OK, I only skimmed the article, but I read some of Dennet's work attentively (Darwin's Dangerous Idea and From Bacteria to Bach and Back) and watched a number of his lectures on YouTube. My...
OK, I only skimmed the article, but I read some of Dennet's work attentively (Darwin's Dangerous Idea and From Bacteria to Bach and Back) and watched a number of his lectures on YouTube.
My summary of Dennet's position would be that there is nothing magical about our minds, that they run on good old material processes, but that this does not mean consciousness doesn't exist. He calls consciousness a "user illusion" analogous to your PC 'desktop'. There are no files and folders, just 0s and 1s. He posits that our conscious minds evolved because we needed some way to explain ourselves to our fellow hominids and a similar 'user interface' layer on top of our cognitive processes was the best way of doing that.
That consciousness is an 'illusion', for Dennet, does not equate to saying it is not real. He would call a claim that it's 'just electricity and chemicals' "greedy reductionism".
This is a pretty old notion. David Hume flirts with it in the Western canon as well. But I don't see how we decide consciousness is "illusory" from this. When you get this reductive, everything...
He calls consciousness a "user illusion" analogous to your PC 'desktop'. There are no files and folders, just 0s and 1s.
But I don't see how we decide consciousness is "illusory" from this. When you get this reductive, everything can be termed as a "user illusion." The 0s and 1s are social constructs too. So is the particular arrangement of silicon that's tracking those 0s and 1s. Sure there is some kind of gross matter that is acting, but any significance of those actions is entirely based on our perception of it. Otherwise it's substantively no different than the random Brownian motion of dust in a shaft of light.
Our conscious minds impose the context and structure that creates this sort of significance to anything.
I think there's a more concrete take on it. We understand that body awareness can vary. (Fingertips are more sensitive, some parts of the body lack pain receptors, anesthesia works, there are...
I think there's a more concrete take on it. We understand that body awareness can vary. (Fingertips are more sensitive, some parts of the body lack pain receptors, anesthesia works, there are phantom limb illusions, and so on.) Similarly, we should expect that our introspective understanding of our own mental processes varies. There are mental processes we're entirely unconscious of, others that we're vaguely aware of, and so on. Some of this introspection might be a simplified or distorted view of what's really going on underneath. There are some striking illusions that you can learn about reading Oliver Sacks.
It seems like the relationship between mental introspection and underlying brain processes (and the feedback effect this causes) is something that should gradually be cleared up with more scientific study.
Maybe this won't answer the "what is consciousness" question, but it seems like we will understand the question better once we know what's going on in more detail.
When I type something in this reply box, is the electromagnetic activity in my laptop "what's really going on"? I'd say no. At least, the "underlying processes" and "what's going on in more...
Some of this introspection might be a simplified or distorted view of what's really going on underneath.
When I type something in this reply box, is the electromagnetic activity in my laptop "what's really going on"? I'd say no. At least, the "underlying processes" and "what's going on in more detail" says very little of importance about what's happening. My comment exists regardless of its substrate. Software runs on hardware, but it exists as its own thing, it's not just a view on/interpretation of physical processes too complex to comprehend.
That's not quite what I mean. There are cases, sometimes associated with mental illness, where people are plainly wrong about what's going on in their heads. There may be more subtle illusions,...
That's not quite what I mean. There are cases, sometimes associated with mental illness, where people are plainly wrong about what's going on in their heads. There may be more subtle illusions, analogous to optical illusions, but it's less clear, since we often don't have an independent idea of what the truth is.
With respect to free will, the question isn't so abstract as "do we have free will or not?" Sometimes, when you ask someone why they did something, they will say they decided to do it for plausible reason X when the experimenter knows there is a different reason, and they didn't decide at all and the action is in fact involuntary.
This doesn't mean we don't ever have free will, but it does mean that our feelings about it can be mistaken sometimes. It seems to have something to do with rationalizing. Even when you're sincerely attempting to understand why you do things, you are making inferences and can be wrong.
This seems to contradict some philosophical arguments where it's assumed that, if you know anything for sure, it's what's going on in your own head. This turns out to be no more reliable than trusting what you see.
We (and Dennet) don't. I agree with the criticism that Dennet's use of the word 'illusion' here is confusing. It doesn't match well with his actual claims. This is where Dennet (and I) would...
But I don't see how we decide consciousness is "illusory" from this.
We (and Dennet) don't. I agree with the criticism that Dennet's use of the word 'illusion' here is confusing. It doesn't match well with his actual claims.
Sure there is some kind of gross matter that is acting, but any significance of those actions is entirely based on our perception of it.
This is where Dennet (and I) would disagree. Thoughts, dollars, and bits exist just as much as the "gross matter" does. They are not mere interpretations (or 'illusions', for that matter).
I think it will be shown in the future that bacteria, in a collective sense, are not nearly as uncomprehending as we think. I also think that a bigger illusion than our consciousness is that of...
We evolved from uncomprehending bacteria.
I think it will be shown in the future that bacteria, in a collective sense, are not nearly as uncomprehending as we think. I also think that a bigger illusion than our consciousness is that of the assumption that consciousness is created in and confined to the brain.
We already know a lot about some bacteria decision making, from the general behaviour down to each individual protein and their collective dynamics. For example the flagella system is very well...
We already know a lot about some bacteria decision making, from the general behaviour down to each individual protein and their collective dynamics. For example the flagella system is very well characterized. Thing is, there's nothing comprehending about it, for example to locate and move toward a food source the bacteria will randomly spin to choose a direction, and then move straight for a little while. The only "smart" thing it does is moving straight a bit longer on average when the food concentration is increasing.
And I'm certainly not a biologist. But the thinker in me can't help but wonder that our current attempts at artificial intelligence are taking a similar path by having relatively simple...
And I'm certainly not a biologist. But the thinker in me can't help but wonder that our current attempts at artificial intelligence are taking a similar path by having relatively simple components, by the sheer law of numbers, arriving at efficient algorithms on their own. If consciousness is only an illusion, might intelligence also be a human-defined abstraction?
From what I've seen, we've barely begun to understand the way our own biome works and it's importance to our being.
I'm not a fan of this type of headline, Betteridge's law and all, but the topic is very interesting. I have to say that my gut feeling is that "human consciousness" is not that special. I think...
I'm not a fan of this type of headline, Betteridge's law and all, but the topic is very interesting. I have to say that my gut feeling is that "human consciousness" is not that special. I think that it is just what we call the critical mass of senses and self-awareness which evolution has handed us.
This strikes me as a misunderstanding of Dennet. And I think they'd be even more hostile to hard-line computationalists. But I think it's hard to argue with the core line of thinking, that there...
This strikes me as a misunderstanding of Dennet. And I think they'd be even more hostile to hard-line computationalists. But I think it's hard to argue with the core line of thinking, that there is no spiritual aspect to consciousness, but instead it is the manifestation of a very complicated biological process. It's in no way "false", but the dualistic idea of a consciousness beyond a body is.
Edit: I should also nitpick the title - science hasn't "shown" consciousness is an illusion, but we lack any way of proving it other than biology.
To me a real illusion would be epiphenomenalism, that is that our conscious experience is caused by bio-physical processes but doesn't cause anything in turn, like the sound of our heartbeats is...
To me a real illusion would be epiphenomenalism, that is that our conscious experience is caused by bio-physical processes but doesn't cause anything in turn, like the sound of our heartbeats is caused by the contractions of our heart but is itself a causal dead-end.
OK, I only skimmed the article, but I read some of Dennet's work attentively (Darwin's Dangerous Idea and From Bacteria to Bach and Back) and watched a number of his lectures on YouTube.
My summary of Dennet's position would be that there is nothing magical about our minds, that they run on good old material processes, but that this does not mean consciousness doesn't exist. He calls consciousness a "user illusion" analogous to your PC 'desktop'. There are no files and folders, just 0s and 1s. He posits that our conscious minds evolved because we needed some way to explain ourselves to our fellow hominids and a similar 'user interface' layer on top of our cognitive processes was the best way of doing that.
That consciousness is an 'illusion', for Dennet, does not equate to saying it is not real. He would call a claim that it's 'just electricity and chemicals' "greedy reductionism".
This is a pretty old notion. David Hume flirts with it in the Western canon as well.
But I don't see how we decide consciousness is "illusory" from this. When you get this reductive, everything can be termed as a "user illusion." The 0s and 1s are social constructs too. So is the particular arrangement of silicon that's tracking those 0s and 1s. Sure there is some kind of gross matter that is acting, but any significance of those actions is entirely based on our perception of it. Otherwise it's substantively no different than the random Brownian motion of dust in a shaft of light.
Our conscious minds impose the context and structure that creates this sort of significance to anything.
I think there's a more concrete take on it. We understand that body awareness can vary. (Fingertips are more sensitive, some parts of the body lack pain receptors, anesthesia works, there are phantom limb illusions, and so on.) Similarly, we should expect that our introspective understanding of our own mental processes varies. There are mental processes we're entirely unconscious of, others that we're vaguely aware of, and so on. Some of this introspection might be a simplified or distorted view of what's really going on underneath. There are some striking illusions that you can learn about reading Oliver Sacks.
It seems like the relationship between mental introspection and underlying brain processes (and the feedback effect this causes) is something that should gradually be cleared up with more scientific study.
Maybe this won't answer the "what is consciousness" question, but it seems like we will understand the question better once we know what's going on in more detail.
When I type something in this reply box, is the electromagnetic activity in my laptop "what's really going on"? I'd say no. At least, the "underlying processes" and "what's going on in more detail" says very little of importance about what's happening. My comment exists regardless of its substrate. Software runs on hardware, but it exists as its own thing, it's not just a view on/interpretation of physical processes too complex to comprehend.
That's not quite what I mean. There are cases, sometimes associated with mental illness, where people are plainly wrong about what's going on in their heads. There may be more subtle illusions, analogous to optical illusions, but it's less clear, since we often don't have an independent idea of what the truth is.
With respect to free will, the question isn't so abstract as "do we have free will or not?" Sometimes, when you ask someone why they did something, they will say they decided to do it for plausible reason X when the experimenter knows there is a different reason, and they didn't decide at all and the action is in fact involuntary.
This doesn't mean we don't ever have free will, but it does mean that our feelings about it can be mistaken sometimes. It seems to have something to do with rationalizing. Even when you're sincerely attempting to understand why you do things, you are making inferences and can be wrong.
This seems to contradict some philosophical arguments where it's assumed that, if you know anything for sure, it's what's going on in your own head. This turns out to be no more reliable than trusting what you see.
You're right, I misunderstood you.
Using that same argument you could say that there are no macroscopic objects, just atoms.
This is what Dennet would call 'greedy reductionism'.
We (and Dennet) don't. I agree with the criticism that Dennet's use of the word 'illusion' here is confusing. It doesn't match well with his actual claims.
This is where Dennet (and I) would disagree. Thoughts, dollars, and bits exist just as much as the "gross matter" does. They are not mere interpretations (or 'illusions', for that matter).
I think it will be shown in the future that bacteria, in a collective sense, are not nearly as uncomprehending as we think. I also think that a bigger illusion than our consciousness is that of the assumption that consciousness is created in and confined to the brain.
We already know a lot about some bacteria decision making, from the general behaviour down to each individual protein and their collective dynamics. For example the flagella system is very well characterized. Thing is, there's nothing comprehending about it, for example to locate and move toward a food source the bacteria will randomly spin to choose a direction, and then move straight for a little while. The only "smart" thing it does is moving straight a bit longer on average when the food concentration is increasing.
And I'm certainly not a biologist. But the thinker in me can't help but wonder that our current attempts at artificial intelligence are taking a similar path by having relatively simple components, by the sheer law of numbers, arriving at efficient algorithms on their own. If consciousness is only an illusion, might intelligence also be a human-defined abstraction?
From what I've seen, we've barely begun to understand the way our own biome works and it's importance to our being.
I'm not a fan of this type of headline, Betteridge's law and all, but the topic is very interesting. I have to say that my gut feeling is that "human consciousness" is not that special. I think that it is just what we call the critical mass of senses and self-awareness which evolution has handed us.
What are your thoughts on this topic?
This strikes me as a misunderstanding of Dennet. And I think they'd be even more hostile to hard-line computationalists. But I think it's hard to argue with the core line of thinking, that there is no spiritual aspect to consciousness, but instead it is the manifestation of a very complicated biological process. It's in no way "false", but the dualistic idea of a consciousness beyond a body is.
Edit: I should also nitpick the title - science hasn't "shown" consciousness is an illusion, but we lack any way of proving it other than biology.
To me a real illusion would be epiphenomenalism, that is that our conscious experience is caused by bio-physical processes but doesn't cause anything in turn, like the sound of our heartbeats is caused by the contractions of our heart but is itself a causal dead-end.