Thomas Nagel reviews Daniel Dennett's latest
Is Consciousness an Illusion?
The upshot is, Dennett is obliged to deny the efficacy of 'cogito ergo sum'. If his denial fails, so too does his life's work.
Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”
The upshot is, Dennett is obliged to deny the efficacy of 'cogito ergo sum'. If his denial fails, so too does his life's work.
Comments (76)
I think he's referring to DDHH-bashing or should it be called DDHH Syndrome? ;)
Post-apocalyptic man/horse porn?
Likewise, Nagel seems to maintain the question as unanswerable (or as if it would take some future science).
What's DDHH?
Really? The four horsemen?
I don't know what it could sensibly even mean to say that consciousness is an illusion. An illusion compared to what purported reality, exactly?
I have to say these kinds of questions seem utterly pointless to me.
Dennett's career is based on that apparently outrageous claim, and he's clever enough to be tenured for it. And you may think it pointless, but it is not insignificant, a great deal hinges on it. I get criticized a lot for 'obsessing' about Dennett, but it's because he the most prominent advocate of philosophical materialism in modern culture. So if you want to show the shortcomings of philosophical materialism, the central weakness of its strongest exponent is a good place to start!
Sounds like solipsism (a denial of other minds) to me...
If one actually reads Dennett, the "illusion" is actually the substance of mind, rather than conscious experiences themselves. What he's really trying to break down is the idea of the ineffable conscious subject, as if our presence as existing conscious beings was somehow inexplicable or nonsensical.
His point is the conscious subject, as envisioned under substance dualism, the subject that is of mind contrary to body, is an illusion. We, as conscious beings, as minds, exist and there is nothing controversial about this-- conscious states are just another state of the world, a instance of "body" (e.g. one has an arm, a leg an experience here, an experience there and so on).
What Dennett is trying to draw out is the controversy over "what is a likeness" is a red herring. There is no such thing as that substance of mind. Experiences exist, and felt as they are (i.e. have a "what is a likeness" ), but that this doesn't amount to a substance of mind and subject contrary to body. All it means is that, for example, a conscious experience of a bat exists and it among to living through a feeling.
That's all there is too it: a conscious subject existing and feeling in the world, born form various preceding states. No explanatory gap or hard problem. Conscious subjects are understood to exist.
So, you believe Dennett is doing nothing more ambitious than attacking substance dualism? Thinking along Spinozan lines:if extensa (materiality) and cogitans (consciousness) are two attributes of one substance, then one is no more nor less real than the other and they are simply real in different and incommensurable ways, no? Doesn't Dennett go against this idea, though, in saying that only what is material is real?
I don't find anything much to disagree with in what you say here, but, on the other hand,I doubt what you say reflects Dennett's views.
Regarding what you say about the "what-it-is-like-ness" of experience; I always thought it is strange to say that there is something it is like to experience anything, because I don't think experience is like anything else; or that any experience is really like any other except insofar as it involves the same object or circumstances or similar objects or circumstances. So, I would prefer to say that 'it is something to experience something' rather than 'it is like something to experience something'. Or perhaps it would be better just to say "experience is real" or simply "experience is", just as we might say "materiality is real" or simply "materiality is".
I mean, no one knows what materiality "really is" any more than anyone knows what experience "really is", as far as I can tell.
Here is the reasoning Dennett is trying to criticise.
There is a nasty equivocation here. Who said that consciousness was to be described in neural terms? Experience is not the brain. Colour, flavour, sound and touch are not states of brain. In describing any of these things, in having knowledge of the existence and causation of conscious state and subjects, the brain isn't even mentioned in the first place.
Right of the bat, the substance dualist beings in the reductionist equivocation of consciousness with with various other states of the world (e.g. particles, chemicals, brains) and uses it as a trustworthy account of how the description of consciousness works.
Supposedly, I can't, for example, describe the presence of an experience itself, the colour red, the existence of someone's happiness, etc.,etc. for those things can't be reduced to a description of some other state (e.g. particles, brains). According to the substance dualist, giving description of experience or conscious subject must mean talking about particles and brains.
Where does this leave us though? Well, seemingly without the ability to talk about the presence of consciousness. If, as the substance dualist speculates, description amounts to reductionism, then any account of conscious must be inadequate. Conscious subjects must be ineffable, outside any description or account of existing states, including all causality (hence the "hard problem" ), a subject of a different realm ("mind") which cannot be given by existence (body).
Substance of mind is a solution to a self-inflicted injury of the substance dualist. It's posited to fill out consciousness because, in the first instance, the substance dualist has already reduced it to other states. Since the substance dualist doesn't allow consciousness to exist or be caused on its own terms, they are left posing the illusionary (in Dennett's terms) subject of mind to account for the presence of consciousness.
I don't think he has the words or concepts to state it clearly, but insofar as this topic of consciousness as an illusion goes, yes. (I mean there's more to his philosophy, but I'm not talking about that here).
Consciousness is material-- i.e. states of the world. The "illusion" is consciousness is somehow outside this, in the subject of the substance of mind, such that experiences and conscious subjects are inexplicable.
In Spinozan terms, the "consciousness" we are talking about, our experiences, the existence of experiencing entities, the causation of these things, etc., is extensa.
Cogitans refers to logical significance, about meaning, about what is understood. It's not the presence of a conscious state but the logical expression of a state or idea.
So, for example, when I experience my screen, it is an instance of extensa-- this state of consciousness exists and is caused by the interactions of many other existing things-- and also cogitans-- my experience has a logical significance or meaning, regardless of whether it exists or not.
I disagree with you that this is Spinoza's view. He clearly states that extensa cannot have causal influence on cogitans, and cogitans cannot have causal influence on extensa. The two are, for him, attributes or expressions of the one substance. They are the one substance viewed from two different angles, so to say that they can causally influence one another would be a category error. Neural processes in the brain do not cause thoughts or consciousness, and thoughts or consciousness do not cause neural processes in the brain. They are one thing, which may be seen in those two ways, as thoughts/ consciousness or as neural processes, but which is not reducible to either one. In fact, according to Spinoza, substance has infinite attributes; of which we know only two, which means both that there are infinitely many attributes, and that the attributes are infinite. So materiality (extensa) and thought/ consciousness (cogitans) are in-finite.
... I didn't say they could influence each other.
My point was the "conciousness" spoken about in the context of states of our experiences and their causation is extensa.
The mistake was your equivocation of extensa with "not conciousness?" and cogitans with "conciousness." These terms don't refer to a mind/body split, but to the difference between being an existing state and a logical expression.
If the only attributes we know are extensa and cogitans, material and thought, then the question as to what to call mental (or even what might be thought of bodily) states that are not specifically thoughts, such as sensation, emotion, desire, volition, intuition, consciousness and so on, arises. I believe that Spinoza counts them collectively as modes of the attribute thought. It would seem odd to refer to them as modes of extension, because none of them can be coherently understood as extended.
I know Spinoza would not countenance a (substantive) "mind/body split" and this is precisely where his standpoint diverges form Descartes'. The point is that there is no (substantive) mind/body split, but that nonetheless some things are rightly viewed as mind, and others as body. Now as manifestations of substance they may be essentially the same, but that doesn't change the fact that a physical thing is not mental, or that a mental thing is not physical. They are the one thing, not as attributes, or their modes, but only as substance, in other words. To repeat the point, the mental and the physical are understood by Spinoza to manifest differently as modes of different attributes, but he does not understand them as being manifestations of different substances. I think you are still unclear on this very important distinction.
That's about right. So what Dennett objects to is the idea that the subject of experience could be something that is, in principle, beyond the ken of the objective sciences. It is the very definition of scientism. He simply wants to treat subjects as objects, and can't fathom why this is regarded by other philosophers as both naff and offensive. In effect, he says that humans are not actually beings - this is why he is happy to say that they are simply 'moist robots' - but then he doesn't understand why humanists might have a problem with that. Especially because the kinds of problems they have aren't really states of the world.
Nonsense. Is it a state of Mars or Venus? Is it a state of the Milky Way galaxy? Can you see it through a telescope? Where would you go looking for it?
He does not advocate, say, Searle's materialism.
It's not about the "observed." This issue goes to the logical significance of the subject. Substance dualism puts the concious subject beyond the world. Supposedly, my states of experience aren't instances of existence, without a coherent beginning or end in the world, without origin or source. In others words, substance dualism argues there are no concious subjects in the world. Experiences are beyond the world, there is no mind (i.e. concious entity) present or resulting from the world.
The mind of the substance dualist (the "illusion" under Dennett) is destructive to the subject. Why? It takes all relevance from our actions. When the mind is of the world, it forms states of ethical consquence. How one thinks and acts has an impact on others. What I do causes experiences in others, so in my thoughts and actions I am always impacting on others in the world.
Under substance dualism, there is no such responsibility. Since minds have nothing to do with the world, what I do cannot impact on them. I might as well bash someone's head into the ground repeatedly-- it's only a body after all. It can't cause anything in the mind of another, can't destroy any subject's mind in death. The fact this person stopped experiencing the world, doesn't see their family and friends, etc., is just a "mystery."
It's the substance dualist who denies being to the subjects of the world. Blinded by the absence of an "observed" conciousness, they want to treat experiencing subjects as something not of the world. They deny are presence as subjects of the world, as beings who are impacted by the actions and thoughts of others. In their hasty reducionism, the substance dualist has failed to consider that states of existence might sometimes be more than what appears to the eyes and ears.
When I say conciousness is material, I DO NOT mean some other state-( e.g. brains, particles, Venus or Mars). I mean that conciousness itself, the states of experience which don't manifest to sight, sound, touch, taste, etc., is material. Material states are not only what one sees through a telescope. Some material states are "nowhere."
It seems to me like this is only workable if one makes a wholly different notion of what "materialism" is supposed to entail. Dennett's not an eliminativist. The mind exists, but according to him it is not itself a different substance, it's just one of the many different sorts of specimens in the world. In which case, the material world has to be altered to account for this fact.
Our notion of what amounts to the material world, yes.
Dennett is sort of caught between his own rhetoric, which still sounds like eliminativism on many occasions, and the dogmatic substance dualists who are only interested in saying there is a problem with the existence of consciousness. He gets misread as arguing an outright contradiction ( i.e. "minds exists" "the experiencing subject is an illusion" ), by people such as Nagel and Wayfarer, for they are more interested in creating a problem of meaningless than what is being argued about consciousness.
I agree. It is as if consciousness would have to remain beyond explanation and current scientific principles, no matter what. No reconception, clarification, nor scientific discovery under currently accepted principles would be enough. But who are they to know?
He most certainly is.
"The first person's point of view is not accepted as a valid source of data in the physical sciences, therefore it is possible to argue that subjective experiences are not a part of the overall scientific data that need to be explained by the sciences. Viewed from the third-person's objective point of view, consciousness (as data) does not exist, only behavior and brain activity do; therefore it is easy, perhaps even necessary, to eliminate consciousness from science as an erroneous folk-psychological hypothesis.
Then again, the opponent of eliminativism can argue that we need not accept the third-person's point of view of the physical sciences as authoritative or all-inclusive. If consciousness, whose very existence - as Descartes showed - is beyond any doubt whatsoever, can nevertheless be denied by some type of science, then there is something seriously wrong with the science rather than with consciousness. The task of science is to faithfully describe and explain the world: how the world works and what sort of entities it consists of. If there are undeniable subjective phenomena in the world that cannot be captured through the objective standpoint of the physical sciences, then we need to revise the scientific standpoint so that it will not be blind to consciousness anymore. We need a science that admits and takes seriously the reality of the inner subjective world. The least science can do is to stop pretending that such a reality does not exist."
This seems applicable to issues outside of the one at present.
They are not pretending it doesn't exist. They simply borrowing from Buddhism calling everything that doesn't fit neatly into their equations "illusions". In other words, the only things to take seriously it's that which can be measured. Everything else is inconsequential and just a fantasy created by chemicals. In literature such fantastical thought is called magical-realism, that is it seems possible enough until one steps back and realizes how fantastical the whole story really is.
Remember we are basically, fundamentally being asked to believe that chemicals created everything in some God-like moment of creationism including the illusions that are fooling itself.
Part of the reason eliminative materialism seemsto be so misunderstood is, in my opinion, precisely because it is so staggeringly unintuitive - people wonder if they really understood the fundamental position because it seems ridiculous to actually believe consciousness does not exist. And yet this is what eliminative materialism accepts. You'll do a double-take and ask if this is really what it's all about, and continue to be dumbfounded as to how this can actually be taken seriously.
The main problem with elim mat is that it equivocates, by kind, consciousness with phlogiston or Vulcan. The latter two were unobserved, hypothesized entities meant to fill in an explanatory role. Consciousness is not this. Consciousness is the data, not something we put in the data.
It's also kind of funny to see how elim mat tends to be a "phase" of philosophers of mind. Not many elim mats have been elim mats since day one.
Elim mat is also not identical to reductive materialism, or type-type identity theory. Dennett's theory is reductive in the sense that it maintains that consciousness "exists" but not in the sense we usually see it as. Consciousness is an illusion, but it still is something. Eliminative materialism doesn't even give any room for consciousness to be anything at all, because it denies the existence of consciousness to begin with.
...and the attempt to apply scientific method to the kinds of philosophical issues that can only be properly addressed in the first person is the precise meaning of 'scientism'.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Or, alternatively, a simple acknowledgement that the natural sciences only ever deal with objects and forces in the world, and not with the nature of the meaning of being.
That point is very close, in any case, to that made in Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos.
It comes down to deeply-held and an almost pre-reflective sense of what constitutes reality. I notice in the original review, that Dennett naturally defaults to the idea that:
But, whatever they are, they are the kinds of things that physics, and only physics, can ever understand. So 'mind' is always, and must be somehow, derivative of that - through the 'unconscious competence' of bits of organic matter that spontaneously happen to organise themselves well enough for the Darwinian dynamic to kick in.
Quoting Wayfarer
I would absolutely love to start a new discussion over this at some point, but I agree and disagree with you both at the same time.
If subjective, first-person experience is a part of the world (as it does seem to be, thanks Descartes), then there are a number of courses of action that I see that science can take to account for this:
1.) Deny that first-person experience is something "special" and try to explain how it "emerges" from unconscious, third-person objectivity, as elim and reduct mats etc try to do.
2.) Deny that consciousness is fit for scientific study, as behaviorists and even some phenomenologists believe.
3.) Change the scope of the science itself to account for subjectivity.
By far, the third option seems, to me, to be the least used. Super-Scientists (as I like to call them) have the rhetoric against religion (and even philosophy!) for not observing the empirical data and for constraining the world to a hypothesis (when it should be the other way around), yet all too often they deny what is most obvious (consciousness).
So yes, I do agree that science, in particular physics and neuroscience, has an almost masturbatory fetish with reductionism. It's implausible, if not wholly insufficient.
That being said, I don't agree that scientism is merely the utilization of science for "first-person" projects. If we are being completely honest, if science can't answer questions about consciousness, then probably nothing can. Philosophy has its uses but if we expect it, and/or its relatives like mysticism or religion, to explain something when it has a generally poor track record of linear, teleological progress (not that that's inherently a bad thing), we're going to be sorely disappointed.
I also don't agree that there is a strict demarcation between science and philosophy. Science is more than just the study of third-person, objective facts about the world, and philosophy is more than just the study of first-person accounts. In order for there to be such a demarcation, there should need to be some kind of explanation as to why science can study this-and-that but not the stuff philosophy does.
I like to think myself as an open-minded methodological naturalist. When push comes to shove, I would rather align myself with the scientistic Super-Scientists rather than those who try to exclude science from some domain of inquiry (even it's justified), because all too often I've seen that those belonging to the latter group are pushing some sort of reactionary set of beliefs. "Science can't explain this!" unfortunately gets lumped together with more conservative claims like "Science as-it-exists-today is not capable to understanding this!" All too often the intentional limiting of science is an unconscious mechanism meant to curb the perceived threat of meaningless objective nihilism or what have you. Hence why phenomenology has been criticized as being conservative and trying to seclude human meaning from the rest of the world.
So once again I go back to the list I made before: that which cannot be studied scientifically must either be mistaken, unfit for scientific inquiry in general, or unfit for scientific inquiry as science is practiced today. There are examples of all three: the first includes things like ghosts, phlogiston, and magic, the second includes normative ethics, politics, theology and any sort of transcendental or supernatural-ism (and even then it could be argued that "technically" we could use science to do these things, albeit in a very clunky and indirect way), and the third includes, in my opinion, things like consciousness, aesthetics, and perhaps even some theological issues.
Like I said, I don't see any real strict demarcation between science and philosophy. You can go off and focus more on one rather than the other but they nevertheless are inherently tied. It's silly in my opinion to have a separate branch of inquiry, secluded away from everything else that studies matters in a methodological black box.
But, it's not 'part of the world'. It precedes the world. I don't want to say that the world is 'all in the mind' in the sense implied by solipsism, but to say that the first-person experience is 'part of the world' is a mistake, in my view, because you're already making 'it' something it is not. Have a look at this note on Husserl's criticism of Descartes, which makes a very similar point.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Look back on the history of the question. The mind-matter dichotomy which preceded the whole modern mind-body problem, was a consequence of the combination of Cartesian dualism with Galilean science. Actually Philip Goff, who was the author of the article on panpsychism, has a really good blog post on this. He says:
Rather than 'in the soul', it might be better put 'attributing them to the observing mind'. But that also meshed with Locke's representative realism, which is fundamentally naturalistic - there is a real world, and scientific method and quantitative analysis the way to chart it.
So the naturalistic approach to 'what is consciousness' is naturally to treat it in biological or evolutionary terms, as the attribute of conscious beings, of which h. sapiens is the obvious example. That is what leads to the whole evolutionary-neurological approach of Dennett (and the secular intelligentsia as a whole). And Dennett attempts closure by then altogether denying the presence of the observer, saying that only the observable phenomena are real (ignoring wht I consider to be the obvious fact that all judgements of meaning are made by the subject.)
Nobody can seriously challenge that view in the modern academy (as Nagel did, in Mind and Cosmos, which was accordingly nominated 'most despised philosophy text of 2012', Raymond Tallis having won that honour the year previously on pretty much the same grounds).
But the issue is, that entire 'objectifiying' worldview is itself a state of mind, if you like: an historically-conditioned attitude to life, the universe and everything which treats such questions as 'the nature of consciousness' as being continuous with the other questions that science can deal with (such as physics, medicine, chemistry, and all the other disciplines.) It is part of being modern, to see the world like that. Phenomenology (for instance) wants to undermine or subvert its 'instinctive naturalism' by calling it out.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I don't think it's that strict a demarcation, but I am sure that there is a profound difference between philosophical and scientific questions; however, it's only a difference which is recognisable by philosophers!
Quoting darthbarracuda
That's very true, but I'm sure the same can be applied to a lot of 'scientism', such as Dennett's. What is the big payoff for denying the reality of first-person experience? Why, it solves (or rather bypasses) a lot of existential anxiety. It's almost like a kind of faux transcendence - but rather than passing beyond the self, as traditional spirituality attempts to do, one simply dons a lab-coat and declares it a non-problem.
Snippet from the Wiki entry on Michel Henry's criticism of 'barbarism':
Emphasis added.
Like, on philosophy forums. ;-)
A more complex ethic involving virtuous and vice filled behavior, purity, group loyalty over universalism, and a spirited physical lot, and you of course get more violence. It may be better, and more healthy for individuals, and people may be happier and this be closer to truth... but it would definitely be more violent.
What doesn't sit right is this: Dennett wants to say that common-sense things, like emotions and macroscopic objects and such, are illusions of the manifest image, but that we ought to regard them as real because they're useful. He's basically saying, "It's all just pretend, but it's fine that we pretend, as long as we keep in mind that we're pretending."
On the one hand, I see the merit of this. It certainly helps to keep in mind that the representation is not the thing that it represents, and the reification of representations is, indeed, a philosophical pitfall. The problem is that Dennett wants to claim that the only thing that isn't a representation is physicality. Of course, pretense itself is also a user illusion, but it's okay for us to pretend that there's such a thing as pretending. :s
I am quite comfortable with there being a physical description of all subjective phenomena. It bothers me not one whit that the thoughts I form while writing this all correspond to brain states, or even that they are brain states. I'll even grant you that the neural descriptions are far more useful, if you're doing neuroscience or something similar. The third-person perspective can be primary for methodological reasons, but why grant it ontological primacy? Dennett's answer, ultimately, is "because it's useful to do so." But things are the way they are, regardless of what is useful to us, and Dennett would, no doubt, agree with that. And if utility determines ontology, then why not assume the manifest image is real as well, since we need that too? You can even argue that the manifest image is more useful; we survived for millennia with it alone, and we still use it more often in our lives than the scientific image. More to the point, if Dennett is so adamant that things are the way they are regardless of what's useful for us, then why does he base his ontology on utility in the first place?
The manifest image is "the world according to us," yes - as is the scientific image.
Except it's not as useful as the first person perspective when it comes to human interaction; and what could be more important for humans than that? It's arguable that all the technological and ecological problems facing humanity do not spring nearly so much from an impoverished third person (scientific) understanding of the world and human technological effects upon it, but from a deficiency of decent first person understanding in those with power (and not only those in power, either) when it comes to their ethical responsibilities, including, centrally, how to properly regard others and their suffering.
Wasn't it Peirce who said something like: 'Never doubt philosophically, what you cannot sincerely doubt in your heart"?
I think it just comes down to 'more prosperity, less violence'. The prosperous also have much greater technological means now for keeping the less prosperous peoples marginalized, and distancing themselves from any of their insurgent actions.
I think that it's obviously what I suggested. When you look up the ethical concerns of progressives, and conservatives, you'll see that the godless only care, or care by far the most about only harm. Conservatives care also about purity, loyalty, and such. These other ethical concerns, to the extent that one is more concerned with them, must be less proportionally concerned about harm. It it also easily conceivable for someone to care more about other considerations than harm.
With our minds we can care about everything equally and infinitely, but not in real life. It actually is a calculus where things get hierarchically ordered through various metrics. We don't have time to care and worry about everything, and if we do then we aren't doing anything anyway.
The most significant danger is for something else to over take harm in importance, so that it's more important that people be virtuous than not harmed, or pure than not harmed.
Might be coincidental and none of any of it has anything to do with the trends of violence in modernity, I dunno, my suggestion is as modest as, if the opposing ethical concerns are indeed a relevant and causative factor, then the evidence suggests that the inverse is that case. That it causes less, and not more violence.
these excerpts:
“In this new book, confusion persists, owing to his reluctance to define his terms. When he says “consciousness” he appears to mean reflective self-consciousness (I am aware that I am aware), whereas many other philosophers use “consciousness” to mean ordinary awareness, or experience. There ensues much sparring with straw men, as when he ridicules thinkers who assume that gorillas, say, have consciousness. They almost certainly don’t in his sense, and they almost certainly do in his opponents’ sense. (A gorilla, we may be pretty confident, has experience in the way that a volcano or a cloud does not.)
“More unnecessary confusion, in which one begins to suspect Dennett takes a polemical delight, arises from his continued use of the term “illusion”. Consciousness, he has long said, is an illusion: we think we have it, but we don’t. But what is it that we are fooled into believing in? It can’t be experience itself: as the philosopher Galen Strawson has pointed out, the claim that I only seem to have experience presupposes that I really am having experience – the experience of there seeming to be something. And throughout this book, Dennett’s language implies that he thinks consciousness is real: he refers to “conscious thinking in H[omo] sapiens”, to people’s “private thoughts and experiences”, to our “proper minds, enculturated minds full of thinking tools”, and to “a ‘rich mental life’ in the sense of a conscious life like ours”.
“The way in which this conscious life is allegedly illusory is finally explained in terms of a “user illusion”, such as the desktop on a computer operating system. We move files around on our screen desktop, but the way the computer works under the hood bears no relation to these pictorial metaphors. Similarly, Dennett writes, we think we are consistent “selves”, able to perceive the world as it is directly, and acting for rational reasons. But by far the bulk of what is going on in the brain is unconscious, low-level processing by neurons, to which we have no access. Therefore we are stuck at an “illusory” level, incapable of experiencing how our brains work.
“This picture of our conscious mind is rather like Freud’s ego, precariously balanced atop a seething unconscious with an entirely different agenda. Dennett explains wonderfully what we now know, or at least compellingly theorise, about how much unconscious guessing, prediction and logical inference is done by our brains to produce even a very simple experience such as seeing a table. Still, to call our normal experience of things an “illusion” is, arguably, to privilege one level of explanation arbitrarily over another.”
The entire review is here:
http://tinyurl.com/jp9xhc5
Well, thank you to the reviewer for clearing it all up. Really all we need to do is think of neurons as little people doing all the thinking for us and we are all set. A little bit of
anthropomorphism usually clears up all issues relating to consciousness.
Now back to illusions and myth-makers. Who's to blame for this bit if trickery? Blame it on the neurons? Now why would they go through all of the trouble to do such things? What is their agenda?
Quoting Wosret
The word I used, and the passage I referred to, wasn't about violence as such, but about barbarism.
Which is equally manifestly the opposite of the truth.
A good analog for the brain is a bee hive. Bees do two things when they're doing their dance, which is try to recruit others to do the same dance, or stop others from doing a different one. Likewise, neurons fire, and prevent other neurons from firing. So, ideas, or actions start small, and then cascade.
To me it feels like a superposition of vague possibilities or thoughts until the act collapses the many possibilities into the one actuality.
Because Woz says, right?
So people are more brutal now than ever before, and brutality has increased in the world? Where? In what senses?
I'm sure that it appears to be so if you listen to the right (wrong) people. It's just not at all plausibly maintainable that we're living in a more brutal time now than the past...
Can we please stop referring to neurons as little people? It gets kind of creepy. Maybe it's just an illusion??
You're all silly and creepy, and are not my friends, nor my buddies, but have been reduced to my guys.
I will grant one sense in which it is true. People are psychologically or emotionally more brutal than ever, I think. A consequence of a lack of physical reprisals, and distance.
Psychological violence is still violence. I will grant that I think that it is on the rise. I'm not entirely sure which is worse, either.
I don't know, I would say the ethic behind "purity, loyalty and such" is the basically the avoidance of objectification; which I would call the basis of all rationalizations of harming. We can only be pure, loyal and such to persons or, at the minimum, to fellow creatures, whom we consider to be something more than merely objects.
I've heard that kind of thing a lot, but again, when it doesn't actually pan onto what's going on in the world, it can't be true.
For it to be true, all of our archaeological and statistical evidence to suggest that violence has gone down by many multiples in a few centuries, people's self-professed either systems, and the correlation of violence would have to be better accounted for.
You'd just have to ignore all of the evidence, or say everyone is actually lying.
Further, I don't think that the reasoning even follows, and is better accounted for by what I've already suggested. When people think that we're "merely objects" then ethics becomes about our objective states of existence, it doesn't start to not value people's objective existences at all, because they don't believe in a higher, more significant one. The very suggestion is made by those that talk about one's objective existence as "mere", so who's going to be the one to care less about it, and think that some transcendental state, or whatever the alternative things is, is not "mere" but what is actually important?
I think that this just further demonstrates everything I've said.
I'm conjecturing that the reduction in brutality or physical violence is a result of civilize-ation, and that civilizing tendencies are both the result of, and enabled by, general prosperity. If you think I am claiming that there is not, overall, less violence and brutality today than in past eras, then you misunderstand what I am saying; I am not disagreeing that there may well be a condition of less violence today, I am disagreeing as to the probable cause of that condition.
It's about hierarchy, not loyalty per se. Conservatives care about maintain a particular hierarchy, which is why purity and loyalty (to that hierarchy) register as important.
Progressives demand loyalty and purity too, just not to the hierarchies the conservatives demand.
In this respect, "loyalty" and "purity" are usually about partaking in objectification as much as avoiding them. They are used to justify who can be objectified and harmed-- the impure, the traitor, the criminal, the unnatural, the savage, etc.-- who are the monsters who deserve no protection or respect.
The quote was from an essay called 'Barbarism', by a French philosopher, named Michel Henry. It was made in the context of the debate about Daniel Dennett's denial of the reality of the mind/consciousness/persons. For some reason that caused you to start going off on a tangent about violence, when the quotation wasn't really about violence at all.
But as far as violence is concerned, the USA sees many tens of thousands dead by gun violence every year. Recently a milestone was passed whereby the total number of dead from random acts of gun violence on American soil, totalled more than the number of Americans killed in both World Wars and the Civil War. So I don't think it's possible to claim that 'modern culture' is not violent, certainly not in the USA anyway.
But even though that is true, it's still not the point. The point was first, a quotation from Philip Goff about how modern science, since Galileo, excludes the mind (or soul, or observer) from its doings, and the philosophical implications of that. Then I referred to the quote from Michel Henry. This is because I think Daniel Dennett's anti-philosophy (and that is truly what it is) is based on a systematic denial of the reality of the human being. And that's not really just an academic argument. And I really do think Dennett, in saying these kinds of things, is an instrument (perhaps an unwitting instrument) of the systematic degradation of humanity.
Andew Ferguson, The Heretic (Review of reaction to Nagel's Mind and Cosmos).
You see, ideas really do matter. Dennett's species of neo-darwninian materialism really does deny human nature. Even he acknowledges that this might have serious consequences, and contemplates the notion that 'the brights' ought to let the common folk entertain their notions of purpose and ethical principles, even though the brights realize it's all just matter in motion and none of it means anything.
That was why I referred to Henry. I don't know much about him, he was mentioned here on the forum, I read the Wikipedia entry on it. That is where I read the quote I mentioned:
(This is what is happening in culture. In the USA, you've just seen a budget proposal to totally eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. It probably won't go through, but the intention has been expressed.)
Anyway, I think Dennett's anti-philosophy is a complete falsehood, a crock from top to bottom. So do a lot of other philosophers, but they have to be polite about it. It is simply the attempt to apply 'scientific thinking' to subjects beyond it's scope, which is 'scientism', pure and simple. People have been pointing this out about Dennett for decades, but he keeps turning out this nonsense.
As I attempted to explain to KoolCat, I am not making a claim to the actual explanation of global trends, I imagine there to be many many factors that I couldn't anticipate.
I only meant to offer a more persuasive, and fact friendly account than an alternative.
Are you suggesting that there is more violence today? This is not reasonably disputable. There might be different kinds, and trends, but way less over all.
Maybe I missed the point... but I felt that it was a clear counter-factual, that needed jumping on.
According to Steve Pinker. And I do accept in the overall upward trajectory in the way humans treat each other, much of it due to the civilizing influence of Western civilisation, which is the very thing that Dennett et al are intent on dissolving.
Pinker most famously, because it's hard to get anything other than terrible news out -- but it is statistically and archaeologically supported, and not just a claim he's making. It's what the actual evidence suggests.
You can keep claiming that the world's about to burn up in the dead of winter if you want to. You can say things are wrong all you want to, but when you turn to consequences, don't just make them up.
I go to a lot of trouble to present quotations, citations, articles, and arguments. I'm not the one tossing out assertions here.
And you did for the trends of violence, the only thing I have disputed?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html
Just do a google search. This isn't obscure, or complex.
https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/Pinker's%20List%20-%20Exaggerating%20Prehistoric%20War%20Mortality%20(2013).pdf
That the consequential fearmongering is not to be taken literally, but understood to just be emotional manipulation on its face?
As I already admitted, I may have missed the point, but God is in the details.
That's attacking when claims get speculative, this is actually demonstrable for at least the last few centuries (causes of course aren't).
Not 'understood to be', but 'misinterpreted as emotional manipulation', by you. Anyway, it is plainly pointless to continue, you haven't shown any interest in the actual subject.
You've got an ax to grind is all.
All Dennett does, as do all materialists, is create human beings out of neurons. They talk about neurons as though they are the little human beings in charge of the robots - that is us - who are dwelling on illusions while the real humans - the neurons - continue to play tricks on us - us being the self same neurons, I think. Of course, the neurons are not really in charge, not by a long shot. Scientists, those who see through the illusion, can control the neurons, because apparently their neurons know how to control other neurons and are smart enough to see through the illusion. Call these super-neurons and they inhabit Dennett. So it is really not Dennett who is exposing this illusion for what it is, but rather his super-neurons that have decided to let the cat out of the bag thereby exposing all of the other neurons for the tricksters that they are. The jig is up, and we can thank Dennett's superior neurons for finally setting accounts straight. This may be the agenda that the reviewer speaks of.
And that is the "story".
Presuming this analogy, suppose I am working with my computer, doing something. I haven't the foggiest idea of what is going on within my computer, all that circuitry and electronics. Why would anyone ever think that the work I am doing with my computer is just an illusion, and what is really going on is all that electronic activity underneath? This is like arguing that on a construction site, the activities of the various tools being used by the different trades people is what is really going on, and the belief that a particular building is being constructed is just an illusion. The architect is sitting in an office somewhere, with "no access" to the particular trades people. But that doesn't mean that the trades people are not following the architect's plans. It doesn't matter that the person carrying out the task doesn't know all the particular low level activities which are going on. This does not make the task being carried out illusory.