
Five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness - danielam
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-illusionist
======
mrmyers
This is a really terrible review. I really want to say something that
contributes more, but my god, this person does not understand or even care to
understand Dennet. Again and again, he elides over all of Dennet's reasoning
only to seize suddenly on the conclusion, which prima facie he disagrees with,
as an apparent absurdity or contradiction. I don't intend to write an
elaborate dissection of the article, but just as a particularly egregious
example:

"Similarly, when Dennett claims that words are “memes” that reproduce like a
“virus,” he is speaking pure gibberish. Words reproduce, within minds and
between persons, by being intentionally adopted and employed."

The review can be summarized, in brief: "Dennet gives some 'ingenious'
arguments that I do not particularly care to follow, but for all the effort,
he does not seem to grasp the fundamental flaw - namely, that he disagrees
with me."

~~~
marcoperaza
Dennett’s arguments are very frustrating because he refuses to engage with the
fundamental problem of explaining the existence of subjective experience, and
how it could arise from physical processes. In dismissing this problem, he
doesn’t do much more than simply refuse to engage with it. “Consciousness
Explained”? More like consciousness denied.

For example, he insists that our consciousness isn’t quite as broad as we
think, and presents ample evidence to show the we are aware of much less than
we think we are. Great, but totally irrelevant for explaining the fundamental
phenomenom of subjective experience. And yet it is presented as evidence that
the phenomenon is really not a problem at all.

What makes this even more frustrating is that the existence of subjective
experience is really the only thing one _can_ be absolutely sure of in this
world (see Descartes and also the brain in a vat thought experiment). And yet
it is the one thing that Dennett refuses to acknowledge.

~~~
ci5er
We absolute can be aware of subjective experience/awareness.

Hawkins posited in "On Intelligence" that consciousness is simply the feeling
of having a neo-cortex.

While I am as baffled as any/many at having subjective qualia appear so
"real", I really don't have any basis for believing/thinking that they could
arise from anything else other than from physical quanta hitting my senso-
sphere and being interpreted by a biological machine.

I also have no basis for not thinking/believing that this is not nonsense.

How you _you_ break the conundrem of primary-physics vs primary-mind?

~~~
escape_goat
It's a bit tricker than it sounds, though. We cannot be aware of the absence
of awareness. This could imply that we can only be aware of a sense of
'awareness' insofar as it was in fact differentiated from awareness itself,
though a missing second step that is probably familiar to you (but it's a bit
late at night for me to articulate it coherently).

~~~
ci5er
Are you referring to nothingness?

I think that most of us can remember being 'nothing' (this might be wrong),
and it baffles me why people are afraid to die, which is simply returning to
'nothing'.

~~~
marcoperaza
That’s a preposterous claim. You obviously can’t remember not existing. Memory
is not magical, it is a biological process that records information during
your life and allows you to reexperience it.

~~~
ci5er
It's a boundary condition. I expressed myself badly.

EDIT: If you are a physicalist. Some people are not.

EDIT2: "The Truth" has nothing to do with whether one is a physicalist or not,
but the interpretation of some various sub-sets of the facts inform various
... schools of thought.

------
Evans_Steven
David Bentley Hart and Ed Feser, who is also mentioned in a comment here, are
theist cranks who have both developed evasive "metaphysical arguments" which
apparently tell us the universe has a "light of being" (DBH) or a "prime
mover" (EF) which turn out, shock horror(!), to be the Christian God that they
already believe in and their "arguments" tell us _nothing_ else (e.g. they
don't tell us if the universe had a beginning or not, because, of course, they
don't want to go toe-to-toe with physics). DBH and EF are the latest in a long
line of "philosophers" paid directly or indirectly by the corrupt church to
provide sophistries to make the billions of peasant believers continue paying
their tithes. Let them, with their oh-so-deep metaphysical arguments, predict
something true about the universe that physics doesn't yet know and then we
might listen. I'm surprised the utterances of a crank like DBH would reach the
pages of HN.

~~~
smithkl42
As it turns out, Daniel Bennett is an atheist materialist crank who has
developed evasive "materialist arguments" which apparently tell us that the
universe has no cause of existence, which turns out (shock, horror!) to be the
standard atheist cant that he already believes, and so his arguments tell us
_nothing_ else...

(Sorry, couldn't help myself.)

------
bhouston
Has anyone read this article? It is pretty horrible. It argues against
explaining mind as a pure physical process that evolved by adaption. I am not
sure what it is advocating instead but it isn't hard science but something
else.

This author elevates the idea of consciousness significantly. And dismissing
Dennett attempts to reduce it. Now I am not saying there may be weirdness in
consciousness such as possible quantum processes which makes it hard to
simulate on a traditional computer but it is still physical and ultimately
reducible given sufficient technical understanding.

I do not support this articles approach at all.

That said I find Dennett long winded and boring to read. But ultimately he is
right. I guess I buy his argument at the beginning thus reading his thousands
of pages is very unrewarding.

------
dvt
Dennet is a reductive materialist. He'd probably disagree with my hardline
depiction of him, but, in my opinion, if it quacks like a duck and swims like
a duck, it's probably a duck. For what it's worth, he identifies as a
'teleofunctionalist' (???).

The author of the piece doesn't _seem_ to be a reductive materialist, so
obviously Dennet won't jive with him. I'm also not a materialist, so I don't
really find Dennet very insightful. For example, he denies the existence of
qualia (and rejects everything that comes with that experience; see Nagel's
famous _What is it like to be a bat?_ ).

With that said, I think he's made some pretty big contributions to
materialism, in particular with regards to evolutionary theory and by
providing some pretty solid theories of an 'emergent' non-hand-wavy
consciousness. I don't really agree with his points and I think he's being
crudely reductive, but dismissing the man's life work is kind of unfair.

~~~
pdonis
_> he denies the existence of qualia_

No, he doesn't. He just says that qualia aren't what we intuitively think they
are.

Denying the existence of qualia would mean denying that we have subjective
experiences. Dennett doesn't deny that. But he does deny that many of our
usual intuitions about qualia are correct, by showing how they lead to
inconsistent and incoherent thinking about our experiences.

It's quite true that Dennett's view of qualia is very different from that of
many other philosophers. But to say he denies the existence of qualia does not
come close to doing justice to his actual views.

~~~
dvt
> Denying the existence of qualia would mean denying that we have subjective
> experiences. Dennett doesn't deny that. But he does deny that many of our
> usual intuitions about qualia are correct, by showing how they lead to
> inconsistent and incoherent thinking about our experiences.

I don't think you're right. See here[1]:

> There is a limited use for such interpretations of subjects' protocols, I
> have argued (Dennett 1978a; 1979, esp., pp.109-110; 1982), but they will not
> help the defenders of qualia here. Logical constructs out of judgments must
> be viewed as akin to theorists' fictions, and the friends of qualia want the
> existence of a particular quale in any particular case to be an empirical
> fact in good standing, not a theorist's useful interpretive fiction, else it
> will not loom as a challenge to functionalism or materialism or third-
> person, objective science.

According to the man himself, he thinks that they are "theorists' fictions"
and "not empirical facts" \-- that's about as "they aren't a thing" as you can
possibly get.

[1]
[http://cogprints.org/254/1/quinqual.htm](http://cogprints.org/254/1/quinqual.htm)

~~~
pdonis
If you're willing to draw a distinction between "denying the existence of
qualia" and "denying the existence of subjective experience", then yes, I
agree that "denying the existence of qualia" can be taken in its usual
sense--"they aren't a thing", as you say. Everything Dennett says about qualia
has to be interpreted with this distinction in mind.

However, I'm not sure the poster I was responding to would agree with allowing
that distinction. Certainly many commentators on Dennett have interpreted
"denying the existence of qualia" as "denying the existence of subjective
experience", which Dennett does not do. For a person who refuses to allow the
distinction, I think one has to simply disagree that Dennett denies the
existence of qualia; he just says they aren't what most people think they are.

Another way of looking at this is to ask what, exactly, the word "qualia"
refers to. If it refers to subjective experiences themselves, then of course
they exist; but, as Dennett says, they might not be what most people think
they are. But if the word "qualia" refers to something else, then what it
refers to might indeed not even exist. Many philosophical arguments come down
to people using words to mean different things and talking past each other.

~~~
dvt
> However, I'm not sure the poster I was responding to would agree with
> allowing that distinction. Certainly many commentators on Dennett have
> interpreted "denying the existence of qualia" as "denying the existence of
> subjective experience", which Dennett does not do. For a person who refuses
> to allow the distinction, I think one has to simply disagree that Dennett
> denies the existence of qualia; he just says they aren't what most people
> think they are.

I read a lot of his back and forth with Chalmers & co. (and philosophy of mind
in general), and no one argues that Dennett doesn't think subjective
experiences exist. But subjective experiences are _not_ qualia. Qualia are
_phenomenal properties_ of experience. Presumably, one _could_ have subjective
experiences _without_ these phenomenal properties. Indeed, that is what
Dennett argues, see the IEP[1]

PS: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted -- guess the materialists have a bone
to pick ;)

[1] [http://www.iep.utm.edu/qualia/#H5](http://www.iep.utm.edu/qualia/#H5)

~~~
pdonis
_> no one argues that Dennett doesn't think subjective experiences exist_

I don't know if anyone has stated that directly. But I've seen plenty of
responses to Dennett that basically amount to saying that the only way they
can make sense of his statement that qualia don't exist is that he means
subjective experiences don't exist. So even if they don't think he actually
believes that, they certainly seem to be unable to interpret his philosophical
claims any other way.

~~~
dvt
They are attacking a weak interpretation of his argument. It's a pretty good
tactic (that might have some merit), but it's pretty uncharitable.

------
starchild_3001
What's the big deal with consciousness? Isn't it an obvious trait of any human
like, animal like, robot like semi-intelligent being? I'd expect it to emerge
automatically, once correct base instincts & abilities are programmed.

~~~
xyzzyz
The big deal is that there's no observable difference between the world where
your robot is conscious of itself and has subjective experience of its
surroundings, and between the world where your robot merely behaves as such,
speaks to you trying to convince you that it indeed has subjective experience,
but in fact it has none, its experiences are just a movie screened in an empty
cinema where nobody is watching.

This unobservable difference goes the most basic axiom of science -- if
there's no observable difference, then there's no difference. Yet, somehow I
have subjective experience. You might also have it, though there's currently
no way you can convince me that you do.

~~~
red75prime
Why do you think those worlds are different in a meaningful sense? You can
distinguish them in your imagination only. If you were the God, I would
believe you.

~~~
xyzzyz
The meaningful sense is that I have subjective experience, yet I can imagine a
world where there's no subjective experience of being me -- it is exactly the
world _you_ are living in.

------
joe_the_user
The title would be clearer if it implied that it was a review of a single
philosopher - Maybe "Daniel Dennet - The Illusionist"

------
D700
We cannot know the limits of our thinking because we cannot think beyond those
limits (or something like that) - Wittgenstein

------
yters
It's impossible to objectively explain the subjective. To do so is a category
error.

~~~
erasemus
How about positing a one-to-one correspondence between our subjective
experiences and patterns of neuronal firings in our brains?

~~~
yters
That would not explain why there is a matching.

~~~
erasemus
But that's a different problem.

~~~
yters
It doesn't explain whether the neuronal firings cause the subjective
experience or visa versa.

~~~
erasemus
Why can't they _be_ the same thing? All my experience is processed information
(see my other comment in this thread about qualia [1]); information processing
requires hardware; the hardware is the brain. My report of my experiences is
itself changes in a pattern of neuronal activity which is determined by
changes in what it and other patterns are doing. I say 'changes' to emphasise
that the precise medium I'm running on is not fundamentally important and I
cannot perceive it (the neurons) without the aid of a brain scanner. In
principle I could be scanned and modelled by a brain scientist whose 3rd
person description of what's going on exactly matches my 1st person
description. Would that convince you?

[1] though I didn't mention it there, a quale can't usually be pinned down
exactly because most of the associated ideas are inexplicit (cannot be reduced
to propositions in English). I think this is why people consider their
experiences to be ineffable in some way. Daniel Dennett's talk on Edge.org
provides a discussion ("A Difference That Makes a Difference", Nov 2017)

