Daniel Dennett - How are Brains Conscious?
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Brains are conscious. The heart is not. What does the brain do that the heart does not do? How does it come to be that brains generate inner subjective experience, the movies of our minds? Why do brains seem to be the only place where such mental magic occurs? Could a complete understanding of physical laws account for consciousness?
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One day when I'm a grandpa, I'm gonna have an epic beard like Dennet!
I hope it turns a deep yellow and is dirty.
If it SEEMS like anything at all that IS conciousness. This guy just uses a different set of definitions for a lot of these terms like consciousness and “free will” then he argues w people w/out ever defining his terms. That’s the most charitable explanation I can think of. He could just literally believe the things he says like “free will is real” and “consciousness is not”. This guy is totally irresponsible and shouldn’t be given platforms to spread confusion. Stand aside Dennet, the adults are talking.
I would summarize Dennett's position as follows: "Fame in the brain" is what we usually call consciousness. There's no real difference between pre-conscious and post-conscious thoughts for everything in the brain is like a stream of "drafts" constantly being re-written. Consciousness happens in memory, namely, the emergence of a momentarily winner among so many competing neural stimuli that strive to gain the whole brain.
Now, this explanation says nothing about how it is the case that there is an "I" who is conscious about that "emergent winner." I mean, there are many other instances of competing signals in nature and we do not speak of consciousness regarding them. Think of the particular photons coming from a distant star.
There is no "I". "I" is just another celebrity in the brain. A superstar if you will. A feeling that makes itself known among the other feelings that make themselves known. If you feel like a subject the fact that you feel is proof that it is appearing among other feelings in consciousness.
@@muresandani There are several serious inconveniences with your approach, which, to my mind, expresses correctly Dennett's thought:
1. You say: "a feeling that makes itself known" -- which begs the question: "Known by whom?" Be it an inner or outer "system", the problem of consciousness has been only transferred to that or those who "know" that "feeling" (although I'm not just so sure that Dennett would deal with the "I" as a sort of "feeling").
2. The attempt to build science --I mean: hardcore science-- with no "I" borders on the ridiculous. The simplest dialogue in any lab goes like this: "Hey, Mark, are you sure of that cable's length at 60 °C? --Yeah. I measured it myself." Certainty goes hand in hand with consciousness. It's not some part of Mark's brain that is assuring us about that cable's length: it is he himself, which is why two or three days after the events, Mark is still held responsible for the data he provided.
3. What is denying the very existence of the "I" besides renouncing to explain or at least face head-on the real problem, the hard problem of consciousness?
@@fraynelson If I understand Dennett correctly, he would say that "makes itself known" is nothing more than a metaphor for "becomes available as a motivator for subsequent action". I think he has covered the "I" you refer to pretty extensively in his work, and would agree with @Dani Muresan that it is just another celebrity in the brain
@@muresandani And yet, there is consciousness. Why?
As usual, not even an attempt to a solution to the _hard_ problem
??? Aren't the problems he's dealing with hard enough?
Shave and see how many people still believe you.
Vanity and American culture :)
My favorite thing about Dennett is he never says what I think he will (what my argument would be), then defying the expectation of a bumbling professor, and phrasing it not quite in a way you've heard before. Love it.
I don't understand what this guy is saying. How does constant stream of information and things processing things allocating important things into certain areas in the brain translate into a personality or into what we feel?
How do electrons and neurons translate into a feeling? What is a feeling, some group of neurons being affected by a release of a certain chemical and other neurons processing what happens in that section of the brain....wait, if little bits of brain were removed and replaced atom by atom until full brain was replaced, what would happen? Would we stay who we are, I think so, logically. That means we are constant pulsating energy of information regardless of what matter it pulsates in? That means we could replicate or transfer into a biological computer one day and live forever or until atoms decay? No this can't be, i think there is something in the brain that dictates everything which makes you you or me me but where, maybe DNA or the quantum field? What the hell am I smoking?
the brain, like everything else living, IS replaced atom by atom and molecule by molecule all the time, as is trivially known. so thats one deep problem off your mind =)
and no, he doesnt actually explain the process that give consciousness (if anyone actually had a comprehensive theory about it it would be big news). almost all his writing and talk on the subject is merely to "demystify" it and point out, like he does here, that its closely related to attention for instance. (I also think he could be clearer in pointing that out.)
Id love to study particle physics with you and smoke blunts, its convenient here in amsterdam
That's the longest "I don't know" I've ever heard.
+MikeRoePhonicsMusic haha
+MikeRoePhonicsMusic Lolzz..Man, I have been laughing by remembering your comment for about a month now everytime I recall it...Lolzzz
+MikeRoePhonicsMusic Haha
That's because it wasn't an I don't know. He told you that he knows how a great deal of it works and that negates a lot of other ways it could be.
It's all still a 3rd-person account of physiology in the brain. I don't think Dan's illusion of consciousness makes any sense. Everything he describes could happen in a zombie,or a computer, and we are not zombies or computers. Consciousness has to be something extra. .
He said interesting things but i don't think they match the title which is a much more interesting question .
bingo -- his book 'Consciousness Explained' doesn't either
well there is still a HARD PROBLEM about this phenomenon of "pay attention to me!" How does it emerges from matter?...
I think there is no easy way to answer this question because consciousness is too complex phenomenon. It's like asking someone to explain how life emerges from periodic table in few sentences. It's not possible to give easy and fast answers (which people like), there are whole books written about it.
In addition, I think that antimaterialist arguments like qualia or knowledge argument fail to say there are non-physical aspects of experience. Dennett's Quining Qualia I think refutes these arguments nicely. Qualia emerges like "elan vital". Artefact of bad theory.
We have strong intuition about non-physical aspects of consciousness, but these arguments I think fail when examined rationally and closely.
Intuition, in general, proves nothing. A lot of scientific truths are not intuitive. For example, general relativity which shows gravity isn't really a force at all. Psychologists and mathematicians know how our intuitions are terrible in probability theory. They always lead us to wrong conclusions.
I'm not so averse to Dennett's description of what consciousness is as I am to the fact that he clearly has not answered the question
No one else can either. Partly because - what is the question exactly? Most of the relevant concepts remain undefined.
If you listen carefully he is telling that the question itself is flawed. You'll not get satisfaction if you ask the question that way. Stop placing consciousness on a pedestal and the answer will be quite obvious
@@divish007 it's not even about placing consciousness on a pedestal, if you intuit that consciousness is irrelevant to matter then that means consciousness must be resolved into matter, that begs the question why is matter conscious if it is stimulating itself via the shape and function of the brain? Because if you don't consider the importance of consciousness then it must go without saying that matter is prone to internal states of experience if it ends up stimulating itself correctly, we will just say these are illusions (which is an irrelevant response, matter is still having experiences regardless of their ontological status) and this is nothing special and we can go on with our day... but here is the problem, this means that matter is prone to having 'illusions' if it stimulates itself in some capacity, this means we are no longer materialists and now we enter protopsychism whether we like it or not. The only way to save materialism now is to state that the illusion is separate from the matter in a magical non existent space, but then it would not correlate so strongly with brain matter in the first place.
I feel like hes describing how conciousness works not and not answering the original question, how are brains conscious? I feel like this is his more cognitive scientist side of things coming out and answering this.
I agree completely. He seems to be avoiding the real issue, i.e. "How can the brain (a totally physical object) create conscious experience?" What he is hypothesizing instead is how the brain organizes that conscious experience once it has been created, which is far less controversial. Said another way, what he is discussing is the "object" of consciousness (i.e. the perception of the phenomenal world as it is processed in the brain), and ignoring the "subject" of consciousness (the observer of that object), which is the real mystery.
I would love to see him opposite Bernardo Kastrup, to thrash things out.
The question was " How the brain explains the mind?" The question wasn't about how molecules are conscious, it was about human consciousness. he clearly explains how human consciousness is a emergent property of the complicated interactions between neurons and how memory is created and accessed based on every moment. That explains how Human brains are conscious in regards to our minds and perception of ourselves.
@@kianimate7803 In so far as I'm familiar with his work and public persona, I like Dennett a lot, but I have to agree with the preceding comments here. What he provides in this clip is merely a model of attention and memory - right? In other words, he sets out a system for how physical processes in the brain determine what is attended to.
Somewhere else if I recall correctly I think he may argue that there is no 'hard problem of consciousness' and it's a non-issue that's only arisen due to asking questions based on mistaken preconceptions.
I'm not persuaded he's right.
A number of other publicly prominent experts in the field perform a similar sleight of hand by conflating the content of consciousness with consciousness per se.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that consciousness is necessarily some kind of substance or thing or agent.
In other words, what I'm looking for is how the faculty of experiencing - of being aware of objects of experience - emerges out of material processes.
An experimental demonstration of the processing model Dennett describes could be made using technology such as computers or even water pipes and valves and so on, right?
How is it that those physical machines aren't aware yet machines like cats and humans are?
What a bunch of smoke. if I repeated Dan Dennet's view in class I would get a failing grade... in fact I'm going to do that and see what happens
+Joe Ruf If you failed, then you need to find yourself a new class. I won't pretend to know his if explanation is perfect or not, but it's as good an explanation as anything else out there. and infinitely better than the intuitive cartesian view that a lot of people seem to hold.
Try Twice Like mice Maybe 20 years ago but if anyone is being Cartesian it is certainly Dennett whether he wants to admit that or not is another story. In fact I believe he is the Cartesian of Cartesian with his book "Consciousness explained" (A book I brought to class to make a point about the misuse of language by non scientific people pretending to be scientists (got an A on that)). Anyone who has the arrogance to redefine words as if they are an authority and then use them without really telling the reader what you have done only to reply, when this fraud is revealed, that any other way is just nonsense, is quite the old useless intellectual thing to do. This is what happens when you grant self proclaimed auto didactic trust fund babies PhDs and there aren't any philosophers around. If Rorty were still alive I don't think he would be getting away with this. As someone pursuing Neuroscience (and by that I mean studying the brain not conducting polls or making massive behavioral inferrences based on fmri scans to promote my political agenda) I have found there is much work to be done in the language dept here to clean up a bit. A couple guys at Oxford seem to understand what I mean. Hopefully it catches on here. Dennett will be dead soon anyways and likewise his ideas will die with him. I don't even believe he understands the brain mechanisms of vision (not that it is easy but if one is going to make an epistemic claim, especially as a materialist, one would assume that would be pretty important... And to dismiss that, whether on purpose or not, you never know whats on an autodidacts syllabus, yet hold up the useless term, for science at least, 'meme" is worthy of ridicule
Right, well i'll be honest you clearly know a lot more about this than me so i wont bother to argue! I can't imagine that someone so well respected could be so wrong, but then again you lot are about to get massive letters spelling out TRUMP on the white house, so fuck knows. anything goes in the US ;)
Try Twice Like mice lol. true that. But the only reason Dennett is popular is because he hopped on the "Muslims proved to the world God is bad" post 9/11 academic gravy train and all the good post modern (this was their one use) philosophes were dead or more focused on politics than people attemptoing to solve consciousness. Marvin Minsky's respected and yet wrong about everything. Then again many greats were wrong about everything but one thing and the reverse. He's just "wrong" because he didn't want to the hard work
you seem fairly well versed on the subject (i would hope so as you appear to study it!). would you be able to point me in the direction of some decent work on philosophies of conciousness? I only ran into Dennet through the whole four horsemen thing... Dawkins and Hitch i respect, Harris less so but has his moments, so i figured Dennet was worth checking out - hence i was expecting more religion and less about neuroscience and conciousness. This has sparked my interest, but i need somebody to at least show me where the torch is before i can start searching the dark room, if you catch my meaning.
So he explained how the brain makes judgement and processes information, great, but that doesn't explain how and why conscious experience arises in the brain. He *avoids* the question, rather than answer it. Just say "I don't know".
There are no such thing as conscious experiences (qualia) in Dennett's view. There are only representations of such experiences, such as "you are experiencing a red object", "you have experienced a pain a few moments ago", somewhat similar to representations of external objects such as "there is a chair in front of you" that are then used in thinking and to instruct external behaviour. Sounds unfathomable? Maybe so, but it's either that or adding consciousness as something primary to your onthology such as in panpsychism, so if you trust in Occam's razor you better be damn sure that Dennett is wrong first.
Stu Saying there's no "conscious experience" is a huge step. Robots, clocks, cars, and machines do not have conscious experience.
Decision making and processing information isn't unique, and doesn't result in consciuos experience. I can program a robot to react to heat, and say "ouch", but this doesn't mean the robot has conscious experience.
To say we have no conscious experience, is saying we are equal to a rock sitting on a road, or a clock ticking, or a robot making a decision. .There are many parts of the mind which we are "conscious of" and many other parts which we are not. If we accept that there is a separation between the two, then this is a proof that to an extent, that conscious experience is real.
Bryan U you don't get consciousness for free just by doing any old computation in Dennett's view, that idea would belong more to panpsychism. We are conscious because we compute extremely complex models of a self that include representations of conscious experiences.
We've evolved to be conscious mostly of thoughts that are connected to macro-level computation and decision making (emotions as well as concentrated thinking in the sense of Kahneman's "system 2"). It makes sense to connect these kinds of thoughts to our self models, but the precise details will have to be worked out in the future.
Are we like stones? From an outside perspective, yes. When you take apart a brain, you won't find anything but particles observing the laws of physics. From the inside, it's not so easy. Consider a theoretical mental patient who believes he is Elvis. All of his sensory input is perfectly manipulated to invoke the perfect illusion of being Elvis. To himself, he really is Elvis, even though this interpretation doesn't align with any cohrerent interpretation of the real world.
Stu It doesn't matter how complex our "processing" is in our brain, if it is mere computational activity, it simply can not be conscious, period.
We can program the most complex AI that mimics a human mind, but it won't suddenly have "conscious experience". From the outside, it'll act just like a human and they would be indistinguishable, but it's still just electrons passing through logic gates one after another in succession, albeit a lot of ones. No conscious experience there.
"From the inside, it's not so easy. Consider a theoretical mental patient who believes he is Elvis. "
That's irrelevant. A person can perceive and experience whatever he wants, and the outside world can perceive him however he wants. However, the fact is, humans as we know it, seem to have conscious experience.
However, I don't know if anyone else except me does have one for sure, since I can't prove it, but I know very well myself that right now I do possess a conscious experience. In fact, it's the only thing in reality that I can be truly certain of, that "I Am" that I exist, and I am aware of something.
Yes, no computational activity ever leads to conscious experience (qualia) in Dennett's view, as there are no such thing as qualia. We believe that we have such experiences because representations of them are created in our brains that then affect our further thinking and decisionmaking.
You can deny that this is the case, but then you have to come up with an alternative explanation. This typically involves postulating consciousness as a fundamental entity in your onthology, which comes with a whole host of problems that makes such an explanation much more convoluted and therefore disfavoured by Occam's razor.
You are overconfident if you believe that you can be certain of anything. Your brain is a computational machine that has no direct path to ultimate reality.
But why Daniel? Why does matter experience? How do we approach that experience?
@@Bringadingus Yeah, and the scientists would have discovered that if not already knew it. Why can dead matter arrange itself and suddenly experience sensations? That's at least part of the question.
@@Bringadingus I am studying neuroscience, it literally does not. Perhaps biology would come closer, or the philosophy of biology but all we look at is mechanisms and correlations for biological processes. You would think this to be the case however it really does not. At least definitely not at the moment or in the foreseeable future. But, I am just a feeble human.
@@Bringadingus what distinguishes the way you feel and respond to temperature and the way a thermostat does? nothing? because you said we are just mechanism. the brain feels and responds to temperature using a more complicated version of the mechanism a thermostat uses. but you and i both know, no matter what linguistic gymnastics you use to try to avoid the question, that you and I actually feel heat, and the thermostat doesn't.
Daniel Dennett is a very very very very very very very confused man. Highly intelligent people are actually better at confusing themselves and lying to themselves than dumb people, they think they've got good reasons to think the only thing that can't be an illusion is an illusion.
*Daniel Dennett sounds so foolish. he is almost stuttering to explain how he denies the existence of the entire problem of consciousness. Obviously he is bravely treading unknown territory. He does not know, and like a PhD professor, just can not say that he does not know. Disappointed*
Confucius say: What a load of rubbish. This professional poseur extracts moonbeams from cucumbers.
It’s the change in criticality from one state to the next
This is all true, but instead of explaining how the brain generates consciousness, it raises more questions than answers. For example, how do individual neurons (as well as the brain as a whole) know what they are registering in the external world (e.g. how does a neuron know it is detecting a vertical line, without having some sort of outside knowledge )? All neuronal firing is the same; it is what causes this firing that differs depending on the stimulus. The only measurable difference in neuronal firing is the rate of the firing, which represents the intensity of the stimulus but none of its features.
Moreover, the very fact that neurons are tuned in to specific stimuli seems to suggest that some level of consciousness is already present on the neuronal level (even if it is outside our awareness, whatever "we" are), and the fact that the brain is constantly trying to predict what's "out there" is evidence of it being a conscious organ. So this leads to some circular logic: the brain generates consciousness because it performs functions (detection, judgement, prediction) that we normally associate with consciousness in the first place
Consciousness is the constant process of "drafting" in the mind, it is not a "thing".
***** If theres no god , theres no soul . and if theres no soul and were nothing but brain and body , as experts say we shouldnt have Consciousness and when we dont have Consciousness , so we dont have any thing because we dont actually exist !! But if you deeply and definitely know and feel that you have Consciousness and have will , so : youre not just matter ( brain and body ) and the other logical results ... . Definitely a worth thinking issue .
Hossein Karimi You say: "... if theres no soul and were nothing but brain and body , as experts say we shouldnt have Consciousness ..."Then they are not really experts, are they? You do some more research, and you will find that there is a lot more science than what you say here, and you will see not only better and better explanations of many adaptations in the living world but explanations of where our consciousness comes from. They are not perfect explanations yet, but they are really good.
***** I didnt exactly get what u said ! i said that if were nothing but matter ( brain and body ) we shouldnt have Consciousness . almost 90% of scientists say that .
So if youre naturalist - materialist you have no way to believe in Consciousness unless you believe in " something else " that isnt material in its origin but has connections with matter and nature in a very complex process . this is what some scientists and philosophers say especially in recent time.
I dont know you exactly , but i guess your disinterest to believe in God and religion makes you not to believe in the " Soul " meanwhile you dont want to call yourself a materialist. this is what some other people do too! for example they speak about : spirituality with out god , meaning and purpose with out god , morality with out god , etc . but as far as i and many others understand you only have two choices ! : 1. believe in God 2. materialism . Theres no third option , sorry .
Hossein Karimi "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots."
CallMeMrNameless Invalid .
I use criticism of Dennett as "not saying much" as a basic test of imagination in others. "Not saying much" = failed.
He's trying to explain the workings of brain, and how it "decides" to focus on one set of info than another, but that's NOT the question here, this is pretty well understood biology, there's nothing new here, the contrast between his so called "cartesian theater " and his model is more of a discussion on freewill than conscious experience. I don’t know how people even considered this.
Spoiler - He doesn't know.
Watch at 1.50 speed. Your welcome
Denette tends to jump from one thought to the next
Whatever this guy's ideas are, he doesn't communicate them very clearly.
+bpansky Haha, His books are very good. He is the kind of guy who needs a long time to work up to and present his arguments in written form. I would recommend reading "Consciousness Explained"
bpansky I'm glad its not just me...
+bpansky Ok, let's see how effectively you can communicate an argument for why experience itself is an illusion.
+Sterling Gutierrez so what philosophers do you like then?
Mats Andren
I recommend Richard Carrier.
Dennett is Darwin and Buddha in one. 😉
Hmm, the question he tries to answer seems to be more akin to 'how and why do we experience reality like we do?'.
They could have just said up front that they didn't have a clue, left it at that, and saved me 12 minutes of nonsense.
+Eric Michel They can't. Simple as that. If they do admit that, it means no more school funding, no more dramatic science-knows-everything media coverage, no more IFL website shiny titles for teenage audience, and no more invitation for superficial debates here and there to make money. These people are at best celebrity scientists, while there are many many more actual scientists are doing their job seriously in the lab with almost no media coverage. Religion does not need to be ritualistic to have political meaning, these mediocre wannabe scientists are all religious in nature even if they are not aware of it...
He is talking about self reflexive mind means awareness of self awareness not consciousness. It is a memory of the previous self aware state. He mix things. Self awareness is common among animals. Consciousnesses is a totally different concept equal to reality
Does anyone has any idea about *why is he speaking in a church* at all??
I figured it was just irony
Then people who don't have sight and other senses don't have enough consciousness as a person who is getting more sensory data?
he calls the thing that can differentiate between reality and illusion an illusion....lost atheist
I wish people would stop asking Dennett this question. He has nothing to say to it and can't be taken seriously.
Scroll down for christians who want a simple, one sentence answer.
Not a christian. Still think Dennett is spouting off nonsense.
Dennett was a materialist and viewed everything through the lens of matter. Consciousness is now ‘the hard problem’ and materialists have a hard time fitting it into their view of the world. That it is fundamental they cannot acknowledge or that mind is elemental emerging with quantum events.
What arises and emerges with quantum events is elemental; lightly elemental as is mind with dense matter being grossly elemental. The reason for this is vibration. If there were not different rates of vibration, then all that is elemental would have only one level of density.
So materialists will continue to be puzzled by consciousness and it will continue to be the hard problem until they acknowledge that it is fundamental.
For centuries _'professional'_ philosophers have made their living hiding the fact that they have no more an explanation of consciousness than their listeners. This man is no exception... he just doesn't know, but can't just say, *_"I don't know"._*
There is (must be) a solution to "What is consciousness ?". Two epistemological 'puzzle pieces' are 1) thought is physically made of forces flowing through the brain's neural structures and sub-systems that include loops, comparitors, differencing and summing, and 2) existence is always and exactly now (the duration of every Now is exactly zero). This is why when being in states of flow, the sense of time disappears. Feeling conscious is 'simply' experiencing those changing, merging, and opposing forces in every moment.
After experiencing this conclusion, and with practice, one can step into this knowable state by simply choosing to BE. The causal continuum of forces (that is the entire universe) is just running; it cannot do otherwise. Enjoy the ride.
in a church? lol!
I quite liked when he talked about 'fixed' things and how there's no finish line in consciousness. Don't we all feel ourselves as a unitary self that in our perceptions, that things really are fixed and there is a finish line? Of course, this was an illusion, but for many of us, we don't typically realize it.
I've always been curious on how we can perhaps cultivate experience that correlates the data and neuroscience on the mind. Right now, the only answer is low-level nonduality experiences, to see that there's no fixed "you" in control, to see how things are largely differentiated in nature but separate and isolate. Unfortunately that discipline has been hijacked as New Age woolshit because the high level claims they make are not provable, like how consciousness is infinite and how it makes the universe what it is. How many people say the universe is one, which is true, but then make a claim that there's a hivemind behind it all, which is not true? These people are fucking everywhere.
Consider for a moment that neurology can definitively say that consciousness is selfless, and the only disciplines that even focus on this as experience are Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, philosophical schools of experience largely discredited because they're offshoots from religions, but they are themselves not a religion. Many of us are missing the big picture to absorb the data here, and that's experience. Dan's friend Sam Harris is a wonderful advocate here, for he's a very skeptical person, and he's inquired into the mind both as data and experience.
It’s not only Zen Buddhism. All schools of Buddhism have the concept of non-self, meaning no substantial unchanging unitary self, which does totally match what Dennet is saying here. The later Mahayana schools, like Zen, do go futher into the emptiness of all phenomena, not just self, than the earlier texts do. But they all really lead to the that. The modern secular Western tradition known as the Insight Meditation Tradition takes those experiential elements of the Buddhist teachings, whilst not getting sucked into the metaphysical claims of more traditional Asian Buddhism. This is a pretty open tradition though, with some people still feeling aligned with the metaphysical claims. But there is a secular Buddhist strand within it. This is definitely where I am aligned. It’s about interpreting experiential phenomena in a way that works with, and does not contradict, the findings of material science.
The Secular Buddhist Association has quite a lot of stuff on that, or the RUclips channel Doug’s Dharma. Doug (I forget his surname) goes through all these concepts from a secular perspective.
It’s like he’s describing the workings of the insides of a
computer, Audio components, visual parts, REM, processer etc, none of
which explains the input of the internet.
It is not hard to understand Dennett’s claims. They are difficult to accept, as soon as we go beyond description, with all the idealized metaphors for a very (or over-) simplified understanding of consciousness, and misunderstandings of Descartes, among other things that are hard to swallow.
Haha yeah this does not explain conscious experience
Despite contrary comments, I find Daniel's explanation the clearest yet of what consciousness is even after reading "How to build a mind" by Kurzweil and watching many Marvin Minsky videos. A flock of birds appears as a moving pattern through time as observed from a distance, so too is our experience, even if we are thinking about our experience. There is no meta "us" that escapes this.
Each bird in the flock is an "illusion" of a bird, composed of countless millions of cells, each of which is illusory, composed of quadzillions of molecules and atoms, which in turn are illusions, composed of energized fields in empty space... It's sometimes most convenient and appropriate to describe it as a flock, or other times maybe as birds, or atoms, or sometimes as legs, wings, breasts and thighs.
Dennett is confusing consciousness with meta-consciousness. He's providing an explanation for meta-consciousness, the ability to explicitly self-reflect upon one's internal states, but does not touch phenomenal consciousness, which is why is there something it is like to be anything?
@@pandawandasI agree with this. At least that seems to be what he is explaining part of the time - he jumps around rather. But quite a lot of what he seems to be saying is that the idea we are (or have) a unitary self observing a coherent flow of conscious experience is illusory. This is I think correct. It is very close to the Buddhist psychological concept of non-self. But yes, it completely ignores the question of why there is any awareness at all. Why are we not just inert “zombies” reacting to stimuli, with no awareness at all?
THE SPERM CELL IS THE SOUL IN THE PUREST CLOTHING CLOSER TO THE SPIRITUAL THAN TO THE PHYSICAL.
Our journey into this world no doubt started as a sperm cell and ovum cell (egg cell). The sperm cell entered the ovum cell (egg cell) and embedded itself into the ovum cell, as what is internal into what is external. In no time, the duplet cell replicates its chromosome and starts dividing into cell divisions (mitosis) and finally project a brain, then a neck`, then a torso, then hands and legs to produce the human form. For that reason, the principal cause, the sperm cell (development into a spirit) is not perceived in the instrumental cause (the ovum cell development to become the physical body) otherwise than as one with it.
Since the human form belongs to the sperm cell, it follows that the sperm cell is also in the human form and is a mirror image of our physical form. This is what wills, sees within us as if we are watching a video in our heads, and thinks in words as if we are listening to a telephone conversation within us. For that reason, the body by itself can do nothing, but is always moved in complete obedience to the bidding of the will, seeing within us, and thinking in words, even to the extent that whatever a person thinks in words he speaks with his tongue and lips, and whatever he wills he does with his body and limbs. Thus, the will and understanding (made up of the seeing within us and thinking in words) belonging to our spirits are what act, while our physical bodies by themselves do nothing.
Moreover, when we go to sleep, we see ourselves in our dreams, but think we are still in our physical bodies only to realize on awakening that we have dreamt. The Bible calls our mirror image the inner man (Eph 3:16), the inward man (7:22), the hidden man (1Pet 3:4), and also a spirit (Dan 2:3), and also distinguishes between the two, calling them the inward man and the outer man (2Cor 4:16).
Because the inner man is our spirit is the reason why God Speaks to his prophets in dreams (Numbers 12:6). It should be here stated that the sperm cell covering is woven from the purest natural substances bordering the spiritual and the natural, while the soul’s substances is purely spiritual. The soul is called a spirit because we stamp on it our way of willing, our way of seeing things within us, and our way of thinking in words. Thus, soul and spirit can used interchangeably.
From all this, it is clear that the mind belongs to the spirit and the brain belongs to the physical body. This is why we can get injured in the spinal cord and in a part of the brain, but still, we will, something, see within us as if watching a video, and think in words as if listening to a telephone conversation. We can see that these three, namely, to will will, see within us, and think in words are our consciousness which form the mind. Thus, the mind generates the brain, and not the other way round
The seer Emmanuel Swedenborg [1688-1772] wrote:
"The physical body is added to and apparently almost joined to the spirit, in order that the spirit of man may be able to live and perform activities in the natural world, all things of which are material and in themselves devoid of life. And as it is the spiritual only which lives, and not the material, it can be seen that whatever lives in man is his spirit, and that the body merely serves it, just as what is instrumental serves a moving living force. An instrument is said indeed to act, to move, or to strike; but to believe that these are acts of the instrument, and not of him who acts, moves, or strikes by means of the instrument, is a fallacy."
Multi draft theory Totally makes sense.
Materialism is dead. Science is beginning to “ see “ the elephant in the room, “the observer”. The observer is conscious and in essence, beyond time and space.
Consciousness is memory moderated by awareness. Constant info processing with wilful discarding of info that doesn't match whatever worldview you are inhabiting. Origens of dogmas and doctrines that excise conflicting alternates.
Dennett makes some good points, but how in the world could you talk about consciousness and brain functions without including the fact that the thing you are talking about is alive. That's the extra something that makes all the difference.
Imagine being in that church and overhearing this conversation
Smoking weed does cook your brain as those old D.A.R.E. Programmed T.V. Commercials.
He says "Let's try to get the bird's eye view here" then proceeds to crawl from one tiny detail to the next like a little inch worm.
It's a bird's eye view for the interviewer who knows the whole process in more detail.
Sorry. He doesn't get close to explaining consciousness.
Who gets closer?
I agree in many aspects with what Daniel says.
However, there is a pre-consciousness treshold from which the real structured matter can "sense" it's OWN introspective activity and its OWN existence.
I agree that a level of post-consciousness doesn't exist, the real material consciousness being a continuously evolving real structuring material.
You can observe this by simply looking at how some animals perceive their sorroundings, and by how the human race perceive its own environment.
Nobody who's a bit smart can miss this interpretation and I don't know how people like Daniel miss the evidence that's all around humans.
Again, Daniel has some good observations, but they are incomplete.
Daniel, can you tell us if, with what you know, you can create now, today, full artificial consciousness? Not AI, but AC ( Artificial Consciousness )!
To be honest I find the interview obnoxious purposely believing it’s compiled a competition tourney and it’s not,
His whole point is that the real answer is a big letdown. Like a magician explaining the trick.
Did he answer the question, or did he waffle on through multiple analogies ( the equator?) & ultimately fail to hit the spot?
Energy and the cosmos existed long before brains. Yet it was intelligent enough to produce life form and the a human brain which has the ability to contemplate and wonder existentially. Don't assume it's just a dumb accident.
Anyone else didnt get it....am I just too fucking stupid? how are brains conscious????
the problems is we don't need to be conscious. your conscious just makes us different from a machine.
ruclips.net/video/n4SzHoRhbaE/видео.html not even animals are machines.
The idea that there is no finish line where matter becomes conscious sounds to me like panpsychism, which asserts consciousness is a quality of all matter, even at a subatomic level.
I take mine ⚓️ it and claim itself victory ✌️ Jesus Christ theology.
An example of “When you have no idea about what you are talking about”.
I just got a micro-judgement. There was a lot of low-level modulation involved, the mills were a-churning, the waves of activity were welling up while gathering allies to compete for my high-level attention, despite all the 'edited' history that was only retrospectively available. Confusing? Perhaps. But in the end, the archival copy of the paleo-version of what was going on in my brain triumphed over the many competing versions. It appeared to be unitary, and fixed. Fixed for sure. I can understand that many people don't understand Mr Dennett's thoughts, considering the Cartesian theater aspect and all. But ultimately, the final version in MY brain has been signed off on, even though -- damn it! -- there is actually NO final draft distributed in space and time. Did it happen in memory before consciousness, of after consciousness? Pre-conscious or post-conscious? I give up. Maybe I've crossed the equator line of my brain, without having reached the finish line that marks the real beginning of consciousness and the end of memory. I don't know. I'm just an unlettered dumbass anyway. Fuck it.
+gerry O 'tray u funny :) but gods forbid a macro-judgment...
Punch yourself in the brain every time Dennett says "designed".
hahaha fucking dennett doing the backwards chair thing on a pew like "let's rap"
I loved Dr. Daniel Dennett, very sad to hear about his passing, I've would have loved to meet him, he was my absolute favorite, an intellectual giant, a legend, true sage, heard he was also very kind gentle person, huge loss to civilization, I will watch tons of his lectures in the next few days in his memory
The old fraud himself. He talks and talks and talks, like a conjurer misdirecting your attention away from the fact he's not explaining anything.
How didn't you understand him? I understood him.
Graham Black he's terrible, indeed. Never heard a single word of wisdom come from his mouth. And he does have an academic position as well as accolades...
Graham Black and he lectures on consciousness frequently...
When you are trying to cause fear don’t we are very educated U*people.
Sure, there is all that Neural Processing and Competition going on in the Brain. But the thing that Dennett always avoids is talking about a particular output of all that processing such as the beautiful High Def Color filled Conscious Visual Experience that is Embedded in the front of our faces when we look at a scene in the External World. He will harp on some of the imperfections of this Visual Experience to distract from the Existence of the Visual Experience. I have come to suspect that Dennett really does not have the same Color Qualia that I have or he could not so easily say it is an Illusion as he does whenever he speaks. I have always assumed that all normally functioning Human Minds would have at least similar kinds of Conscious Experiences. I have thought this for decades. But after many years of discussions about this with people it has finally become clear to me that some people actually must not have Conscious Experiences or Qualia. I limit this observation to things like the Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Salty Taste and so on. The Experience of Colors and especially the Experience of Redness has been a major target for my discussions with people on the various Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness Forums. There are people that flat out deny the Existence of the Experience of Redness. I think they give it their best shot at understanding it but they always fall back to just dismissing the Experience of something like Redness as pure Fantasy, Superstition, Magic, and Illusion. I have become convinced that their denials of Conscious Experience, their very words, show that they truly and simply do not perceive Redness as a kind of Experience. There is no Redness Experience. They are not Color blind so they can Detect Red in their Visual Field in some way but it seems to be more at the level of the Neural Activity. They can somehow sense that their Neurons are Firing for Red and indicate that there is Red in their Field of View but there seems to be no Experience of Redness in their Field of View. They deny any such extra Consciousness Phenomenon is happening. I used to think they were just messing with me, and I was hoping that after all these years that they would get tired of continuing their Fraud. But they are not messing with me, they truly do not have Conscious Experiences or Qualia. In fact they say that Qualia was invented by Idiot Philosophers. They are usually nasty and arrogant like that and I wonder if that is a symptom of their lack of Qualia. It is interesting that their lack of Qualia would make them living examples of the P-Zombies from Philosophy. One thing I can say is that if they really never have had an Experience of something like Redness then I can completely understand how they would think it was something Magical, and Illusory. These people simply deny the Existence of Qualia and are completely stymied by talk of Qualia, which naturally results in their complete inability to understand the Hard Problem of Conscious Experience.
I have been astounded by the possibility that some people (mostly the Physicalists) actually might not Experience the Color Qualia. It is a mystery to me what their Inner Experience of Color could be like. I have always tried to use the Experience of Redness as a discussion point for talking about Conscious Experiences. These people literally will say that there is no such thing as Redness and they always try to compare descriptions of Experiences of Redness to Religious Experiences. I have tried for a long time to get them to describe what the Experience of Redness means to them. After receiving mostly insults, one of them gave me a description of what the Experience of Redness was from their own point of view. He dismissively said that his Experience was the same as everybody else. He described the multitude of Emotions and Memories that were Experienced while Seeing Red. He went on to describe particular Emotions and Memories. I noticed that there was no recognition of the Experience of the Redness itself, but rather it seemed like his Experience of Redness wholly consisted of Associations to other things. This seemed a little odd, but telling. So I then asked him to strip away all the Emotions, Memories, and other Associations from his Experience of Redness and tell me if there was anything still remaining in the Experience. Here is his reply: "How the {!#%@} would I know? It isn't possible for me to 'strip out all the Emotions, Memories, and any other Associations'. Further, I don't believe for a moment that you can either, Steve. This is navel-gazing, pure and simple." This person obviously does not Experience the Redness, but rather Experiences all these other things in place of the Redness Experience. He literally can not figure out what I am talking about. Notice the reference to Navel-Gazing. He still thinks that the Redness is a Religious Experience.
After some further conversations I now understand what an Experience of Redness is for these Physicalists. When they think about Experiencing Redness they always branch off into talking about Emotions and Memories. For them, it appears that the actual Experience of Redness is an Experience of Emotions and an Experience of Memories. That is the Experience for them and there is nothing else for them to report. This is of course why they hate the word Qualia, because it does indeed imply that there is something else happening with the Experience of Redness. I can fully see how they would think that the concept of Qualia is Redundant to their Experience. I can fully now understand why they would think that Qualia and the Experience of Redness are different things. For the Physicalists the Experience of Redness is not what I expected. It is something different than my Experience of Redness. I Experience Redness as a Quale and they Experience Redness as associated Emotions and Memories. In fact I can say I really don't even Experience Redness as Emotions and Memories at all. I just simply Experience Redness as a Thing In Itself.
Another discussion thread I have participated in where the people denied the Existence of Qualia was one where the people were convinced that we cannot see a Color until we have a Word for the Color. This seems like a very strange thing to believe. I tried in vain to convince them that the Word for the Color does not make the Color real but that the direct Experience of the Color is real. They could not understand what I was talking about. This can only make sense if you consider that they might never have Experienced a Color Quale. They instead receive some kind of Signals from their Neurons that give them some type of Indications about the different Colors, but without any actual Conscious Experience of the Colors. I can see how the Words might be of prime importance to them.
But yet another example of People that probably have no Conscious Experiences or Qualia are the people that don't understand the difference between a Computer detecting Red and a Human detecting Red. They probably also just Detect Red in some way but have never had an actual Experience of Redness.
The evidence for this lack of Conscious Experience in some people is continuing to grow. It explains the endless arguments about Conscious Experience and Qualia. These people simply do not have Qualia. The Lights are out in their Minds.
At 1.01 min This philosophobe says,
"What the brain is designed to do........"
Who's side is he on?
His position is that the brain, and all organs of all life-forms and all life in its magnificent entirity, are the result of nothing but unempirical, unobservable,uncountable and unanalysible beneficial accidents. In what way can an autonomous individual interpret such as design? or is he necessarily indulging in sophistry and slippery rhetoric as the only way to preserve a precious but self-refuting and falsified materialist paradigm?
I am not a Christian so replies that mindlessly attack literal religion will be more irrelevant than usual. Let's stick to empirically derived data interpreted with rational thought.
John Owen "or is he necessarily indulging in sophistry and slippery rhetoric as the only way to preserve a precious but self-refuting and falsified materialist paradigm?"
What is this nonsense? He probably said "designed" where he should have said "evolved" because that habit, of thinking of the brain as something that "ought" to function a certain way, is hard to break.
John Owen "At 1.01 min This philosophobe says,"
Just because he doesn't agree with bullshit and considers that science and philosophy should be used complementary doesn't make him a philosophobe.
""What the brain is designed to do........"
Who's side is he on?"
The one that doesn't take metaphorical language in a literal manner. "Designed" is not meant in a teleological sense here.
"are the result of nothing but unempirical, unobservable,uncountable and unanalysible beneficial accidents.
No, the result of a non-random process called biological evolution that's empirical, observable and analyzable. That it's uncountable is irrelevant. We can't count all the stars that have died either. That has no impact on the sciences of stellar formation or stellar evolution.
"In what way can an autonomous individual interpret such as design?"
Again, as a metaphore for the description/schematics of the way things are. Same thing when physicists talk about the design of the universe. Really not fucking rocket science.
"or is he necessarily indulging in sophistry and slippery rhetoric as the only way to preserve a precious but self-refuting and falsified materialist paradigm?"
You mean that thing that never happened yet the silly post-modernists keep babbling on about? That was fun to watch in a back-alley theater in Paris, not in any meaningful Academic establishment.
You have tremendous faith but very little intellect. Thinking is not for you, try something a little less demanding.
John Owen The irony being that I actually get paid for doing philosophy, while you seem to be too ignorant to address any substance when your shitty arguments get countered, and instead need to resort to what I presume is psycho-analyzation done by someone who's doesn't have a clue what it is.
That or you might be just an idiot in true Dunning-Krüger fashion. Which I think is more likely given your "materialism is self-defeating"-rhetoric.
*****
You have tremendous faith but very little nous.
No "Hard Problem"?
No "Measurement Problem"?
This demonstrates to the world that you are a liar, you can not be a philosopher, not even in America, you are in fact a tedious little religious fundamentalist.
Try this perfidious child.....
Take two identical twins. The same ones as in Einstein's clock paradox after a hot bath and a nice cup of tea.
Let's say that one is tone deaf and the other has perfect pitch.
They are identical genetically and let's assume identical physically but their quality of consciousness differs in their respective appreciation of sound.
The tone deaf twin hears the same sound as his sibling but to him it's just/merely/only noise without relevence.
The twin with perfect pitch hears the sound and recognises beautiful and meaningful music that raises his spirit/mind/consciousness to greater heights.
The tone deaf twin takes no pleasure in music.
The twin with perfect pitch loves music, learns its secrets and benefits from its gifts.
One twin is a theist and one twin is an atheist.
It's not difficult to guess which is which and the difference between them lies entirely in their respective mental capacities.
Just as blind people lack the capacity to see and deaf people lack the capacity to hear, atheists are people who lack the capacity to appreciate the profound beyond the shallow.
This is my belief.
p.s. I'm not a Christian so replies that attack literal religion will be more irrelevant than usual.
Platonic love to all.
This is beautifully said AND can be enhanced by adding the dimension of psychology. Our life experience shapes how we select and respond to sensory input AND internal autonomic system activity. We each fabricate our own reality by the selections we make. It is little wonder that we have so much difficulty coming to agreement about anything since we are each driven by our own view of reality.
What an odd place in the piers to have a conversation..
WOW, something amazing is going on in the brain.
it's called thinking
@@eriksaari4430 thought is just a material process. It’s not amazing.
I get a crick in my neck watching this video.
Crypto wallet do you got ethereal coin for payment? Lol
That is the most unscientific explaining of something I ever heard. He spoke in circles and said nothing. He should be a politician.
I'd argue that he's a philosopher first, a scientist second, and that the science is a 'means to an end' to pursue the philosophical questions of cognition. Also, I'd argue that these videos are meant to provoke thought, questioning, rather than to explain or offer answers.
That has got to be some of the Most Insane Equivocation I have ever heard.
What I absolutely love about Dennett is that he is tackling one of the hardest questions “how we developed consciousness ?”, gods will have one of its final holes closed.
Fame in the brain equals consciousness?
All I will say is LMFAO
11:11 skip to there. He sums up his view/answer. and 12:00
*free will has entered the chat
What is the name of the interviewer.
This is why the problem will never be solved. We need some fresh thinkers.
@@Bringadingus no he isn't. There is Donald Hoffman and better yet Tom Campbell
@@Bringadingus "i'm an analytic philosopher. i don't actually 'feel' warmth. i'm just like a thermometer. there is no hard problem of consciousness. la la la la. all things can be explained by my big science brain, cuz i'm smart. any question i can't answer must not be a real question."
He doesn’t know, guys.
Who is the other guy?
I have no idea what’s going on
Now Dan is one of my favorite. So much bullshit on such a small space. I love him as a human being no matter what its just his mind is so full of shit it spills all over the place.
Well said !! 👏;)
None of this explains _how_ consciousness arises from the brain, nor how it even _can_ so arise. It seems instead to explain (offer a model of) how the brain comes to focus on some things more than others, and how that can change. This is interesting but it hardly even addresses the mind-brain problem. Dennett shows why thinking of consciousness as a finishing line or final state may be a mistake. But even if it is, this leaves the mind/brain problem quite unaddressed. Why? because the ideas that Dennett puts forward seem consistent with various theses with respect to the mind/brain problem - even substance dualism (to which the notion of a 'Cartesian Theatre' is a rather suspect, and certainly non-essential, added extra).
no he is saying that what we call consciousness is like shadow - it doesn't exist but seems to exist. there is constant information without anyone looking at it. the experience of 'looking at' is part of the information stream
Bringadingus An article of materialist faith.
Bringadingus Not at all. All that has been shown is that conscious events are correlated with neural events. The issues of causation and identity remain open.
Bringadingus Of course science is in the business of making causal claims but two pints need to be observed here. (1) Correlation doesn’t necessitate causation. (2) Even of (certain kinds of) brain states do cause conscious states, this still doesn’t imply identity - that is, that conscious states just are brain states.
Bringadingus But if brain states ‘give rise to’ (cause) conscious states but are not identical to conscious states (as you now seem to be saying) then conscious states clearly are not brain states.
God magic.....duh!
Bug fix Google
Oops
Dennett, not at his best here, perhaps because his interviewer was too gentle; he's better in debate. This might be called, recalling his book, "Consciousness NOT explained."
He does not speak, he gibbers. After listening to him jump from one reference to another in seemingly random way( which I cannot decide if it is some kind of ADD or just him trying to avoid saying "I don't know") I not only do not feel informed, but the subject is more confused. What a waste of time!
Consciousness is material. If not how could it interact with matter? If something else, something non material where does it come from?
Fame in the brain does not solve the hard problem. It's a metaphor for how Denett imagines information theory processes.
volume is so low!
try turning your volume up
Like that Woody Allen Joke:
I went into a synogogue and asked the rabbi the meaning of life. He explained to me the meaning of life in Hebrew. I don't understand Hebrew. He then wanted to charge me 600 dollars for Hebrew lessons.