what Dennett says, it's what you want him to say.

Excuse me, cupcake, but I’ve forgotten more about Dennett’s work than you will ever bother to learn, and I see quite plainly how his comments about information consistently tie in with ideas in his other work.

I know what he believes. You absolutely do not. You will start being a serious philosopher when you begin to deal with genuine content instead of made up versions of people you disagree with.

If information is always registered by a physical state of some sort, because information is an abstraction about that physical state, then either information isn't real in the sense that matter/energy are real, or information IS matter/energy.

Dennett doesn’t care about establishing degrees of reality and thinks philosophers who are concerned with that sort of thing are wasting their time. Information is as real as money, marriage, contracts, and Wall Street in his view. Real enough to matter, and that’s enough.

But we get the bad dualism when we say that information is something other than matter/energy.

No, we don’t get any kind of dualism. Recognizing that the same informational object can exist across different physical mediums just makes us aware of a feature of objective reality. It does not require us to engage in metaphysics.

Not even wrong.

Then when you can fit your conception of “phenomenal consciousness” into an evidence-based, reason-based approach to objective reality, let me know. Until then, as far as I’m concerned, you are essentially whining about materialism’s failure to address fairy dust and unicorns, issues we don’t care about.

[Faustus5]

Right, as I recall Dennett makes this 'aboutness' distinction between beliefs and desires(intentional states), and qualia, which he has a different approach to. Yes?

I’d say his way of dealing with qualia is on a spectrum that is consistent with his approach to intentionality. Remember, he doesn’t think that qualia as conceived by most philosophers even exist, or that the concept is confused and worth tossing, which is essentially the same thing.

If we're interested in consciousness, why wouldn't we care about experiential mental states and their correlated brain states?

Do you need to look inside of someone’s brain to tell if they are sad or mad, happy or amused? Of course not. If you want to understand the mechanisms that lead to those states., yes, but here Dennett is not concerned with a scientific understanding of intentional states, just what they are in ordinary human existence, where science is literally irrelevant for you to ascribe those states to another person.

OK, so he's saying intentional states, beliefs, are physically 'instantiated' in this particularly complicated way, which means no two people's beliefs will be instantiated identically in any two people, therefore phenomenal mental intentional states can't be reducible to their physical correlates?

Yes.

I don't see how the 'therefore...' follows, if I've understood you correctly. Not being identically reducible in others, doesn't mean not reducible in each individual.

He’s operating according to the strict, technical definition of what counts as a reduction, which requires a law like or logical relation which solidly and reliably links one set of vocabularies to matching terms in another vocabulary. I mean, almost nothing reduces when you raise the bar so high, so saying mental states don’t reduce isn’t saying much.

This still puzzles me. Why not say a successful theory of consciousness will explain the How and Why of phenomenal mental states?

Because science is done from a third person perspective, and the only evidence you’ll ever be able to study about those states are the descriptions of subjects using language or following instructions (like “press the button when you see a color word”). So once you’ve been able to establish causal chains inside of their bodies leading to those motor activities, you are done and there is nothing left to explain.

Is it just because we can't observe other people's mental states, only their behaviour and reports, so hey lets not worry about it?

I think he would say that the observable behaviors (including nervous system activities) are the only evidence you have of a mental state and that’s all you need to explain.

[Faustus5]

Do we believe that neuroscientists are on the verge of solving the "hard problem", with current models being correct, with only a few details needed to work it all out?

I would say, “Yes, but there are a ton of details to work out”. Since the 1990’s we’ve had a growing consensus in the cognitive neuroscience community around the Global Neuronal Workspace model of consciousness, which already gives us a plane’s eye perspective on what consciousness is and how the brain achieves it. But there are huge technical details to work out, the binding problem being the biggest in my opinion. The general outline, however, is not ever likely to be overturned and replaced with something else, just supplemented.

For some philosophers, though, the so-called “hard problem” was purposely fashioned and designed to be completely untouchable by any form of known science, so no amount of finished work around the GNW would ever matter to them. Which is why I think they can and will be safely ignored would such an achievement ever come to be.

[Faustus5]

I did not mean to imply that that was his intention. Maybe I should restate my comment. His dismissal of phenomenal consciousness (qualia) bothered me because of MY thoughts about the potential political and social consequences.

There will never be any political or social consequences from any kind of position anyone takes in such an obscure brand of philosophy.

The fact remains that denying phenomenal consciousness (qualia) in people is dehumanizing, and it is a tool that is frequently used in racism and when people choose to eradicate other people.

You will not be able to cite so much as a single racist who has ever, in human history, even mentioned the word “qualia” or “phenomenal consciousness” in a speech or political document.

Regardless, Dennett's idea that he can deny phenomenal consciousness in humans is ridiculous. Do you want to know why? It is because Dennett would never deny his own rights, his own subjectivity, and his own experience/qualia.

The first thing you’d do is say to yourself, “Since Dennett doesn’t want to deny anyone their rights, perhaps I have misunderstood what he actually believes about qualia?. . .”.

[Faustus5]

And his eliminative materialist followers tend to think that people who claim otherwise are just crazy.

Exhibit number 223 demonstrating that on a deeply fundamental level, you just don’t understand Dennett’s views--he has vehemently attacked eliminative materialism as incoherent and incompatible with his theories of intentionality.

But I’m sure you’ll never let objective facts get in your way when it comes to him.