Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Hereandnow]

Terrapin Station wrote

Ontology isn't epistemology.

NOW might be getting it. Ontology IS epistemology. This is Heraclitus' world, not Parmenedes'.

[GE Morton]

You can't find him doing this in his own words, which right away should ring alarm bells if you have any intellectual honesty and think accurately representing views you disagree with is essential to being a good scholar.

I mean, common sense alone should dictate that if he squabbles with people who openly call themselves eliminativists over their eliminativism, it's kind of stupid to call him one.

If anyone cares to read Dennet's "Quining Qualia" it is here:

https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/p ... inqual.htm

[Hereandnow]

Sculptor1 wrote

But science is perfectly fit for the foundation of all knowledge; Just ask Locke Hume, and Newton, among many others.
I mean seriously. How can you claim to know anything without the empiric paradigm. It is the basis of all things.
There can be no ontology without the evidence that drives it.
Unless you want to sit in a dark cave and imagine the world you prefer to live in, you are basically stuck with EVIDENCE.

Just to be clear, I believe in the power of science over all things, with no exceptions save philosophical ontology. I will grant you that such a thing does require experience, but then, what IS experience? Does it have "parts" that can be abstracted and understood, like reason? It does, and so it is possible for a more basic level of analysis than empirical theory can provide.

One can have one's cake (say, evolution or climatology) and eat it, too (that is, keep it at bay for a more foundational ontology).

[Atla]

Wonder how a phenomenologist would deal with a severe psychosis, where for example he sees and hears things that aren't actually happening, and feels a rather overwhelming internal presence of some form of being that wasn't there previously, and so on.. is this also ontology?

[Gertie]

You can't find him doing this in his own words, which right away should ring alarm bells if you have any intellectual honesty and think accurately representing views you disagree with is essential to being a good scholar.

I mean, common sense alone should dictate that if he squabbles with people who openly call themselves eliminativists over their eliminativism, it's kind of stupid to call him one.

If anyone cares to read Dennet's "Quining Qualia" it is here:

https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/p ... inqual.htm

I've tried reading that before, the experience proved pain exists.

[Terrapin Station]

It seems like your new tactic is that whatever our criticism is, you respond with "That's what Heidegger said!"

We could write, "Look, Heidegger was wrong. He simply didn't know what he was talking about, and he was a horrible writer." You'd respond with, "That's what Heidegger said!"

It's apparently the new "That's what she said."

[Faustus5]

No, Dennett just thinks experiences don't have all the qualities that believers in qualia insist they do. He's more of a deflationist than an eliminativist.

What qualities does Dennett 'deflate' qualia to?

The soundbite would be "representational states of the nervous system".

[Faustus5]

The anti reductionism you are talking about is the resistance to a hasty reduction dismissing complexity.

No, he is literally anti-reductionist when it comes to mental states. I'm talking about "reductionsim" in the strict technical sense, the only sense that really matters in philosophy of science.

I do note that I asked you for one philosopher you could think of as a counter example to my claim that empirical science had hegemony in analytic philosophy, and you give me dennett, who you say is, "empirical to the core." Interesting strategy.

I do note that the burden of proving your ridiculous claim was on you, to find a mainstream analytic philosopher who made the outrageous claim you attribute to analytic philosophy. You'll never be able to do this, so of course you try to change the subject.

[Faustus5]

The issue is not what he said, it's what he what didn't say.

When he says in plain English that he's not denying the existence of conscious experience, you don't get to claim that he denies conscious experience. End of story.

This is not rocket science.

[Hereandnow]

Faustus5 wrote
No, he is literally anti-reductionist when it comes to mental states. I'm talking about "reductionsim" in the strict technical sense, the only sense that really matters in philosophy of science.

I good start. Now, SPEAK! What is your aversion to explicative language? You should, by now, have at least SOME sense of the issue at hand, and you appear to have a thought or two about reductionist talk, so put the two together and make an idea.

Try this:
Different accounts of scientific reduction have shaped debates about diverse topics including scientific unification, the relation between (folk-)psychology and neuroscience, the metaphysics of the mind, the status of biology vis à vis chemistry, and the relation between allegedly teleological explanations and causal explanations. Understanding the relevant notions is thus a prerequisite for understanding key issues in contemporary analytic philosophy

Now, where do YOU stand on this issue of, as you say, "the strict technical sense the only sense that really matters in philosophy of science" reductionism vis a vis the argument here you seem to have such an abundant of critical thinking on?

I just think you don't like to be called out on matters to defend your thinking. That's not good. If you can't defend an idea, then perhaps you should review whether it is justified for belief.

Surely someone who has read The Mirror of Nature twice and memorized Dennett can say more than, oh, that's nonsense.

[Atla]

The issue is not what he said, it's what he what didn't say.

When he says in plain English that he's not denying the existence of conscious experience, you don't get to claim that he denies conscious experience. End of story.

This is not rocket science.

I said that he eliminated qualia, because that's what he did. You are bending the issue by calling it conscious experience, which can be interpreted more broadly.

[Faustus5]

Now, where do YOU stand on this issue of, as you say, "the strict technical sense the only sense that really matters in philosophy of science" reductionism vis a vis the argument here you seem to have such an abundant of critical thinking on?

Reductionism is the attempt to reconcile and link two separate vocabularies or language-games which address some phenomenon in the natural world. In sound-bite form, reduction requires that you be able to transform one vocabulary into the other either through some sort of logical deduction or through systematic application of scientific “bridge” laws.

If you cannot do this, then while you can certainly claim (if the evidence supports it) that one vocabulary is talking about the same thing as the other but at a different level of analysis, you cannot claim that one reduces to the other. The two vocabularies have a sort of autonomy from one another.

That's reductionism. Dennett does not believe that mental states can be reduced in this way to brain states.

[Faustus5]

I said that he eliminated qualia, because that's what he did. You are bending the issue by calling it conscious experience, which can be interpreted more broadly.

You wrote yesterday that Dennett "does away with experience". That's what I was responding to, so if dragging "experience" into the discussion is "bending the issue", maybe you shouldn't have used that phrase in the first place.

Of course I agree that he does away with qualia. Where I believe we differ is that I see this as a wise move because qualia is philosophical BS.

[Gertie]

What qualities does Dennett 'deflate' qualia to?

The soundbite would be "representational states of the nervous system".

And are these representational states of the nervous system phenomenally experienced by the nervous system, or are they themselves the phenomenal experience, or...?

[Atla]

I said that he eliminated qualia, because that's what he did. You are bending the issue by calling it conscious experience, which can be interpreted more broadly.

You wrote yesterday that Dennett "does away with experience". That's what I was responding to, so if dragging "experience" into the discussion is "bending the issue", maybe you shouldn't have used that phrase in the first place.

Of course I agree that he does away with qualia. Where I believe we differ is that I see this as a wise move because qualia is philosophical BS.

Thanks for admitting it. Too bad that the existence of qualia can't be doubted.
At this point I usually ask you eliminativists, to explain what magenta is, and how science detects it, or infers its existence from the behaviour of other things. After all, if science can't do that, then magenta is made-up, right, or some sort of 'illusion'? Would be too much off topic though so maybe we'll have that fun another time.