"that consciousness doesn't exist is the silliest thing that has ever been said in the whole history of the human race": Dan Dennett go and sit in the naughty corner
Good point. Why are Dennett's acolytes such pricks? It seems to be a required part of their induction into the fold. A sociological study would be interesting.
Dennett's opponents often distort or gravely misunderstand his view, including Strawson, whom (I should add) is a great philosopher. His argument for panpsychism is intriguing, and valid - but only if you accept his premise about the "concrete reality" of phenomenal experience, which is ultimately grounded (and can only be so) in folk-psychological intuitions and a great deal of conceptual muddiness. I'm not saying he's wrong, but Dennett's work poses some serious difficulties for this view and at the same time manages to conceive of 'qualia' as behavioral dispositions - I encourage you to read the Ch. 12 in "Consciousness Explained" and sincerely engage in the task of imagining your qualia as "mere" behavior without intrinsic properties (it is not as impossible or implausible as people like Strawson want us to suppose (as the "obvious default view")).
It’s obvious that people have different experiences of qualia: otherwise, the painted exteriors of the houses in my neighborhood would not resemble the curtains hanging behind Dr. Strawson in this lecture.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="659">10:59</a> Here he is again. "Matter," with quote marks around it, "is known only as regards sudden very abstract characteristics," <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="669">11:09</a> by physics that is, "which might quite well belong to a manifold of mental events, but might also belong <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="675">11:15</a> to a different manifold." "It's necessary to emphasize the extremely abstract character <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="682">11:22</a> of physical knowledge, and the fact that physics leaves open all kinds of possibilities as to the intrinsic character of the world <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="689">11:29</a> to which its equations apply." And he says, "interest in the materialism <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="695">11:35</a> has been guilty unconsciously, and in spite of explicit disavowals, of a confusion <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="704">11:44</a> in its imaginative picture of matter." And I think that that afflicts all of us. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="711">11:51</a> Most of us, most of the time, are just not able to overcome that confusion. We can't help thinking we know more about the intrinsic nature <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="720">12:00</a> of matter than we do. So I think that Russell is right about the nature of physics. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="728">12:08</a> He's also right that we find it very hard not to slip back into thinking that we know more than we do <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="733">12:13</a> about matter, and then coming to think that matter can't be conscious, can't give rise <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="739">12:19</a> to consciousness or qualia. OK. Well, that's a big mistake. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="745">12:25</a> That's a fatal mistake. A mistake again is to think that we know anything about matter or physical stuff that generally gives us <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="754">12:34</a> good reason to think that conscious, conscious experience, qualia, can't be wholly physical. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="761">12:41</a> One point I don't know that's going to come up, because I can't control my-- <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="767">12:47</a> oh, yeah, now I've got some rude remarks about philosophers. I'll just leave them up there. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="774">12:54</a> Absolutely true. All of them. I'm not saying other people are better, but. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="781">13:01</a> Russell again. "We now realize," I'm quoting, "that we know nothing of the intrinsic quality of physical phenomena <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="787">13:07</a> except when they happen to be sensations, and that therefore, there is no reason to be surprised <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="793">13:13</a> that some are sensations." So there's a very explicit endorsement of the claim that the qualitative what it is like is literally physical. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="801">13:21</a> Physical stuff, you could say. And this is extremely startling, if you've <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="806">13:26</a> had this sort of conventional upbringing. When you get this, when you really get this, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="812">13:32</a> you're on the verge, in my view, of becoming a real naturalist, a real materialist. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="818">13:38</a> What are your chances of getting this of becoming a real materialist? <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="823">13:43</a> If you've had this conventional upbringing. I just think they're not great if you've already been tempted to deny consciousness in any way. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="830">13:50</a> It depends on how open-minded you are. Most of us aren't. I mean, I fully admit that I had a kind of revelation <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="839">13:59</a> 25 years ago when I finally got it. I was imprinted on this picture of matter as this clunky stuff that is intrinsically nonconscious. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="849">14:09</a> Many of us imprint on what we're taught early on. We feel the need for closure. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="854">14:14</a> The psychologists, the social psychologists, have a nice term for this. We seize and freeze. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="859">14:19</a> We seize on the view, and then we freeze out further thought about it. We polarize, and we tribalize with great intensity. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="867">14:27</a> I'm nearly done. But people I claim who know something about what physics is, now with Eddington, it's a very old point <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="875">14:35</a> that physics has nothing to say about what he calls, I quote, "in 1928, the unget-at-able nature of the physical. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="886">14:46</a> They know this whether or not they think with Schrodinger, for example, and I quote, "the material universe <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="891">14:51</a> and consciousness are made out of the same stuff." Or whether they think with Max Planck, for example, I quote, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="897">14:57</a> "that consciousness is fundamental and matter is derivative from consciousness." I'm not sure I'd put it that way. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="903">15:03</a> Or whether they know with DeBroglie, the wave function guy, I quote, "that consciousness and matter <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="909">15:09</a> are different aspects of one and the same thing. I quote again, DeBroglie, "the aspect <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="916">15:16</a> of this substance that we examine by scientific methods is what we call matter. The other aspect to which we obtain <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="921">15:21</a> knowledge, not scientifically, but directly, is what we call consciousness." And Lorenz, with whom Einstein fully agree says, and I quote, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="930">15:30</a> "the mental and the material are two sides of the same thing." The key here is that physics, in being <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="936">15:36</a> just a set of rules of equations, doesn't rule that our in any way. And since we know that's consciousness, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="943">15:43</a> the door is now wide open for us to reconcile. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="948">15:48</a> OK. This mistake has gone very deep in some people. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="954">15:54</a> And I mean characteristically, when you've got used to a certain use of the word or a certain way of thinking, you just can't really <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="962">16:02</a> hear the other view. And some people, there's also a kind of rebellious attraction <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="967">16:07</a> to the denying the existence of consciousness in one way or another, and you kind of feel brave, or heroic, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="973">16:13</a> or intellectually fearless. Well, that's fine. But I think it's also sad, because you're really <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="979">16:19</a> so lost when you do that. OK
I think <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2766">46:06</a>-<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2935">48:55</a> clears up what is meant by consciousness in this view of panpsychism. It's actually a pretty good argument.
Panpsychism, like the idea of a supernatural soul, is debunked by the fact that we can go unconscious with anesthesia and other methods. If Panpsychism or souls, or any non-biological means of consciousness were true, we would not be able to ever go unconscious.
@@naturalisted1714 But he is not arguing for a non-material form of consciousness. I think he is just arguing that all material has the properties of consciousness though the kind we experience when awake is a very specific type of consciousness. I might be off but it seems that he is expanding the definition of consciousness to include everything that could possibly be within conscious experience.
Good point he makes. He says: sciences, in particular physics, don't raise a problem about the good old sense of consciousness. And it shouldn't be a problem. But some scientists made it into a problem as some hard liners in neuroscience postulated that the brain "makes" decisions before the person does it. To even postulate that there isn't something like consciousness sounds utterly ridiculous to me. And I am also not on the side of Daniel Dennet, who said, if I understood Mr. Strawson right in his quotations, that "consciousness" is just something to function properly, otherwise we would be like zombies. If consciousness would only be something to function properly, why then do we even have a sense of self?
The title of the paper, “What Mary did not know” is a bit mistaken. It should be titled what “Mary did not feel.” If Mary was a physicist she could very well have found out all the laws of gravity and space time without ever experiencing falling from a cliff. Same as real world physicists who do not jump of cliff. Although there are empirical regularities in realm of how it feels for humans when they jump of cliff of a particular height. Such regularities of feelings are not dealt with by physics. Instead psychologists deal with such empirical regularities.
If Mary did 'know' everything about seeing a color, then she would have that bodily experience of the process of seeing the color in her memory and be able to recall it. The set up to the thought experiment is all wrong, because it presumes that knowledge is only a description of molecules bouncing off each other. A process is more than that. A process is organized into a unit by a reflective consciousness. The process of seeing a color requires an organizing principle reflecting on the process that is occurring and reorganizing the input into an recallable experience. That is all included in the knowledge of what a color experience is.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="556">9:16</a> That's where some people go wrong. A materialist, again, is just someone who thinks that everything that exists is physical. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="564">9:24</a> No one-- I propose no one who understands what physics is <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="569">9:29</a> thinks that physics can express or descriptively characterize everything that exists. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="575">9:35</a> This is because they know with, for example, Stephen Hawking, that physics, and I quote him, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="582">9:42</a> "physics is just a set of rules and equations." <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="587">9:47</a> They know that physics has nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to the question of the ultimate intrinsic nature <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="595">9:55</a> of the stuff that satisfies the rules and equations over and above saying that it satisfies those rules <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="602">10:02</a> and equations. They know that physics just isn't in the business of answering the question, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="608">10:08</a> and this is Hawking's words again, "the question, what is it that breathes fire <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="613">10:13</a> into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?" <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="619">10:19</a> Let me try and get to my-- they know, so I want a quote. Oh, here he is. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="624">10:24</a> Russell. I'm very keen on Russell. He's been forgotten recently, but he's coming back I hope. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="631">10:31</a> So they know, with Russell, that I quote, "physics in itself is extremely abstract and reveals <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="637">10:37</a> only certain mathematical characteristics of the material with which it deals. It does not tell us anything as to the intrinsic nature <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="645">10:45</a> of this material." "At moments," he says, "we realize this abstractness, but it doesn't make its due impression <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="653">10:53</a> because imagination reasserts itself as soon as we are off our guard." <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="659">10:59</a> Here he is again. "Matter," with quote marks around it, "is known only as regards sudden very abstract characteristics,"
I think I have another way he could make his argument. We have this conscious experience, which is the only thing we can be 100% certain of about reality. We also know that we have no idea how anything should exist at all, and that it is some mystery by which anything exists. We must accept that the mystery of consciousness does exist. So we are granted this sort of miracle about reality. If we then argue that there should also be "stuff" that isn't conciousness, then we are asking for a second miracle.
I wish this gentleman would just stick with idealist terms rather than being unnecessarily confusing by associating classic materialist terms with the things he says. It's like saying, "no, panpsychism is the REAL physicalism." Fine, I suppose, but it took me quite some time to nail down what you actually think. I could have simply agreed much sooner lol.
Hello everybody! Think about the idea of Trnity. It explains why math or consciousness or perception taking separately can't explain anything. I think only combined they give the whole picture of existence!
Clearly, there is Consciousness, there is qualia, the material and the physical. But, what is the relationship between matter and consciousness? The quotes of Russel, Eddington, deBroglie, Schroedinger. Max Planck and Lorenz are fine, but do not tell us whether consciousness comes from matter or the other way round... Can we do more Physics or whatever to gain a better understanding of the 'intrinsic nature and relationship' between matter and consciousness?
I think it's a bit like asking physicists to describe the relationship between matter and gravity, asking them does gravity come from matter or the other way round. But it could be more accurate to say that gravity is just a property of matter and maybe that's as far as we can go. I think that's what he is arguing here, consciousness should be thought of as a property of matter. Many philosophers think we understand a lot more about matter than we do and it gets them into trouble, I think that's the argument he is trying to make.
If Mary uses math and physics in her neuroscience, well math and physics work because they PREDICT the outcomes of possible experiments in terms of energy, force, particle structures etc,
Why isn't the pyhscial law itself the intrinsic nature of the matter? Two bodies attract each other by gravitational law. Isn't gravitational law (that each body attracts everything and every other body attracts one specific body) the intrinsic nature of every body?
All of physics can only be described in terms of it's structure or it's behaviour. It can never tell you WHY it is structured this way, or WHY it behaves that way. What is the driving force behind the driving forces?
*Consciousness isn't a mystery, and quarks being conscious is a bullet you might have to bite if you don't want to deny it's obviously apparent properties without being a dualist.
The question about whether a computer can be conscious can be examined further with this thought experiment. If you devised a program that you claimed generated a conscious experience when it was run on a computer, would it then have the same exact experience if you ran it at 10,000,000 times slower on a much lower powered processor? It would take longer, but if it is merely the logical calculations that are executed by the processor which generates the experience, then the experience should still occur, just on a much slower time frame.
WOW! You're cracked the case! Good job. Go pick up your Nobel Prize. I'm sure simply declaring a definition on a RU-vid comment section took years of thought and research. Incredible!
We can all construct declarative statements with no literal significance. Look: sandwiches are a mortified transgression. Are you saying you're an illusionist about consciousness? An eliminativist? There are even ways to be Russellian monist about consciousness that are consistent with the statement you just made. Care to supply any content at all?
A consciousness is like a video game running on a computer but missing a screen; you would hear it beep & sound in recognition of your input but you don't simply say it was beeping simply because of a key press but instead you imagine a reality inside the computer that is making the beep. So you would agree that "there's a virtual reality existing inside a computer" like you would agree that "there's consciousness existing inside a person", it is something physical, it is real.
I think you missed a central point (that I don't necessarily defend): we human beings talk about having a consciousness. But when we talk about that we are talking about something that we don't really grasp. We are not even sure about being able to point at it (see the beatle argument in PH.Inv. by Wittgenstein). There is some kind of sociality and language-related qualities of it that cannot be applied to computers. P.s. the screen metaphor is not right since the 'being-our-screens' is part of what we call consciousness.
