Marchesk

Dennett's response to Strawson was that of course he doesn't deny consciousness, he's merely denying what certain philosophers make of consciousness. ...

Thanks for that. Dennett's response is typical Dennett:

I don't have one. You?

I don't think the mind is a thing. It's the result of brain activity in addition to the context of an animal or human in their environment. So for us ...

Oh, i see. That makes sense. I'm not willing to go there.

Yeah, although Galen Strawson in the link I posted above makes an interesting claim about physicalism (distinguishing it from the science of physics) ...

No, I don't think so. Consider a brain in a vat, or Neo in the Matrix. Now regardless of whether we think such a scenario is feasible (whether the vat...

I think Dennett would call himself a pseudo-realist about the self. It depends on what kind of stance you're taking, which means what sort of explanat...

Well, it depends on what's meant by awareness. A computer program could be said to be aware of its inputs. A simulation of perceptual awareness could ...

Just found this response to Dennett and others of similar persuasion: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-deniers/ I guess it's...

I'm sure one of these days I'll be wrong about something. <insert deadpan face>

Also, this is easy to prove. Take the totally naive view of vision. It seems like we're looking out onto the world through the eyes. But we know this ...

Kant, the pragmatists and the ancient skeptics would agree. Hume would agree at least about causation. I don't think we have to go that far. We can ju...

Sure.

Because photons aren't colored. They are packets of energy having frequency and wavelength, carrying the electromagnetic force.

We don't know for sure. The best we can do is come up with explanations that fit all of our perceptions as best as possible. Thus the ancient skeptics...

How photons of a certain wavelength bounce off objects, or are refracted by air, water, glass, etc. It's a good evolutionary strategy to use that to n...

No, they perceive things as they appear to human beings. But that doesn't stop us from learning about X-Rays and GR and germs and what not. But It mig...

Or it might be that the world isn't colored, it only looks that way to creatures with visual systems which use color coding to detect things by how vi...

The scientist perceives the outcome of their experiments and observations, which might lead them to suppose that there are large parts of the world we...

Run some experiment, gather observations, come up with models to explain the experiments and observations. That sort of thing I would imagine.

We know that the scientific account of the world differs quite a bit from the world we perceive. We also know that our perception varies quite a bit, ...

You can try and defend color realism - that objects are actually colored like we perceive them to be, but it's a difficult position to maintain. Denne...

But we don't consciously perceive the world as it is. From science we know that it's not true.

Yeah, that sounds correct. And Chalmers arguments for the hard problem escape Dennett's assessment in that book. We still want to know how/why red is ...

Yes, but the feeling of the water comes from us, and we're aware of it in perception. That suggests we're aware of something we might be tempted to ca...

So would you say that we directly perceive the red apple, but not the cold water, which might feel warm to someone used to ice swimming in Siberia?

Let's try this for temperature. Three people are in a room. One complains that it's hot, another that it's cold, and third that the temperature feels ...

Well, they are green under certain conditions for the sort of eyes and nervous system I possess. The reason for supposing the green is mental is becau...

Then I don't agree with the point that relational properties means direct perception is the case, because what I'm aware of is dependent on the kind o...

What is the point then?

Because that property is generated in the brain. Also, consider that perceptual relativity means that an objects relational properties can vary.

The Cyreneacs liked to say they were sweetened or reddened instead of the apple being sweet or red, which acknowledges that color and taste are proper...

Perhaps not, but it does still leave all of Chalmers' arguments for the hard problem in play. How do we account for brain events having color experien...

Are objects of veridical perception phenomenal? It seems that way if color, sound, etc. are phenomenal. I suppose an evolutionary account would say th...

Yep. Makes me wonder if there will be 21st century version of the Amish that draws the line at AI, anti-aging and spending all your time in VR. I'm no...

I didn't want to go down the meaning rabbit hole in this thread. I'm aware of that sort of criticism. What I'm wondering is if Dennett's approach can ...

Indeed, but in all honesty, I find myself agreeing with Douglas Adams: I mean, I can only take so much talk about how VR is going to disrupt education...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuobI8NLM4U "We solemnly believe that although humans have been around for a million years, you feel strongly that the...

The question is do these sorts of behaviors not occur in other economic systems?

Homicidal sun won't you come And wash away the humans.

Turn it around. If you're being tortured, you're not going to worry about whether it's really happening. Pain has this nice property of driving skepti...

Well, matter is a form of energy and energy might be fluctuations in the vacuum, so maybe it's the vacuum that's primary. The problem with this is tha...

Because photosynthesis can be understood in terms of chemistry, physics and biology, but experience cannot be understood in terms of brain activity. O...

But an explanation of how neural activity results in a red experience would show how some neural activity is conscious, and it would dissolve the hard...

Sets of words that make sense of some phenomenon, showing how such phenomena works and came to be. That sort of thing.

But if we want to explain consciousness, it's not sufficient to point to neural activity, unless the neural activity actually explains consciousness. ...

The explanations of neural activity are not consciousness FULL STOP. How could they be?

Do you experience pains and mean things? If so, then why would you throw them away because of some philosophical argument? If the beetle in the box en...

The amount of invalid inferences this behaviorist would make. Think about all the times we try to tell whether someone is lying, or fail to tell. Take...