> He does not say that all those experiences aren't real
Yes he does, and has said it a lot, it's one of the main things he's known for, second to atheism. In the video I linked he literally says phenomenal states "don't exist". I've also seen numerous other interviews where he's said that. You're the only person I've ever come across who describes Dennett as someone believing in rich conscious experiences.
> indeed they must be real in order to be "composed by the activities of billions of neurons"
No that's the distinction - he says only the activity of the neurons are real that there is not an additional "mental state" or what he calls "double transduction". He simply dismisses that it happens.
Figure 7.1 shows a conscious observer seeing a red light and letting us
know that he's seen it by saying "Red light!" Some people think that
consciousness is a fundamental division in nature, which divides things
that are conscious from things that are unconscious. The things that are
conscious (sentient) engage in this very special sort of transduction. Of
course, just saying "Red light!" under this condition does not guarantee
that a person is conscious. After all, we might have an experimental subject
who stands all day saying "Red light, red light, red light, red light."
The fact that after someone flashes a red light in the subject's eyes, the
subject says "Red light!" is no indication that the subject is conscious of
the red light.
...
If you are tempted to think that way (and if you are not, I think you are a
very rare individual) you are making a fundamental mistake, the mistake I
call Cartesian Materialism. This idea is that there is a second transduction
somewhere in the brain (that is why this is a form of materialism). The idea is
that a privileged medium exists in the brain where and when the consciousness
happens, a place in which all the various features of a conscious experience
become "bound" - and then, most importantly, are appreciated.
He very clearly does not believe in the phenomenon of consciousness. At times he even conflates experience with self/identity (2 different things) at which point people usually ask him to clarify, and often he will confirm his stance by outright denying that mental experience happens. That's Dan Dennett.
He should have loved panpsychism, since it would coincide with his idea that there is no second transduction - that there's not a fundamental difference between the conscious and the unconscious - however, because he is an eliminative materialist he sticks with physicalism.
I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree. You are reading things into his writing that he is not saying.
> he says only the activity of the neurons are real
No, he says that the activity of the neurons is your conscious experience--that the real conscious experience you have is the activity of the neurons--or, if you like, the conscious experience is "made of" the activity of neurons. That's not the same thing as saying your conscious experience isn't real. It's just saying your conscious experience is not "made of" what many people think it's made of. It's not made of magic "consciousness stuff" or "mind stuff" or "soul stuff".
> that there is not an additional "mental state" or what he calls "double transduction". He simply dismisses that it happens
No, he looks at the actual evidence from cognitive science about what actually goes on in the brain, and concludes from that evidence that there is no such "double transduction"--because there is no evidence for any such thing. In other words, "double transduction" is a testable hypothesis about how our minds work, and we've tested it, and found it to be false.
> He very clearly does not believe in the phenomenon of consciousness.
Nonsense. I gave an explicit quote from a paper of his that describes various kinds of conscious experience. He believed all those things were real. What he didn't believe is that they were magic.
> He should have loved panpsychism
No, he shouldn't have, because he is, as you say, a physicalist.
> he is an eliminative materialist he sticks with physicalism.
Physicalism is not the same thing as "eliminative materialism" about everything. You are simply misrepresenting Dennett's actual position.
At this point I am wondering whether you are a physicalist or not. If you are, you should be agreeing with Dennett, because his views about consciousness are the only viable option if you are a physicalist.
If you are not a physicalist, on the other hand, then of course you will disagree with Dennett, but you should be clear about what you are disagreeing with him about. You are not disagreeing with him about whether consciousness exists. You are disagreeing with him about what kind of thing consciousness is. His position was that consciousness, really existing consciousness, is a physical process that goes on in (at least) human brains. Your position, if you are not a physicalist, is that consciousness, really existing consciousness, is some kind of non-physical thing. But his critics were simply unwilling (or perhaps unable) to frame their disagreement in these simple terms, so instead they misrepresented his position.
> You are reading things into his writing that he is not saying
I linked a video where he says it in full HD with audio: "The latter exists and the former doesn't" - did you watch it?
Not like it's the only time he's said it either, the downplaying of consciousness and the denial of a rich inner experience are things Dennett is known for.
> he says that the activity of the neurons is your conscious experience
Finally you said something that reflects reality. Yes he does say that. And more than one interviewer (don't make me find them, but I think they are Louis Godbout and Robert Lawrence Kuhn, or maybe Donald Hoffman) have asked for clarification in asking something like:
But the activity of the neurons are not identical with the redness of red, the aroma of coffee, the taste of chocolate, the blueness of the door in Godbout's example. The activity of the neurons are the activity of the neurons, little electro-chemical excitations. That's not, for example, the aroma of coffee.
To which Dennett will explain away that experience - it doesn't exist - often conflating raw experience with self/identity (different things) in doing so. It's a kind of rigid, ultra physicalist stance that you apparently really dig, but it's ultimately wrong because as Chalmers says it denies the datum of experience - we know there's an experience happening because we observe it ourselves (even though the self is illusory, the experience isn't). Empiricism means to be based on observational evidence - in this case it's your direct first-person observation or "experience".
I've gotten off track - the reason I'm arguing with you is because you grossly misrepresent the late, great Dan Dennett and I'm trying to figure out A) Why you think this or B) If you're just a hobbyist arguer.
> At this point I am wondering whether you are a physicalist or not. If you are, you should be agreeing with Dennett
> as Chalmers says it denies the datum of experience
Chalmers is a particularly ill-chosen example for this, because Chalmers also claims that his zombie twin--an atom-by-atom duplicate of him that is indistinguishable in all its physical properties and actions but lacks consciousness--is a coherent concept. But by his own definition, since Chalmers says his conscious experience is a direct "datum", so would zombie-Chalmers. And since zombie-Chalmers is an atom-by-atom duplicate of Chalmers, on what basis would Chalmers say that he is right when he makes this claim, but somehow zombie-Chalmers is wrong? If physicalism is true, this is simply false reasoning: zombie-Chalmers, since he is physically identical to Chalmers, must also be identical with respect to consciousness. So either Chalmers is simply denying physicalism--he has some mysterious non-physical property, in principle unexplainable in terms of the physical state of him, that zombie-Chalmers lacks--or he is simply failing to think clearly about his own position, and therefore believes that the concept of zombie-Chalmers as he defines it is coherent, when in fact it isn't.
Similar remarks could be made about other concepts that are trotted out by Dennett's critics, such as "qualia", but Chalmers makes the incoherence of such positions particularly obvious.
>And since zombie-Chalmers is an atom-by-atom duplicate of Chalmers, on what basis would Chalmers say that he is right when he makes this claim, but somehow zombie-Chalmers is wrong?
This isn't quite the right question to get at the issue. Zombie Chalmers is wrong by definition as he's a hypothetical creature defined not to have any conscious experience. Real Chalmers is right iff he has conscious experiences.
I think what you're getting at here is Chalmers' epiphenominalism about consciousness and its possible implications for whether or not Chalmers' belief that he has conscious experiences can be justified according to his own lights. Chalmers is well aware of this issue. It is rather a subtle one, as it is not so obvious on further examination that the belief that one has conscious experiences must necessarily be caused by conscious experiences in order to be justified. Thus, even though zombie Chalmers' belief has the same cause as real Chalmers' belief, it is conceivable that one belief may be justified while the other is not. It all depends on one's theory of justification – and it's probably an understatement to say that there are a lot of those to choose from. There is some summary of Chalmers' and others' takes on this here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/#SelStu
More broadly, I would say that if you are willing to indulge Dennett in some of his more counterintuitive speculations, you could stand to be a little more generous to Chalmers here, who is certainly no fool.
Only if you accept that Chalmers's definition of Zombie-Chalmers is consistent. But if you are a physicalist, it is not consistent, and any claims based on it are simply invalid. See further comments below.
> Chalmers' epiphenominalism about consciousness
Yes, that's part of the issue, but not the only part. It is true that I personally have never been able to make sense of epiphenomenalism about consciousness: the idea that my consciousness has literally nothing to do with any of my physical behavior (and remember that this doesn't just include easily observable things like the sounds I utter or the movements my body makes, but things like what can be detected in my brain in an fMRI scanner) to me seems daft. Furthermore, it doesn't make sense from an evolutionary perspective: why would organisms evolve consciousness if it had no effect on anything else?
However, over and above all of that, there is the issue that, as i said above, Chalmers's definition of Zombie-Chalmers is simply inconsistent with physicalism. If physicalism is true, then the idea of a physical duplicate of you, who are conscious, that is not conscious is a contradiction in terms. As I said in an earlier post, physically identical necessarily implies identical in everything, including consciousness, if physicalism is true.
> if you are willing to indulge Dennett in some of his more counterintuitive speculations, you could stand to be a little more generous to Chalmers here
Nothing I have said in support of Dennett anywhere in this discussion is "indulging" him in "counterintuitive speculations". I am simply describing the basic implications of Dennett's physicalism about consciousness. For example, I have not said anything about the "Multiple Drafts" model that he propounded in Consciousness Explained, which he himself said was speculation, but I think he expected it to get more traction than it has apparently gotten. I have tried to limit myself to just the basic things that have to be the case if physicalism is true at all.
Certainly Zombie-Chalmers is inconsistent with physicalism. Chalmers is not a physicalist, and the logical/metaphysical possibility of zombies forms part of his argument against physicalism. If you want, you can just stamp your foot down and insist on physicalism (and thereby dismiss whole swathes of the philosophical literature on consciousness), but from Chalmers' point of view you'd just be begging the important questions.
My point regarding Dennett is that his overall picture of consciousness also contains highly counterintuitive elements (such as e.g. his denial of any form of privileged access [1], which is not just an ad-hoc speculation tacked on to his main theory but a necessary consequence of it). I agree that Chalmers' epiphenominalism is counterintuitive too. I don't think anyone has succeeded in arriving at an overall philosophical account of consciousness that is entirely satisfying and free of implausible or counterintuitive elements. I think it's important to have a certain amount of empathy here and understand that people genuinely differ in their plausibility judgments in this domain. For example, I personally find epiphenomenalism, though implausible, to be less implausible than the denial of privileged access; I suspect you have the inverse judgment. It is unclear how to weigh these sorts of considerations against each other.
[1] > I see no other way to force this issue into the open than to defend an admittedly counterintuitive theory and await enlightenment on what, exactly, I have left out. The view that I wish to defend is that our privileged access extends to no images, sensations, impressions, raw feels, or phenomenal properties at all. There are indeed all sorts of interesting things going on in our heads that have characteristics or play roles that might tempt us to call them images or sensations or impressions, but our access to these events is not only not privileged; it is highly indirect, inferential and uncertain. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-9479-9_...
> Certainly Zombie-Chalmers is inconsistent with physicalism.
Ok, good, we agree on that.
> his denial of any form of privileged access
Not of any form, no. Dennett was fine with the notion that we have privileged access to what it is like to be us (to use Thomas Nagel's phrase--Dennett's often-used term was "heterophenomenological world"). We have a direct experience of what it is like to be us, and that experience is real. Dennett just insisted that that, in itself, tells us nothing about how accurate our "what it is like to be us" is as a representation of the underlying processes going on in our brains. There are indeed images, sensations, raw feels, phenomenal properties in our "what it is like to be us"--in Dennett's terms, those are indeed intentional objects in our heterophenomenological worlds. But that, in itself, does not mean that, for example, if we say we have a mental image, there must actually be an image somewhere in our brains. There are real underlying processes going on, but we can't infer from our direct experience of having a mental image that any of those underlying processes involve images.
> I think it's important to have a certain amount of empathy here
It's not a matter of empathy; it's a matter of being consistent about the implications of one's views. I'm a physicalist, just as Dennett was. You agree that, for example, Zombie-Chalmers is inconsistent with physicalism. No amount of "empathy" can overcome that contradiction. I have to pick one or the other. I pick physicalism, not because of any lack of "empathy" for Chalmers or anyone else, but because, all things considered, that's what I pick. And having picked physicalism, I have to deny that Zombie-Chalmers is a valid concept, in order to be consistent. Just as Chalmers, to be consistent with his belief that Zombie-Chalmers is a valid concept, has to deny physicalism.
Pretty much everyone agrees that the existence of a distinction between zombie and non-zombie Chalmers is inconsistent with strong physicalism. That is the whole point. Regarding empathy, I'm saying that you appear not to understand why physicalism might not be the non-negotiable ur-assumption for someone else that it is for you. Chalmers is arguing against physicalism, so to point out that his position is inconsistent with it is not a very interesting response. You're certainly free to make your own judgment about the centrality of physicalism to your belief system; it just doesn't work as a rejoinder to Chalmers' arguments.
We could have an extended discussion of exactly which aspects of privileged access Dennett denies, but the broader point here is that he himself acknowledges the counterintuitive nature of his position on it.
> [Physicalism] is everybody's default assumption when dealing with anything that matters in practical terms.
No, it isn't. People assume that things which they take to be physical objects (such as cars) will obey physical laws. They can perfectly well do this without the additional assumption that the contents of the universe are exhausted by physical entities. Indeed, when dealing with people (who surely matter in practical terms!) it is probably a minority of the world's population who assume them to be wholly physical. The idea that non-physicalists must be worried about their cars exhibiting ghostly non-physical behavior is just silly. It is like saying that someone who does not believe that everything in the universe is made of wood must be worried that their wooden table might actually be made of chocolate. Believing in the existence of non-wooden things doesn't preclude treating wooden things as instances thereof. Almost everyone believes that there exist wholly physical objects governed wholly by physical laws, even if they don't think that all objects fall under this category.
> you appear not to understand why physicalism might not be the non-negotiable ur-assumption for someone else that it is for you
Oh, I understand that just fine. I just don't agree with non-physicalists.
I could equally well say that non-physicalists who claim that Dennett denied the reality of consciousness do not understand why their implicit assumption that consciousness must be something non-physical is not the non-negotiable ur-assumption for Dennett (and me) that it is for them. They simply fail to understand that physicalists like Dennett and me are not saying that consciousness doesn't exist. We're just saying that it's a physical process. Real consciousness--real feelings of pain, suffering, joy, and everything else that phenomenalists wax poetic about--is a physical process. It is no answer at all to say that, gee, I can't imagine how that could possibly be true, so I'm going to assume you actually mean that all those things don't exist. But that's basically what Dennett's critics have said for decades. You talk about empathy: I think that line of criticism shows an astounding lack of empathy.
> People assume that things which they take to be physical objects (such as cars) will obey physical laws.
No, they don't. Most people have no idea what the actual applicable physical laws are. People assume that things they are familiar with will show the regularities they are familiar with them having. Those regularities, to a physicalist, are all grounded ultimately in underlying physical laws, but the connection is very complex, even for objects much simpler than cars. Scientists still don't completely understand how molecules work in terms of the underlying laws of physics of atoms and elementary particles. That doesn't stop them from being able to build accurate models of molecules using higher-level regularities. The physicalist program for consciousness is simply applying to it the same methods we already apply successfully to all sorts of complex systems.
Galen Strawson has a good line about the "pizza theory of consciousness". Pizza theorists accept that consciousness is real but believe that it is pizza. Technically, this is not an eliminativist theory: pizza exists. But it is so manifestly obvious that pizza has none of the properties that we typically associate with consciousness that the theory is merely eliminativism in disguise. Perhaps those of us who reject the pizza theory simply lack the imagination to understand it. Or maybe the pizza theory is just obviously wrong.
>No, they don't.
I could have written that sentence more clearly, but I just meant to say that people will assume such objects to obey the typical regularities and constraints exhibited by physical objects (and not expect them to have weird ghostly properties). Which you seem to agree with.
> it is so manifestly obvious that pizza has none of the properties that we typically associate with consciousness that the theory is merely eliminativism in disguise
The problem with this, other than the obvious point that "extremely complicated physical processes inside the brains and bodies of humans, which we are only beginning to work out the details of" is very different from "pizza", is that no physical process can possibly have "the properties that we typically associate with consciousness", at least if "we" means Strawson and those who take his side in the debate. The only way for something to exist that has all of the properties that Strawson et al insist on is for that something to be non-physical, to violate physical laws.
Is this non-physicalism logically impossible? Of course not. That's why, as I said, nobody is going to resolve this debate with arguments. But lots of things are logically possible: Russell's teapot, Sagan's undetectable dragon in the garage, etc. That doesn't mean everything that is logically possible should be taken seriously.
The non-physicalist argument for taking them seriously with regard to consciousness boils down to a simple assertion without argument: it is just obvious to them that no amount of physical processes could ever produce the conscious experiences we all have. But this isn't science. It's just throwing up your hands and refusing to look any further. That is what Dennett and those on his side of the debate refuse to accept. There is a lot of science to be done in this area, and only a small part of it has yet been done. Let's do it and see where we end up. Is it logically possible that we will end up just where Strawson et al are now? Yes. But is that the way to bet? Dennett didn't think so, nor do many others, and nor do I. As I've already said, we'll see.
No-one would disagree with this. But you have to actually obtain scientific results before you can use them as the basis of your world view. Dennett has a tendency to gloss over the paucity of scientific results pertaining to consciousness by slipping into "pro science" vs. "anti science" rhetoric – as if to suggest that the science of consciousness would be complete by now if only it wasn't for the evil machinations of the superstitious anti-scientists. Strip away the rhetoric and all you are left with is optimism: Dennett thinks that science will explain consciousness eventually. That's a perfectly fine opinion, but being optimistic about future science is not fundamentally any more scientific or rational than being pessimistic about it.
Has had plenty of exchanges in the literature with Dennett. I have read most of them. I don't buy his counterarguments, although I admit has does have some good turns of phrase.
> you can just stamp your foot down and insist on physicalism (and thereby dismiss whole swathes of the philosophical literature on consciousness), but from Chalmers' point of view you'd just be begging the important questions
And to Dennett (and me), as a physicalist, Chalmers's claim that zombies are a coherent concept is begging the important questions. So if we're going to take that approach, we're just at an unresolvable impasse.
However, physicalism is not just a doctrinaire assumption. It's everybody's default assumption when dealing with anything that matters in practical terms. If Chalmers has a problem with his car, he's going to assume there is some physical reason for it and take it to a mechanic. He's not going to wonder if his car has lost some non-physical essence of carhood and become a zombie car. And cognitive science is taking a similar approach to consciousness, finding physical processes that underlie various conscious activities of people's minds (as well as unconscious ones). Dennett simply said that he expects that that process is sufficient to explain consciousness.
Chalmers disagrees (as do many others), saying that no matter how many discoveries cognitive science makes, it will never fully explain consciousness. In the end, though, neither Chalmers nor Dennett nor any other philosopher is going to resolve that issue just by making arguments. Ultimately it's going to come down to whether, once we have enough cognitive science under our belts, our intuitions about what that science is telling us will change or not. Particularly if, once we have enough cognitive science under our belt, we are able to build robots that are behaviorally indistinguishable from human beings, that tell us they are conscious and describe their conscious experiences the same way humans do. Some like Chalmers (or Searle) might still remain holdouts even then, saying that those robots are actually zombies, unlike us humans (because, in Searle's terms, our human brains have biological "causal powers" that the robots' brains don't), but those claims will seem a lot less plausible in the face of the actual existence of such robots.
Or perhaps it will turn out that we are never able to build such robots, and cognitive science ends up hitting blank walls where it is simply unable to account for some aspects of human consciousness, in which case our intuitions will go the other way, making Chalmers and Searle seem a lot more plausible and Dennett seem a lot less so. We'll see. I know which way I'm betting (and which way Dennett did), but we'll see.
I've already rebutted your claims about this video multiple times. Your response has been to repeat the same assertions without even bothering to address my rebuttals.
> the reason I'm arguing with you is because you grossly misrepresent the late, great Dan Dennett
Apparently we're never going to agree on who is misrepresenting Dennett. But I'm curious: how much Dennett have you actually read?
> I'm trying to figure out A) Why you think this
Because, as I've already told you, I have read every book Dennett ever published on consciousness and free will, and a fair portion of his papers on those topics that never got put into one of his books, and based on all of that reading, I think you are misrepresenting Dennett's position. What's more, the counter arguments I see you giving are the same ones Dennett responded to for several decades. I see nothing new whatever in anything you've posted that would change my mind about who is misrepresenting what.
Yes he does, and has said it a lot, it's one of the main things he's known for, second to atheism. In the video I linked he literally says phenomenal states "don't exist". I've also seen numerous other interviews where he's said that. You're the only person I've ever come across who describes Dennett as someone believing in rich conscious experiences.
> indeed they must be real in order to be "composed by the activities of billions of neurons"
No that's the distinction - he says only the activity of the neurons are real that there is not an additional "mental state" or what he calls "double transduction". He simply dismisses that it happens.
people convince themselves that there is a special sort of late transduction event occurring in the brain, a transduction event which is consciousness -Dennett (https://dl.tufts.edu/downloads/ht24ww75v?filename=v118rs17v....)
More from it:
... He very clearly does not believe in the phenomenon of consciousness. At times he even conflates experience with self/identity (2 different things) at which point people usually ask him to clarify, and often he will confirm his stance by outright denying that mental experience happens. That's Dan Dennett.He should have loved panpsychism, since it would coincide with his idea that there is no second transduction - that there's not a fundamental difference between the conscious and the unconscious - however, because he is an eliminative materialist he sticks with physicalism.