@Lucas Paprocki Actually, I like listening to them on the move. Problem for me is rather that the volume level needs some normalization: I constantly have to turn up and down the volume on my smartphone to be able to both understand as well as not kill my ears. I'll might have to get out of the convenience zone and do it myself before listening.
Sean! Great episode of Mindscape! Just wow. A lot to digest here. I'll be giving this one many more spins on the turntable, count on that. Daniel Dennett should be heralded as among the greats, in my opinion. I knew he was an intellectual force before hearing this today, but I was unaware of the immensity of his depth of thought and capacity to reason. And you, sir, did an excellent job in sussing out that immensity for us listeners. Nicely done, Sean. You know, I never did care for Chalmer's "Big Problem", and now I know exactly why! Lol!
Sean it's excellent you started this podcast. You're providing amazingly digestible scientific and cultural conversations with some amazing people. I really love listening to these and enjoy even the harder more complicated scientific topics. It's excellent to hear more about topics that are never really explained correctly.
Dan Dennett is just about the best thinker I have ever read and listened to. Maybe that is because he has the skill to explain his ideas in a way that makes them easily accessible. Two years later I listen to this podcast again and am reminded of this gem of a person. And to have him paired with my favorite theoretical physicist is a delightful treat. Thanks so much for this podcast.
Great talk indeed! I was having a discussion about the subject at the end of your talk, regarding what rituals and habits and rules even, should or could one keep, for a healthy society to continue without religion. My friend then reminded us that MANY of those things we hold dear in the world which we attribute TO religion are in fact much much older than religion, and thus we need not fear that we can perhaps redefine or rediscover in some way a more 'rooted' reason to hold onto them.
"Home is where... when you go there, they have to let you in." Robert Frost. Ha! So funny... so awesome... so true! Daniel Dennett's ideas are great. I typed in (to Google) "Daniel Dennett wiki" and I'm really enjoying his wiki page. There's all kinds of material there. It turns out I read one of Daniel Dennett's books, I thoroughly enjoyed it as I recall, and I didn't recognize the Author's name prior to looking at this wikipedia page. Sean does us all a favor by putting us in contact with Daniel Dennett's ideas. Cheers!
Adore Dennett. Sean please join him for The four hoseman 2.0! Hitchen's can't be replaced like ever but the message and discussion would be so great for countering magical thinking.
This hit me like a ton of bricks, a severe epiphany even though I've previously understood these views myself. To hear these gentlemen strike in agreement with my worldview is slam dunk after slam dunk. I'm an anarchist/neo-atheist, and to hear the problems I've always had with some of my other idols such as Chomsky on language and Chalmver etc. is liberating. To understand how little we can even define "conscience" in this day and age where people are yelling "The sky is falling!, look out for AI" is such a calming and hilarious view of "branding". Freewill? Yes, of course, we have and use and abuse. It's almost as severe as believers who claim the universe popped out of "nothing". It amazes me how people with such high IQ and understanding of most things can't let go of their intuitions/beliefs of "magic" and "magical" views about reality. Thanks, guys, You Rock. Gr8! Peace ☮💜Love
42:20 SC: "So now we get to consciousness." DD: "... it emerges, in this innocent sense; and the idea that it's one thing, that everything in the universe is either conscious or not, that the light is on or the light is off--that is, I think, a fundamental error. ... the search for the simplest form of consciousness ... it's a wild goose chase. Because it emerges; and yes, starfish have some of the aspects of consciousness, so do trees! And bacteria!" SC: "But not electrons." DD: "But not electrons. And we can argue about motor proteins, but ... the question of where do you draw the line is an ill-motivated question." But they just did draw a line. They drew the line between systems from which consciousness is absent and those in which it emerges somewhere between electrons and motor proteins. Does no one else have a problem with this? It's one thing, mentioned often by Dennett's serious critics in consciousness studies, that he never offers a picture for how exactly it emerges; but it's another for him to call this line ill-motivated and yet in the same breath claim that something belongs behind it. An electron is a system. If Dennett thinks that we are "robots made of robots made of robots...", meaning we are just very complicated mechanisms--the mechanistic perspective, which is already based on a false premise if you pay attention to relational biology, but that notwithstanding--and that consciousness emerges in these "robots", but also thinks that consciousness doesn't emerge in electrons, then he must think that electrons aren't robots, meaning that systems (which, in point of fact, all consist of electrons) only become robots at some simplest level of complication. But that contradicts his belief that the search for some such "simplest form of consciousness" is a "wild goose chase".
Elsewhere DD claimed consciousness is an illusion/magic. DD pretends to know a lot of science and pretend to be right in dismissing well established concepts in science and is credited by some for his so called philosophy. In science we do not know what space, time, energy etc., are, yet we can comprehend what is incomprehensible. Let me just give you one example. In QM many physicists misinterpret what is meant by observation/measurement, which according to Copenhagen, means collapse of a wave function into a particle. Hawking explained black hole (BH) radiation by the pair production of virtual particles and anti-particles, one falls into the BH , while the other is ejected as real particle into space. Implying that the quantum field (QF) can simulate conscious intelligent 'observer' collapsing the wave into real particles (an insight not mentioned by Hawking) but mentioned by SC as indicating Anthropic Principle, deciding the small value of Cosmological Constant, so life can evolve in our universe. There is only one universe, although SC believes in multiverse. I think QM leads to life consciousness and even soul (so electrons can be conscious). This is all because DD runs an organization that gladly pays money to those who endorse atheism. I wonder if he thinks knowledge can be bought. How pathetic. However, QM leads to much more than 'divine design' and the 'mind of god', if only DD was not dismissive of science.
Illusion is a tricky concept because we often forget in our colloquial usage of the idea that illusion does not mean that something doesn't exist, that's simplistic, we already have good words for things that simply don't exist. Illusion is about a certain arrangement of patterns say, that create a misleading impression under certain conditions, something that appears different from one angle than what it actually is. There is always still something there, just not what you would think from a surface level glance. Illusion is about something being not quite what we think it is, but the popular assumption is that illusion equals something not existing, being real. In reality illusions can be interacted with, they will respond to changes, they can appear in a more straightforward way from a different viewpoint, in other words they exist, they are real, just not quite what we think they are from a point of view. With that in mind, yes, consciousness is clearly an illusion, given how we are often so mistaken of our own experiences, everything from cognitive psychology, or just visual illusions and their experience in our consciousness will tell you that. But in the end I tend to avoid using the word illusion because of the baggage that people have a hard time dropping about it, and just talk directly about all the things in our minds that are different from what we tend to think about them. Loved the discussion!
Correct, because they're not using the illusion in the ordinary sense, but more like in the illusionist sense; the magic trick is real, its just not what you think it is!
I love his command of the literature. Hours of recalling authors and papers written over decades. I’m like oh that’s the famous actor I know well in this movie, why can’t I remember their name....
In regards to free will, it seems like Dan is more concerned with the damaging effects of the free will illusion rather than the question of if it’s real or not. Even if people who think free will is real to function better in life, I don’t think that’s an argument for the truth of the question. It reminds me of when religious people believe that all of morality will fall apart if you don’t believe in god, and don’t acknowledge whether the belief in god is true or not. I’m surprised that he thinks this way about free will and if he has any examples of how people that don’t believe in free will are damaging themselves in the process.
Dennett says that "in a sense" we are all zombies. I think he means technically but not practically. Just like for the idea of free will, we just don't operate in a world or society where we are constantly cognizant of what is technically correct about ourselves. Our interpersonal, judicial and commercial world operates on what is probably an incorrect notion about us all, but is practical for how we have come to socially organize ourselves.
Dennett still incorrectly believes that free will exists, so he necessarily creates two different "senses" of reality. Subtracting the delusion about free will simplifies the universe to a single reality and removes many contradictions and confusions.
do not mind the ads so much .... you should get something if that is the case .... watching and listening to you and therefore the AD .... so.... ya seems fair and if ADs are a bother and one can afford ad free.... ya blah .... thank you .... love the opportunity and experience for this kind of exposure to conversation, learning, and expanding.... a tool the best loot for consciousness , awareness or something
After watching many things about quantum mechanics I have noticed how many things in my life I look at as probabilities now, which i think goes with what you were saying at the first.
Engrossing podcast. Thank you Sean. What is the likelihood that consciousness evolved as a result of the development of language? It’s hard to think of consciousness without giving serious consideration to language as a tool for self awareness.
It seems to me that language is only useful in giving us the ability to express our opinions and thoughts on consciousness and is clearly not essential for the possession of it. For instance right now you are experiencing, in a first person perspective, the feeling of weight (your bottom on the chair), vision of all the things around you, all the sounds and smells etc of your environment. None of these demand language to experience. We use language as a tool which allows us to contemplate these experiences but it is clearly not (imo) generative in the sense which you seem to be conveying.
He should either do a thing on Sellars "defense of the appearances" or do a thing on Structuralism and Analytic Philosophy (is Structuralism Analytic or Continental).
"user illusion"... So he says that there is a user to receive the illusion. Why should there be a user to receive the illusion in his view? For what should it be for? There needn't be a user to receive an illusion if you are a zombie. I think he disproves himself wonderfully in this sentence.
«A voice is not an organ, disposition, process, event, capacity or as one dictionary has it - a 'sound uttered by the mouth. The word 'voice' as it is discovered in its own peculiar environment of contexts, does not fit neatly the physical, non-physical dichotomy that so upsets the identity theorist, but it is not for that reason a vague or ambiguous or otherwise unsatisfactory word. This state of affairs should not lead anyone to become a Cartesian dualist with respect to voices; let us try not to invent a voice-throat problem to go along with the mind-body problem. Nor should anyone set himself the task of being an identity theorist with respect to voices. No plausible materialism or physicalism would demand it. It will be enough if all the things we say about voices can be paraphrased into, explained by, or otherwise related to statements about only physical things. So long as such an explanation leaves no distinction or phenomenon unaccounted for, physicalism with regard to voices can be preserved - without identification of voices with physical things.» _Daniel Dennett
Well, not to be contrary, but this was interesting once they got to the hard question and hard problem discussion at 1:06:15 but it was not as challenging as David Albert, IMHO.
Every, day, life, is a deceptively disparaging and simplistic description of every day life. My *Everyday life” @ 19 was as a USMC Helicopter mechanic. Every day life in Afghanistan May include #drones these days. Poetic Naturalism 🌎🌪🔥🌻
It's interesting the Daniel Dennett criticizes Chomsky's view -- I've read chomsky's latest book on it why only us but I haven't had the chance to read Dennett's. one thing that's interesting that I think Daniel dennett should think about is that certain people don't have the capacity to imagine images. blind people obviously don't but even among people who have eyesight there is such a thing as a congenital incapacity to do that. So that would suggest that it is a separate neural process from language and linguistic cognition
I really like this metaphor about the computer interface. When we speak about interaction with the computer, we speak in terms of windows, buttons, mouse cursor, etc. All those objects are not "real" in the sense that they are not real physical objects but mere projection of the internal state of the computer. In principle, we could describe any interaction in terms of IRQ signals, read and written port values, changed memory bits, etc, but it would not only overcomplicated but largely useless, because it could happen in many different ways. The interface gives us a useful abstraction that hides many irrelevant details, so we can focus on what we are trying to accomplish. Similarly, though freewill does not exist independently from the underlying physical reality, that does not make it any less real when it comes to human interaction and social norms. All arguments that try to prove that determinism is incompatible with freewill are either based on the assumption that freewill has to be something immaterial and thus include some circular reasoning, or based on an intuition trap, which assumes existence an external omnipotent, omniscience observer that can predict everything. However, even if we assume that such an external observer can exist, from that point of view, time itself would not exist: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_time Obviously, if you assume that time is illusion, it is natural to assume that freewill is illusion as well. However, I personally prefer to consider them as immersion phenomena that are as real as any immersion phenomenon can be.
1:30:00 It may turn out that each piece of the universe or each pattern in the universe is/has a point of view on the rest. That it feels like something to be a tree or a galaxy or a hydrogen atom, and that that may remain a brute fact resistant to explanation. I'm against quantum mumbo-jumbo trying to explain how minds emerge at higher levels, but the relativistic nature of the universe, the idea that generally pieces of it have a local perspective accessible only to themselves, may be fundamental. And pieces of the universe may mean points in spacetime but could also mean complex neural machines.
That idea immediately fails once you remember that a human being is composed of trillions of parts. Does every part have a personal perspective? Which one is the one I consciously experience?
44:10 - "do you have a simple definition of what consciousness is that you prefer?" - one can't talk about something without defining it. 54:00 - "a moral agent.. is to be able to foresee and understand the outcomes of possible actions, and act accordingly" - defines a moral agent without defining morality. What function is being optimised by the moral agent ("act accordingly")? The consequences? What distinguishes morality over mere pragmatism/consequentialism/immorality is the ability to make decisions based on logic/reason irrespective of the personal consequences (eg there is no reason to treat another different to how one would expect to be treated all things being equal, considering that the only reason one treats oneself special is because they value their own self/sentience/agency and we assume this is shared by like others). 56:54 - "scientific theories of consciousness" - phenomenological consciousness (mental properties/1st person experience) is by definition not an empirical phenomenon because it cannot be denied through empirical observation (measurement). We can only measure physical (eg neuronal/behavioural) properties. We can philosophically infer the existence of other sentient beings by projecting our own internal experience to like (physically similar) others (whose brains also in the case of humans encode a model of a sentient agent including certainty of its existence); but apart from the measurement of the similarity between ostensibly sentient beings and the mapping between self-report conscious experience and neuronal function this is not an empirical exercise. 1:27:25 - that "martian zombies"/martians/earthling zombies/earthlings (irrelevant) could infer phenomenological consciousness through seeing/reading human behaviour/records - This implies that it is necessarily true that we could infer phenomenological consciousness in an AI by observing its behaviour/records.
“We shouldn’t tell people they don’t have free will because they may act badly” is that basically what Danielle Dennett is saying? It doesn’t seem like he actually argues we do have free will.
I have great respect for both guys. However, I think that Dennette is presenting a very human centric view and does it very casually and without convincing arguments. For example, the statement that human mind is profoundly different than monkeys and dolphins implicitly creates a dichotomy between humans and animals. It dismisses that all animal species can be considered profoundly different from eachother. The statement would be trivial unless you accept that human exprience is special in some fundamental way and that is different than an instant of animal being, which I do not understand how it can be true. It sounds like the same approach that religion have had, humans are special and the rest is background.
Not really true. Dennett says clearly that consciousness is widespread and a continuum, and that there are no fundamental differences in kind. It's one of his most clearly stated ideas in this podcast. The difference is simply a matter of degree. 50:30
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself Fun fact: Ali isn't her real last name. That's just the name she used to evade Dutch immigration laws. She lied her way into the country, then when discovered demanded Dutch gov pay for her protection while in the US.
QM theories have become like football teams....., support one and defend it come what may. Rather than look at math, the starting point needs to be the real world.
Sean please get some video of your conversations, then watch the views of this podcast explode. Most people (including myself) can not focus on long form conversations without a visual component for long periods of time, no matter how big of fans we are of yourself and your guests.
Sean, I can't stop asking how it all began! Even tho you said it is no longer a valid question, I still keep asking it. Because I like to :-) Because I CAN, and you CANNOT STOP ME AHAHAHAHAHA!!!
only question is how a particular pattern of electrochemical signals in our brain create certain subjective experience, can you do it on any silicon chip.... ??
It sounds like its not a question of being conscious or not, but to what degree of consciousness, and the amount of degrees of freedom dictates this, especially the degrees of freedom in thinking, and instinct does not count. So something with with only one degree of freedom is conscious, just extremely limited. The difference between a frog and a human is billions of degrees of freedom in thinking.
1:34:30 in 15 seconds tell me it doesn't sound like Dennett's actually a demon in disguise and accidentally let it slip. Just a coincidence to be sure.
I love the analogy to "user illusion"... the idea that consciousness can be, in a sense, an illusion, but still basically real. I wish you had discussed the fact that people can have very different consciousnesses... for instance towards the end I believe Dan was disagreeing with some philosopher that consciousness is word-based, and in the conversation there was a lot of focus on visual (i.e. literal) imagination, like picturing cows. However there's a reasonably broad spectrum of visual imagination, psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm, and anecdotes from Reddit say the same is true for auditory consciousness/imagination (the strength/existence/number of "the little voice in your head"). It seems likely to me that a lot of philosophers disagree about whether consciousness is fundamentally visual or auditory because they actually have very different consciousnesses!
Even great minds can be captured by an initial fallacy that pollutes the rest of their thinking. There were many brilliant Christian philosophers. Dennett's problem is that he is motivated to defend the idea of human free will, and this poisons many of his conclusions. When he talks about gazelles and lions, how does he know with any certainty what the conscious experience of the lion is? How does he know that the lion doesn't understand, in its own conscious way, that the gazelles jumping are not good for hunting? In fact they DO UNDERSTAND THIS because they don't chase preening gazelles. Human understanding is itself predicated on sensory inputs and no different than lion understanding IN NATURE... It is perhaps more complex than lion understanding, it may tell a more compelling story, but "understanding" itself is not fundamentally different in nature. Human's are likely to run away if another human attacks them with a weapon. The human mind can tell itself a story about why it's running away, but the fundamental reason is your brain saw a weapon and said "oh shit" - No different than the conclusion drawn by the lion's brain not to chase a preening gazelle. In both cases the mind makes the decision.
He clearly says that consciousness is emergent, and Gazelles therefore certainly have it. Therefore they do have understanding as much as any other intentional agent.
Dear Professors. Just another quid-pro-quo kind of food for thoughts rant from me. Thank you for your professional discussion though still free of charge radio/ internet input to human kind treasury .😂 Respectfully and gratefully I deeply thank you for the inspiration from you and I hope you will appreciate the milked from the audience well deserved response of mine. Let's get started then without any further ado.😂 Your interlocution reminds me of Shakesperanean, Mozartian, Newtonian, Vangoghian, Socratian, Einsteinian, Dostoyevskyan... whoever... input .. so to speak. No no do not get me wrong and let me put the whole thing another way. 😂All the guys I have mentioned before where geniuses and role models of the humans, of course. They basically and essentially said, or and presented their emotions and thoughts approximately close to your ideas too. YES ! Eureka moment guys, isn't it ?! They where grand philosophers of their own right and in addition to that they possessed charm, atmosphere, artistic talent and wit. I am sorry to say it but I got supine, divine and finally comatose at 01.30 hour of your program. Sorry for that my dear friends. I'm just kinda in-between artist with scientific drive.😂 Sofocle once said that "one should not have been born at all... if so he/she should pass away_ as soon as possible". This is still true. What is more... "Beauty is true, True is Beauty..." according to John Keats. That's all from me gentlemen. Bye...😂
My daughter has non-verbal autism, but for me it is obvious she has some level of ‘consciousness’ which gives me whole moral dignity to her. In the same way. dogs and dolphins have consciousness, they could feel pain and suffer, so I can’t hurt their feelings. Maybe Daniel you just regards this as all language based made up stuff - which doesn’t have instrinsic value, but what the hell on earth is there any more important than human consciousness? I don’t think killing a character in my Diablo 3 game has the same guilt than killing a real person in the real life. Of course this is all about just morality, but without morality, what is left in the value of human life?
I have great respect for both Daniel Dennett and Sean Carroll but I disagree with them about agency. I don't think we need agency to describe how the world is or to ascribe moral blame. Agency carries with it the taint of dualism. It invites splitting the self from the substance. Suppose Pat pushed Kelly in from on a tram and Kelly dies. We can easily blame Kelly's death on Pat without once mentioning agency. We can also decide how to respond without using agency but by taking into account the circumstances. We could put Pat in prison for life or give Pat an award depending whether Pat was Kelly's jealous lover orPat was quick thinking and Kelly was fat enough to stop the tram before it killed a cute family of 5. Nothing is gained by sticking agency in the equation, so why do it? However I completely agree with him about drones, they should be emancipated.
Sean, I'm sorry. I discovered your podcasts on UA-cam while looking for long-form audio to listen to while dozing off. I listen to the same video over and over till I've heard the whole thing. With all these mid-video ads interrupting, it's just not working for me. I'll be looking for something else. It's too bad, because I've really enjoyed what you present, up till now.
@@gmotionedc5412 The 'you' was intended as a generalized 'you'. i.e. It's not all about you. However, if you believe in the hard problem, then you also believe that you have qualia in your mind, so maybe it is about you after all.
I love how conspiracy theorists deny sciences, and scientists, when, legit, scientists ARE the OG skeptics.... The difference is "critical (especially for self) thinking skills".... Who was it? Wittgenstein who said, "you can't think decently if you aren't willing to hurt yourself" ...
I like Daniel Dennet very much but he and I diverge on free will, I also don't appreciate his scolding of neuroscientist, comparing them to an irresponsible surgeon who tells his epileptic patient that they removed the portion of their brain that controls free will and that patient committing a murder stating to the judge the surgeon told him he had no free will..... The fuquing REACH on that for an intellectual and one I admire is second hand cringe.....
Great podcast with my most favorite philosopher I know! I love how he addresses some modern misconceptions that people like Sam Harris keep advocating for
@@ammoosaa because I'm not making the argument, I was just agreeing with Daniel Dennett. In fact, I agree with almost everything he says (apart from the chimpanzee stuff which to me is highly speculative and probably not right). So basically his view and another comment I posted under this video would be my argument. You haven't made any argument though, just claims.
@Lucas Paprocki If the first thing you hear about is "martian zombies", you might not thing that you were listening to some of the leading thinkers of our time. It sound more like Sci-Fi B-movie geeks. You know... when things are out of context.
55:48 -- Consciousness implies almost anything can happen???? Dennett is dreaming. There is not a single degree of freedom added by consciousness that anyone can point to, with perhaps the exception of intelligibly discussing consciousness itself. I can't believe it -- how is every intellectual on this subject so prone to the stupidest errors? Hofstadter spent two books arguing a similarly deluded claim of consciousness=thinking, which can be immediately disproved by meditation.
Is it moral responsibility or stimulus-response conditioning? Is moral responsibility in humans really just stimulus-response conditioning? (Hint: the correct answer is "yes.")
@@ammoosaa Well there's one right there right? Dan attempts to dismiss the hard problem of consciousness by saying that "voice" and "consciousness" are comparable. He then goes on to say we have no hard problem of voice and therefore we have no hard problem of consciousness. It doesn't take a genius to recognise that there is a massive category error being commited here. Dan smugly (as usual) destroys the strawman he has set up and believes he has accomplished a fait accompli. Utter, utter drivel. If voice had a subjective experience his point would make sense but of course it doesn't. He has not addressed the hard problem posed by Chalmers at all, just hand wavy bait and switch.
@@CaptainFrantic Agreed. I just hoped we had the same objection to Dennett. What do you think of the Hard problem? I'm convinced by panpsychism as presented by Galen Strawson, Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi.
Are Sam Harris' opinions similar enough with those of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro for him to be grouped together with the latter? Harris probably agrees with 70 percent of your critique of the "Intellectual Dark Web" and can be expected to have interesting things to say in response to the remaining 30 percent, the only thing in common with Peterson is that fringe-left lunacy bothers him more than it does you.
"Welcome to 2020". Thanks, I'm sure it's going to be absolutely awesome.
Not sure why UA-cam started inserting ads during the episodes- nothing I did. I think I’ve successfully removed them.
Hi Sean, all fixed now. Many thanks.
@Lucas Paprocki Actually, I like listening to them on the move. Problem for me is rather that the volume level needs some normalization: I constantly have to turn up and down the volume on my smartphone to be able to both understand as well as not kill my ears. I'll might have to get out of the convenience zone and do it myself before listening.
Sean! Great episode of Mindscape!
Just wow. A lot to digest here. I'll be giving this one many more spins on the turntable, count on that. Daniel Dennett should be heralded as among the greats, in my opinion. I knew he was an intellectual force before hearing this today, but I was unaware of the immensity of his depth of thought and capacity to reason. And you, sir, did an excellent job in sussing out that immensity for us listeners. Nicely done, Sean. You know, I never did care for Chalmer's "Big Problem", and now I know exactly why! Lol!
I'll watch your content either way! :)
Loving the podcast Sean. Please keep making them. It's a huge public service for science.
Saw Daniel Dennett and instantly clicked. Thank you Sean!
I thought you were talking about approaching him at the grocery store or something for a second there
@@patldennis kind of a mindscape-body problem
Definitely one of the best philosopher's of our time
Sean it's excellent you started this podcast. You're providing amazingly digestible scientific and cultural conversations with some amazing people. I really love listening to these and enjoy even the harder more complicated scientific topics. It's excellent to hear more about topics that are never really explained correctly.
Wow, I just saw Daniel Dennett here and said "Oh my, that's going to be deep (actually deeper)!". Thanks Sean and let's hear the thing!
sOME deepity depthy dept
Daniel Dennett is an instant click!
"Welcome to 2020!" Oh gosh...listen to that optimism of a person who doesn't know what's coming.
7iUO i7o777i7o7o77o7o777oi7 xviii was oiiiioiiiil7iioiiioio6i
Lmao
sean carroll is just the calmest of dudes his blood pressure never rises
Dan Dennett is just about the best thinker I have ever read and listened to. Maybe that is because he has the skill to explain his ideas in a way that makes them easily accessible. Two years later I listen to this podcast again and am reminded of this gem of a person. And to have him paired with my favorite theoretical physicist is a delightful treat.
Thanks so much for this podcast.
Always enjoy listening to Daniel. 🤓🙏
dineshdharme Thank you.
I would love to have a repeat of this guest, always a pleasure to listen to you two
Great talk indeed!
I was having a discussion about the subject at the end of your talk, regarding what rituals and habits and rules even, should or could one keep, for a healthy society to continue without religion. My friend then reminded us that MANY of those things we hold dear in the world which we attribute TO religion are in fact much much older than religion, and thus we need not fear that we can perhaps redefine or rediscover in some way a more 'rooted' reason to hold onto them.
"Home is where... when you go there, they have to let you in." Robert Frost. Ha!
So funny... so awesome... so true!
Daniel Dennett's ideas are great. I typed in (to Google) "Daniel Dennett wiki" and I'm really enjoying his wiki page. There's all kinds of material there.
It turns out I read one of Daniel Dennett's books, I thoroughly enjoyed it as I recall, and I didn't recognize the Author's name prior to looking at this wikipedia page.
Sean does us all a favor by putting us in contact with Daniel Dennett's ideas.
Cheers!
Thanks for this. Fascinating stuff. I'm a huge fan of Mr. Dennett and his work and thoroughly enjoyed this discussion.
Adore Dennett. Sean please join him for The four hoseman 2.0! Hitchen's can't be replaced like ever but the message and discussion would be so great for countering magical thinking.
Really good conversation with highly scientific and valuable information, thank you so much for the time and effort and upload, Kudos 👍
This hit me like a ton of bricks, a severe epiphany even though I've previously understood these views myself. To hear these gentlemen strike in agreement with my worldview is slam dunk after slam dunk. I'm an anarchist/neo-atheist, and to hear the problems I've always had with some of my other idols such as Chomsky on language and Chalmver etc. is liberating. To understand how little we can even define "conscience" in this day and age where people are yelling "The sky is falling!, look out for AI" is such a calming and hilarious view of "branding". Freewill? Yes, of course, we have and use and abuse. It's almost as severe as believers who claim the universe popped out of "nothing". It amazes me how people with such high IQ and understanding of most things can't let go of their intuitions/beliefs of "magic" and "magical" views about reality. Thanks, guys, You Rock. Gr8! Peace ☮💜Love
Best one yet. Fascinating.
Cognitive Vandalism!!! What a great term from Daniel. I need to start using it. Poetry. Gr8! Peace ☮💜Love
42:20
SC: "So now we get to consciousness."
DD: "... it emerges, in this innocent sense; and the idea that it's one thing, that everything in the universe is either conscious or not, that the light is on or the light is off--that is, I think, a fundamental error. ... the search for the simplest form of consciousness ... it's a wild goose chase. Because it emerges; and yes, starfish have some of the aspects of consciousness, so do trees! And bacteria!"
SC: "But not electrons."
DD: "But not electrons. And we can argue about motor proteins, but ... the question of where do you draw the line is an ill-motivated question."
But they just did draw a line. They drew the line between systems from which consciousness is absent and those in which it emerges somewhere between electrons and motor proteins. Does no one else have a problem with this? It's one thing, mentioned often by Dennett's serious critics in consciousness studies, that he never offers a picture for how exactly it emerges; but it's another for him to call this line ill-motivated and yet in the same breath claim that something belongs behind it. An electron is a system. If Dennett thinks that we are "robots made of robots made of robots...", meaning we are just very complicated mechanisms--the mechanistic perspective, which is already based on a false premise if you pay attention to relational biology, but that notwithstanding--and that consciousness emerges in these "robots", but also thinks that consciousness doesn't emerge in electrons, then he must think that electrons aren't robots, meaning that systems (which, in point of fact, all consist of electrons) only become robots at some simplest level of complication. But that contradicts his belief that the search for some such "simplest form of consciousness" is a "wild goose chase".
Elsewhere DD claimed consciousness is an illusion/magic. DD pretends to know a lot of science and pretend to be right in dismissing well established concepts in science and is credited by some for his so called philosophy. In science we do not know what space, time, energy etc., are, yet we can comprehend what is incomprehensible. Let me just give you one example. In QM many physicists misinterpret what is meant by observation/measurement, which according to Copenhagen, means collapse of a wave function into a particle. Hawking explained black hole (BH) radiation by the pair production of virtual particles and anti-particles, one falls into the BH , while the other is ejected as real particle into space. Implying that the quantum field (QF) can simulate conscious intelligent 'observer' collapsing the wave into real particles (an insight not mentioned by Hawking) but mentioned by SC as indicating Anthropic Principle, deciding the small value of Cosmological Constant, so life can evolve in our universe. There is only one universe, although SC believes in multiverse. I think QM leads to life consciousness and even soul (so electrons can be conscious).
This is all because DD runs an organization that gladly pays money to those who endorse atheism. I wonder if he thinks knowledge can be bought. How pathetic.
However, QM leads to much more than 'divine design' and the 'mind of god', if only DD was not dismissive of science.
Illusion is a tricky concept because we often forget in our colloquial usage of the idea that illusion does not mean that something doesn't exist, that's simplistic, we already have good words for things that simply don't exist. Illusion is about a certain arrangement of patterns say, that create a misleading impression under certain conditions, something that appears different from one angle than what it actually is. There is always still something there, just not what you would think from a surface level glance.
Illusion is about something being not quite what we think it is, but the popular assumption is that illusion equals something not existing, being real. In reality illusions can be interacted with, they will respond to changes, they can appear in a more straightforward way from a different viewpoint, in other words they exist, they are real, just not quite what we think they are from a point of view.
With that in mind, yes, consciousness is clearly an illusion, given how we are often so mistaken of our own experiences, everything from cognitive psychology, or just visual illusions and their experience in our consciousness will tell you that.
But in the end I tend to avoid using the word illusion because of the baggage that people have a hard time dropping about it, and just talk directly about all the things in our minds that are different from what we tend to think about them.
Loved the discussion!
Correct, because they're not using the illusion in the ordinary sense, but more like in the illusionist sense; the magic trick is real, its just not what you think it is!
Yes! I'm so glad! And whether or not its is the reason I totally suggested this a month or so ago, so I'm pumped.
Happy New Year Sean!
I love his command of the literature. Hours of recalling authors and papers written over decades. I’m like oh that’s the famous actor I know well in this movie, why can’t I remember their name....
This one was fantastic
Awesome clarity of thought here. Well done.
Very, very enjoyable. Mindscape - definite click - with Dan? - even faster click!
In regards to free will, it seems like Dan is more concerned with the damaging effects of the free will illusion rather than the question of if it’s real or not. Even if people who think free will is real to function better in life, I don’t think that’s an argument for the truth of the question. It reminds me of when religious people believe that all of morality will fall apart if you don’t believe in god, and don’t acknowledge whether the belief in god is true or not. I’m surprised that he thinks this way about free will and if he has any examples of how people that don’t believe in free will are damaging themselves in the process.
Loved the part about GEB and recursion. Douglass would be a great guest!
I really love dennett and his ideas... But oh my goodness I struggle so much listening to his speeches.
I know just what you mean, John.....but geez is it ever worth it.
Download Video Speed Controller as an add-on in your browser. Hearing the video sped up makes the pauses infinitely more bearable.
Please Sean get some video!! That would make it perfect.
Dennett says that "in a sense" we are all zombies. I think he means technically but not practically. Just like for the idea of free will, we just don't operate in a world or society where we are constantly cognizant of what is technically correct about ourselves. Our interpersonal, judicial and commercial world operates on what is probably an incorrect notion about us all, but is practical for how we have come to socially organize ourselves.
Dennett still incorrectly believes that free will exists, so he necessarily creates two different "senses" of reality.
Subtracting the delusion about free will simplifies the universe to a single reality and removes many contradictions and confusions.
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself He thinks free will is real, but when he says 'free will' he certainly means something different than when you say it.
do not mind the ads so much .... you should get something if that is the case .... watching and listening to you and therefore the AD .... so.... ya seems fair and if ADs are a bother and one can afford ad free.... ya blah .... thank you .... love the opportunity and experience for this kind of exposure to conversation, learning, and expanding.... a tool the best loot for consciousness , awareness or something
Love from Turkey my professor 🤗🤗
Dan keeps dropping the mic every 5 minutes, it's astonishing how simple he makes things
Happy new year.
It would be much better if we could see you when you talk :-)
YES !
Great episode!
Haha I love that you used the word ameliorate in your ad
Wow, the best!
After watching many things about quantum mechanics I have noticed how many things in my life I look at as probabilities now, which i think goes with what you were saying at the first.
Anyone with a good recommendation to read following Consciousness Explained to catch up what we’ve learned in the past 30 years since the publication?
He published From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds in 2017
@@pathologicallyfriendly Thomas Metzinger's The Ego Tunnel expands massively on Dennett's multiple-drafts model, amongst other things.
Read The Idea of the World by Bernardo Kastrup.
Thank you for this.
Can motor proteins really capture useful energy from random motion of water molecules? This is stated around 26:32
Engrossing podcast. Thank you Sean. What is the likelihood that consciousness evolved as a result of the development of language? It’s hard to think of consciousness without giving serious consideration to language as a tool for self awareness.
It seems to me that language is only useful in giving us the ability to express our opinions and thoughts on consciousness and is clearly not essential for the possession of it. For instance right now you are experiencing, in a first person perspective, the feeling of weight (your bottom on the chair), vision of all the things around you, all the sounds and smells etc of your environment. None of these demand language to experience. We use language as a tool which allows us to contemplate these experiences but it is clearly not (imo) generative in the sense which you seem to be conveying.
He should either do a thing on Sellars "defense of the appearances" or do a thing on Structuralism and Analytic Philosophy (is Structuralism Analytic or Continental).
Welcome to 2020 :)
Great episode
"user illusion"... So he says that there is a user to receive the illusion. Why should there be a user to receive the illusion in his view? For what should it be for? There needn't be a user to receive an illusion if you are a zombie. I think he disproves himself wonderfully in this sentence.
«A voice is not an organ, disposition, process, event, capacity or as one dictionary has it - a 'sound uttered by the mouth. The word 'voice' as it is discovered in its own peculiar environment of contexts, does not fit neatly the physical, non-physical dichotomy that so upsets the identity theorist, but it is not for that reason a vague or ambiguous or otherwise unsatisfactory word. This state of affairs should not lead anyone to become a Cartesian dualist with respect to voices; let us try not to invent a voice-throat problem to go along with the mind-body problem. Nor should anyone set himself the task of being an identity theorist with respect to voices. No plausible materialism or physicalism would demand it. It will be enough if all the things we say about voices can be paraphrased into, explained by, or otherwise related to statements about only physical things. So long as such an explanation leaves no distinction or phenomenon unaccounted for, physicalism with regard to voices can be preserved - without identification of voices with physical things.»
_Daniel Dennett
Well, not to be contrary, but this was interesting once they got to the hard question and hard problem discussion at 1:06:15 but it was not as challenging as David Albert, IMHO.
Every, day, life, is a deceptively disparaging and simplistic description of every day life. My *Everyday life” @ 19 was as a USMC Helicopter mechanic. Every day life in Afghanistan May include #drones these days.
Poetic Naturalism 🌎🌪🔥🌻
When you ask scientists about 'voice' they are speechless and that should be answer enough :))
Good stuff.
It's interesting the Daniel Dennett criticizes Chomsky's view -- I've read chomsky's latest book on it why only us but I haven't had the chance to read Dennett's.
one thing that's interesting that I think Daniel dennett should think about is that certain people don't have the capacity to imagine images. blind people obviously don't but even among people who have eyesight there is such a thing as a congenital incapacity to do that. So that would suggest that it is a separate neural process from language and linguistic cognition
I really like this metaphor about the computer interface. When we speak about interaction with the computer, we speak in terms of windows, buttons, mouse cursor, etc. All those objects are not "real" in the sense that they are not real physical objects but mere projection of the internal state of the computer. In principle, we could describe any interaction in terms of IRQ signals, read and written port values, changed memory bits, etc, but it would not only overcomplicated but largely useless, because it could happen in many different ways. The interface gives us a useful abstraction that hides many irrelevant details, so we can focus on what we are trying to accomplish. Similarly, though freewill does not exist independently from the underlying physical reality, that does not make it any less real when it comes to human interaction and social norms.
All arguments that try to prove that determinism is incompatible with freewill are either based on the assumption that freewill has to be something immaterial and thus include some circular reasoning, or based on an intuition trap, which assumes existence an external omnipotent, omniscience observer that can predict everything. However, even if we assume that such an external observer can exist, from that point of view, time itself would not exist: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_time Obviously, if you assume that time is illusion, it is natural to assume that freewill is illusion as well. However, I personally prefer to consider them as immersion phenomena that are as real as any immersion phenomenon can be.
Very interesting discussion thank you for a
1:30:00 It may turn out that each piece of the universe or each pattern in the universe is/has a point of view on the rest. That it feels like something to be a tree or a galaxy or a hydrogen atom, and that that may remain a brute fact resistant to explanation. I'm against quantum mumbo-jumbo trying to explain how minds emerge at higher levels, but the relativistic nature of the universe, the idea that generally pieces of it have a local perspective accessible only to themselves, may be fundamental. And pieces of the universe may mean points in spacetime but could also mean complex neural machines.
That idea immediately fails once you remember that a human being is composed of trillions of parts. Does every part have a personal perspective?
Which one is the one I consciously experience?
44:10 - "do you have a simple definition of what consciousness is that you prefer?" - one can't talk about something without defining it.
54:00 - "a moral agent.. is to be able to foresee and understand the outcomes of possible actions, and act accordingly" - defines a moral agent without defining morality. What function is being optimised by the moral agent ("act accordingly")? The consequences? What distinguishes morality over mere pragmatism/consequentialism/immorality is the ability to make decisions based on logic/reason irrespective of the personal consequences (eg there is no reason to treat another different to how one would expect to be treated all things being equal, considering that the only reason one treats oneself special is because they value their own self/sentience/agency and we assume this is shared by like others).
56:54 - "scientific theories of consciousness" - phenomenological consciousness (mental properties/1st person experience) is by definition not an empirical phenomenon because it cannot be denied through empirical observation (measurement). We can only measure physical (eg neuronal/behavioural) properties. We can philosophically infer the existence of other sentient beings by projecting our own internal experience to like (physically similar) others (whose brains also in the case of humans encode a model of a sentient agent including certainty of its existence); but apart from the measurement of the similarity between ostensibly sentient beings and the mapping between self-report conscious experience and neuronal function this is not an empirical exercise.
1:27:25 - that "martian zombies"/martians/earthling zombies/earthlings (irrelevant) could infer phenomenological consciousness through seeing/reading human behaviour/records - This implies that it is necessarily true that we could infer phenomenological consciousness in an AI by observing its behaviour/records.
So good
Please have David Wallace on the podcast!
3 secs in, let’s do this
25:09 Whaaaat? You are saying the little transistor man is *NOT* real????
“We shouldn’t tell people they don’t have free will because they may act badly” is that basically what Danielle Dennett is saying? It doesn’t seem like he actually argues we do have free will.
Enjoyable!
Wasn't this the guy who said something like 'What postmodernist philosophers did was evil!'?
Dennett just doesn't get it...
I have great respect for both guys. However, I think that Dennette is presenting a very human centric view and does it very casually and without convincing arguments. For example, the statement that human mind is profoundly different than monkeys and dolphins implicitly creates a dichotomy between humans and animals. It dismisses that all animal species can be considered profoundly different from eachother. The statement would be trivial unless you accept that human exprience is special in some fundamental way and that is different than an instant of animal being, which I do not understand how it can be true. It sounds like the same approach that religion have had, humans are special and the rest is background.
Not really true. Dennett says clearly that consciousness is widespread and a continuum, and that there are no fundamental differences in kind. It's one of his most clearly stated ideas in this podcast. The difference is simply a matter of degree. 50:30
Well that's nice to have one of the horsemen here. I consider Sean a fifth Horseman anyway.
Well, Hitch is dead and Ayaan isn't much of a replacement so...
If Hirsi Ali took over for Hitchens, then Lawrence Krauss would be fifth, and I'd consider Carroll a sixth Horseman.
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself Fun fact: Ali isn't her real last name. That's just the name she used to evade Dutch immigration laws. She lied her way into the country, then when discovered demanded Dutch gov pay for her protection while in the US.
QM theories have become like football teams....., support one and defend it come what may. Rather than look at math, the starting point needs to be the real world.
I’ve just begun to read Consciousness Explained this weekend and boom, he is in my favorite podcast! Don’t think the atheists can explain this lol
Daniel Dennett is one of the most prominent atheists in the world...
firefox517 Do I really have to mention that it was sarcasm?
A lot better than Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett arguing over something they actually agree about.
Sean please get some video of your conversations, then watch the views of this podcast explode. Most people (including myself) can not focus on long form conversations without a visual component for long periods of time, no matter how big of fans we are of yourself and your guests.
Sean, I can't stop asking how it all began! Even tho you said it is no longer a valid question, I still keep asking it. Because I like to :-) Because I CAN, and you CANNOT STOP ME AHAHAHAHAHA!!!
My take: concept driven causal loops (in the brain). (In a deterministic universe) Don't mention it. O:)
only question is how a particular pattern of electrochemical signals in our brain create certain subjective experience, can you do it on any silicon chip.... ??
Concept driven causal loops.
It sounds like its not a question of being conscious or not, but to what degree of consciousness, and the amount of degrees of freedom dictates this, especially the degrees of freedom in thinking, and instinct does not count. So something with with only one degree of freedom is conscious, just extremely limited. The difference between a frog and a human is billions of degrees of freedom in thinking.
1:34:30 in 15 seconds tell me it doesn't sound like Dennett's actually a demon in disguise and accidentally let it slip. Just a coincidence to be sure.
Wow, just wow
I love the analogy to "user illusion"... the idea that consciousness can be, in a sense, an illusion, but still basically real.
I wish you had discussed the fact that people can have very different consciousnesses... for instance towards the end I believe Dan was disagreeing with some philosopher that consciousness is word-based, and in the conversation there was a lot of focus on visual (i.e. literal) imagination, like picturing cows. However there's a reasonably broad spectrum of visual imagination, psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm, and anecdotes from Reddit say the same is true for auditory consciousness/imagination (the strength/existence/number of "the little voice in your head").
It seems likely to me that a lot of philosophers disagree about whether consciousness is fundamentally visual or auditory because they actually have very different consciousnesses!
Even great minds can be captured by an initial fallacy that pollutes the rest of their thinking. There were many brilliant Christian philosophers. Dennett's problem is that he is motivated to defend the idea of human free will, and this poisons many of his conclusions. When he talks about gazelles and lions, how does he know with any certainty what the conscious experience of the lion is? How does he know that the lion doesn't understand, in its own conscious way, that the gazelles jumping are not good for hunting? In fact they DO UNDERSTAND THIS because they don't chase preening gazelles. Human understanding is itself predicated on sensory inputs and no different than lion understanding IN NATURE... It is perhaps more complex than lion understanding, it may tell a more compelling story, but "understanding" itself is not fundamentally different in nature. Human's are likely to run away if another human attacks them with a weapon. The human mind can tell itself a story about why it's running away, but the fundamental reason is your brain saw a weapon and said "oh shit" - No different than the conclusion drawn by the lion's brain not to chase a preening gazelle. In both cases the mind makes the decision.
He clearly says that consciousness is emergent, and Gazelles therefore certainly have it. Therefore they do have understanding as much as any other intentional agent.
Dear Professors. Just another quid-pro-quo kind of food for thoughts rant from me. Thank you for your professional discussion though still free of charge radio/ internet input to human kind treasury
.😂
Respectfully and gratefully I deeply thank you for the inspiration from you and I hope you will appreciate the milked from the audience well deserved response of mine. Let's get started then without any further ado.😂
Your interlocution reminds me of Shakesperanean, Mozartian, Newtonian, Vangoghian, Socratian, Einsteinian, Dostoyevskyan... whoever... input
.. so to speak. No no do not get me wrong and let me put the whole thing another way.
😂All the guys I have mentioned before where geniuses and role models of the humans, of course.
They basically and essentially said, or and presented their emotions and thoughts approximately close to your ideas too. YES ! Eureka moment guys, isn't it ?! They where grand philosophers of their own right and in addition to that they possessed charm, atmosphere, artistic talent and wit. I am sorry to say it but I got supine, divine and finally comatose at 01.30 hour of your program. Sorry for that my dear friends. I'm just kinda in-between artist with scientific drive.😂
Sofocle once said that "one should not have been born at all... if so he/she should pass away_ as soon as possible". This is still true.
What is more... "Beauty is true, True is Beauty..." according to John Keats. That's all from me gentlemen.
Bye...😂
My daughter has non-verbal autism, but for me it is obvious she has some level of ‘consciousness’ which gives me whole moral dignity to her. In the same way. dogs and dolphins have consciousness, they could feel pain and suffer, so I can’t hurt their feelings. Maybe Daniel you just regards this as all language based made up stuff - which doesn’t have instrinsic value, but what the hell on earth is there any more important than human consciousness? I don’t think killing a character in my Diablo 3 game has the same guilt than killing a real person in the real life. Of course this is all about just morality, but without morality, what is left in the value of human life?
Degrees of freedom in humans are intrinsically linked economic status, ie ,power
Social status as well which may not be tied to economic or power.
Art kinda doing that what religions claim to do. Preserving religions means that they will claim they was all about it all along.
I have great respect for both Daniel Dennett and Sean Carroll but I disagree with them about agency. I don't think we need agency to describe how the world is or to ascribe moral blame.
Agency carries with it the taint of dualism. It invites splitting the self from the substance.
Suppose Pat pushed Kelly in from on a tram and Kelly dies. We can easily blame Kelly's death on Pat without once mentioning agency. We can also decide how to respond without using agency but by taking into account the circumstances. We could put Pat in prison for life or give Pat an award depending whether Pat was Kelly's jealous lover orPat was quick thinking and Kelly was fat enough to stop the tram before it killed a cute family of 5.
Nothing is gained by sticking agency in the equation, so why do it?
However I completely agree with him about drones, they should be emancipated.
Sean, I'm sorry. I discovered your podcasts on UA-cam while looking for long-form audio to listen to while dozing off. I listen to the same video over and over till I've heard the whole thing. With all these mid-video ads interrupting, it's just not working for me. I'll be looking for something else. It's too bad, because I've really enjoyed what you present, up till now.
Indonesia subtitle pliz
So this guy solved the hard problem? How?
He has told a convincing story about why you are mistaken about having qualia in your mind.
@@johnhausmann2391 I’m mistaken? About what? You are mistaken. Your comment is a non sequitur.
@@gmotionedc5412 The 'you' was intended as a generalized 'you'. i.e. It's not all about you. However, if you believe in the hard problem, then you also believe that you have qualia in your mind, so maybe it is about you after all.
I love how conspiracy theorists deny sciences, and scientists, when, legit, scientists ARE the OG skeptics....
The difference is "critical (especially for self) thinking skills"....
Who was it? Wittgenstein who said, "you can't think decently if you aren't willing to hurt yourself" ...
I like Daniel Dennet very much but he and I diverge on free will, I also don't appreciate his scolding of neuroscientist, comparing them to an irresponsible surgeon who tells his epileptic patient that they removed the portion of their brain that controls free will and that patient committing a murder stating to the judge the surgeon told him he had no free will..... The fuquing REACH on that for an intellectual and one I admire is second hand cringe.....
Great podcast with my most favorite philosopher I know!
I love how he addresses some modern misconceptions that people like Sam Harris keep advocating for
Dennett is mistaken on consciousness and free will. Harris is right. The hard problem is real and free will, if defined properly, does not exist.
@@ammoosaa the way you say that makes you sound a bit like a religious person.
@@Jaroen66 I could say as much about your comment and there'd be no objective way to disprove me. Why not get straight into the disagreement?
@@ammoosaa because I'm not making the argument, I was just agreeing with Daniel Dennett. In fact, I agree with almost everything he says (apart from the chimpanzee stuff which to me is highly speculative and probably not right).
So basically his view and another comment I posted under this video would be my argument. You haven't made any argument though, just claims.
Harris is right about free will. It is simple to prove that free will doesn't exist. All Dennett does is redefine "free will" to mean something else.
1:28:20 If you just tuned in, try starting here 😜
@Lucas Paprocki
If the first thing you hear about is "martian zombies", you might not thing that you were listening to some of the leading thinkers of our time. It sound more like Sci-Fi B-movie geeks. You know... when things are out of context.
@@DrDress I certainly didnt predict that would come up :)
A flaming elephant standing on its trunk is what you'd create if you could do *anything*
please have grimes make a new opening jingle
55:48 -- Consciousness implies almost anything can happen???? Dennett is dreaming. There is not a single degree of freedom added by consciousness that anyone can point to, with perhaps the exception of intelligibly discussing consciousness itself. I can't believe it -- how is every intellectual on this subject so prone to the stupidest errors? Hofstadter spent two books arguing a similarly deluded claim of consciousness=thinking, which can be immediately disproved by meditation.
I pressed the like button because I had 3 choices, I left a comment because I have free will
His sounds like Esbern from Skyrim
🥂
We hold dogs morally responsible for their actions. Does that make a dog more conscious than a bear? 🤔
Is it moral responsibility or stimulus-response conditioning?
Is moral responsibility in humans really just stimulus-response conditioning?
(Hint: the correct answer is "yes.")
The voice analogy is utterly facile imo (like much of Dan's strawman method of philosophy). Yeah I said it!
woahhh dude, you mean to tell me that two different things ... are, like, *two different things* ??? duude I’m so high
What are his straw man views?
@@ammoosaa Well there's one right there right? Dan attempts to dismiss the hard problem of consciousness by saying that "voice" and "consciousness" are comparable. He then goes on to say we have no hard problem of voice and therefore we have no hard problem of consciousness. It doesn't take a genius to recognise that there is a massive category error being commited here. Dan smugly (as usual) destroys the strawman he has set up and believes he has accomplished a fait accompli. Utter, utter drivel. If voice had a subjective experience his point would make sense but of course it doesn't. He has not addressed the hard problem posed by Chalmers at all, just hand wavy bait and switch.
@@CaptainFrantic That is how the majority of anylaytical philosophers operate unfortunately.
@@CaptainFrantic Agreed. I just hoped we had the same objection to Dennett. What do you think of the Hard problem? I'm convinced by panpsychism as presented by Galen Strawson, Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi.
👍
Are Sam Harris' opinions similar enough with those of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro for him to be grouped together with the latter? Harris probably agrees with 70 percent of your critique of the "Intellectual Dark Web" and can be expected to have interesting things to say in response to the remaining 30 percent, the only thing in common with Peterson is that fringe-left lunacy bothers him more than it does you.