I think Dennett is right in what he says about the lack of a continuous self. I don't think that I am the same person I was 20 years ago in any sense that matters. The only thing connecting current me to the "me" of 20 years ago is that I have some memories of the things that person did back then.
Very few animals "noticing their noticings". I liked that! (and it serves well as yet another paraphrase of the illusion of a persistent self. (reminds me of "object persistence", which is a concept we don't learn until later in infancy. Seems like the notion of a persisting self that notices its noticings -and rememebers them -offers an evolutionary edge. ) Another great moment - and as such new to me - was the problem of Theseus' ship. That philosophical problem that seems to emerge as soon as you have seemingly identical twins is greatly brought across in the movie "The Island" and that particular scene where the hitman needs to make a quick decision over taking out the duplicate, i.e. the "product", and not the real person/customer and needs to swiftly ascertain which is which ( or who is who). For anyone still intending to watch, I won't spoiler this scene. It's a great and IMHO underrated movie touching on some of the concepts from this interview and Prof. Darnell's book(s). Enjoyed this one again! (and 100% agree with the interviewee). Nice!
'Illusion' as Dennett uses the term should not be taken to mean 'deception'. As he explains in this video with his 'desktop illusion' metaphor, consciousness is a special _representation_ of reality, a 'user interface' that is compact and easy to think about. This helps us to survive. In the same way, the user interface of your phone or computer is a benevolent 'illusion' - it is a way of looking at the underlying data. The activity of the 'unconscious' mind-body system, including its torrents of sensory input, is _vastly_ more complex than the conscious mind can perceive, or needs to know about. The Freudian idea of the unconscious as a primitive beast is mistaken - the unconscious is (in some ways, not all) wiser than the superficial stream of consciousness that we confuse with our SELVES. As the ancients said, "Listen to your heart".
This man's theory has endured and proved to be truthful in many ways. The mystery of life is not reduced to his limitations, but his ideas can shed light on the Mystery non the less.
Mind uploading/simulation theory/conscious A.I. entails that conscious experience can come about through running an electric current through switches and turning them on and off in some special way. For example, switching operations XYZ would give rise to the pain of stubbing a toe, switching operations ABC would give rise to the appreciation of the beauty of a sunset, and operations EJO would produce nothing. Does anyone really think that if you string a bunch of switches together, run a current through them, and turn them on and off in some special way, you can generate a conscious experience? That's just as magical thinking as claiming rubbing a lamp a certain way will release a genie.
Putting it as simply as Steve does makes it appear a ridiculous argument. But the brain has billions of cells which “hold” various levels of memory and, as importantly, trillions and trillions of interconnections. Plus inputs from the senses. If it were possible to engineer an entity - of whatever components, silicon or wetware - that was of comparable complexity I wouldn’t bet on it not being conscious at least on some level.
@@Wol747 If we make the system really really complex, it will become conscious. Somehow. Again, magical thinking. It doesn't matter how complex you make the system of switches, it won't become conscious.
@@stevecoats5656 I said I wouldn't bet against it. Some of the finest minds the planet has ever seen have been unable to even define consciousness at it's fundamental level, let alone explain it. If it's the result of a sufficiently complex system, and that could be called "magic" then so be it.
Dennett up to his usual trick of straw manning opposing ideas. Idealism is not based on any kind of 'magical' thinking. It derives directly from the notion ( espoused as far back as 250 years ago by Kant ) that we have zero one-to-one perception of reality. Something akin to Donald Hoffman's 'user interface' is inescapable. In fact no neuroscientist argues that we see reality 'as it is'. It thus follows that as the user interface is the only means by which we know 'the world'.....we ought to question whether what we observe really 'is' reality or not.
huge respect for Dennett for standing on the side of common sense... so many is still looking for the "real magic" when they're dealing with the problem of consciousness... probably only because they are protecting some weak beliefes - like "self", "soul", some "cosmic, universal morality", "god", "afterlife" etc... I consider these defenders of the soul and self as an intellectual trolls... They are playing with arguments only for the sake of finding some interesting, funny retoric when they perfectly know that "self" is already only a dust... brain science is bringing enough of the arguments to abolish these strange claims... "Closer to truth" as always - is doing a great job! ;)
This is very uncharitable and betrays a lack of familiarity with the literature. Hardly all of the people who disagree with the likes of Dennett do so because they are "protecting" beliefs about the soul or the afterlife. Most of them are atheists and/or naturalists like Dennett. Otherwise, they might think there are independently good reasons to believe in something like the soul which makes Dennett's views unattractive. That is totally rational, even if they might be wrong. They are not trolls. They are serious philosophers who defend their views just as earnestly as Dennett has and have made real contributions to the discourse.
There are no trolls. Self is an illusion as is consciousness as is free will. We are the most unfortunate things in the universe. Forced to have this sense that we are aware and matter when in reality not only do we not, but we are powerless to do anything but suffer and watch what we love die and what we build turn to ash. If there were any free will, every single person would commit suicide. It’s the only choice reason would allow
In a recent interview with Sam Harris, he also noted a similar split between two camps. In this interview, it's between the neuroscientists and the philosophers. For Sam, it's not an issue of argumentation. People just have fundamental differences in their ground state intuition. For the neuroscientists, the "hard problem" is as meaningful as asking "why do rivers have bends". It's a pseudo-problem. This is esp. the case when gets into the details of all the mechanisms at play, and have a basic outline of the processes. For the philosophers, the functionalist explanation is insufficient to explain the "qualia" of the inner experience. They feel there is something extra. Mechanistic science has not proven its case. For them, the inner feeling, is more primary. Another aspect of the problem may be practical (e.g., if one were a neurologist). Suppose one were to receive a blow of a hammer to the back of the head, or all the oxygen in the room were sucked out, or just simply receiving general anesthesia. Something will happen to one's consciousness.
>>For the neuroscientists, the "hard problem" is as meaningful as asking "why do rivers have bends". It's a pseudo-problem. This is esp. the case when gets into the details of all the mechanisms at play, and have a basic outline of the processes.
There is an “arrogant” or errant conflation separating humans from the animal world going on now for thousands of years even though no animal or organism can just get up and leave this planet or the solar system or the universe (that we have knowledge of otherwise I think we probably would have e heard about it by now). Human children that don’t learn language by the age of four will always have underdeveloped area of the brain associated with language which then effects other area of their brains development. Many “wolf children” have been studied and found. Are these children not “conscious”? There is a serious serious serious lack of examples coming from neurology of which proposing many different ideas like blind people or deaf people or blind and deaf people or drunk people who black out yet still interact with other people don’t remember the night before or drugs know to disassociate people from their bodies and so on and so forth. “Consciousness” is the entire kit and caboodle but even blind people are conscious so apparently sight doesn’t have something to do with it. Deaf people are conscious so apparently sound has little to do with it. Deaf and blind people the same. People in comas have been known to dream and also wake up years later. Isolating all the very interesting ideas and focusing on genetics and starting there may be a better idea. Qualia is a cool idea but everyone can experience qualia so is it really that special? Subjective vs. objective experience. Objectively it is hard to deny some things. Earthquakes, meteor strikes, tsunamis and pretty much every natural disaster out there. Wars don’t seem to be to subjective. Maybe how the war started but not the real consequences. So, why is everyone so stuck on the subjective? Restaurants create an ambiance, and use psychology to develop menus and increase sales yet the customer (not very educated on restaurants) may not know why certain menu items appear in the order they appear or the color or shape of a plate to give a certain “feeling” about a dish. Well the person creating the dish does have a very good idea about what they want that person to experience. Emotions can be logically and in fact are logical even if the emotion doesn’t fit the scenario. It’s a recognizable emotion but the inner experience of that person is confusing objectively and subjectively without explanation to others. Most of this stuff is new age babble but cool none the less. Also a lot of these ideas have been around for thousands of years already just repurposed and given a new name. It may just be a unique property to humans which could be curiosity, imagination, adaptability and the proper biology to be lucky enough to manipulate materials to suite our needs for survival. Culture is just a form of survival so no big deal there. Ideas are very powerful and humans feel and have emotions and attach ideas to these emotions and many wonderful things have been invented because if these ideas. Extrapolating the simple out of the complexity may be a better idea. I’m sorry to be so very blunt but many of these intellectuals have very sheltered lives. They have not expanded their own ability of awareness and experience surrounding overcoming many inherent biological reflexes like breath holding, meditation, fasting, withholding from sexual pleasure and so on and so forth. Genetics has stopped investigating things like an intelligence gene due to possible discrimination so it is science that is holding itself back BUT all these very creative ideas are fun none the less.
if you google "why do rivers have bends" there is a simple physical explanation that has to do with small changes in topography causing a differential in the river currents on different sides of the river, setting off a chain reaction where it becomes more and more bent, and that is why it happens. it's not a pseudo-problem. it's a problem that physics explains easily. why can't science offer a simple explanation like this for consciousness? that's the point.
what’s embarrassing is the conviction that A network of some sort of bio transistors create a type of software interface which could actually understand the hardware. Makes me think of Mario how to figure out its CPU
That’s the whole idea though behind the thought experiment though. Some people would imagine or say that human brains are just “natural” computers that have advanced to the point where it tries to figure itself out. Almost no animal under us in complexity does that. We’re pretty much the only animal that really cares what’s physically inside our own brains and beyond. Anyway, moving on, the idea continues that if we make AI advanced enough from the ground level (with the correct learning algorithms and whatnot) it might eventually start to wonder what it is and what it’s made of.) I guess you could argue “well you must have programmed it in such a way that it would eventually ask those kinds of questions.” - but then we could argue that nature did the same thing with us.
'Pan-niftism' is a crap comparison and a straw-man. He already said that each neuron should be considered an agent. One could sidestep his argument in exactly the same way that he is sidestepping the idea that a particle, which can store some information, has an elementary type of agency or proto-agency. He also often relies on appeals to 'common sense' when he calls things 'nonsense'. This is a failure to really address what he thinks is wrong with the argument.
He also said one of the stupidest things I've ever heard an educated person say. Saying a philosophical zombie has a "stream of unconsciousness" is like saying a desert has "rivers and lakes of unwater". That argument was close to being "not even wrong".
It's really not that much of a mystery if you step back and think about it objectively. Basic fact: humans are Homo sapiens, a species that evolved from the Great Ape. We are closely related to chimpanzees and bonobos. We have orders of magnitude more brain power and complexity than our DNA cousins. We have much more complex speech. We are much more complex organisms that these cousins, but we are essentially great apes. Regarding consciousness, it cannot be an illusion. We must be conscious to experience an illusion. I hope you see the issue there. Consciousness arises from physical matter organized in a specific way, along with a complex of energy, chemicals, and electricity. If you understand the complex brain processing of vision, audition, olfaction, taste, and touch, then you should not have trouble understanding how consciousness arises in the brain. Regarding subjective first-person experience (qualia), that is the brain making use of the senses internally to create an experience of say "red" or of "smelling banana" or whatever. It is all done by the brain. Regarding free will, evolution has provided Homo sapiens with the capability to interrupt deterministic processes that are leading to certain decisions and actions - we can interrupt the process and change the direction (that is, change our mind). That said, we are constrained by our genetics, our upbringing, our life experiences, and any biases at the time of decisions. Within those constraints, we have limited free will. No such thing as "virtual immortality." Panpsychism is not true within common understanding of consciousness. Just my take on things -- not a philosophical argument. Now, the task is to determine how the brain does all this. That is, lay out the circuit diagrams.
So what is his theory again ? Basically the same material point of view , with some more fancy details that doesn't get us anywhere close to solving the hard problem ...
I had 'epiphany' on dualism. Ok why?! We as communicators react almost always by putting up a barrier. Simplest resolution in communication. Some not many people we meet can go beyond that barrier that is the 'good or extra good' people. Ok dualism is simply putting up barriers like not good people. Like simplifications of underlying more deep ideas. That's it ok great talk again!
I don't remember if I heard of Ship of Theseus specifically, but yes, a cool predicament. Materially we are continually regenerating, and our original atoms are mostly gone, but somehow we feel like the same person. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The concept is one of the oldest in Western philosophy, having been discussed by Heraclitus and Plato by c. 500-400 BC.
The reality of the life of a tree is also compelling, where the living tree is all on the newest ring, while the inner rings can rot away and the tree can live, at least until the rot weakens the tree and it all falls down. Perhaps humans are similar to degrees, can never be the original smaller self physically or mentally, but the memories of those stages creates self-identity and grounds us in time as a whole being across our whole life, partially not yet lived, but knowing our choices now help create who our future self will be. Without this grounding, we might be more adaptable, be better able to see what is at present, but the grounding means we have knowledge and experience to defend a certain identity which we want to continue, and reject external pressures to be something else. If you want to make a soldier, start with a 13 year old, and you can mold his mind to your vision, make him a weapon you can use, but try the same to a 30 year old, and you're dealing with someone with more experience to know they can say no, and not need your approval or acceptance of your perspective.
Funny how you'll find those who try to reject the hard problem of consciousness are more of the practical types of human (nerdy types) Daniel Dennett is no nerd but he is overly practical to a fault in my opinion. Although I like Daniel Dennett I argue that the more practically bound you are as a person the more likely you will be a physicalist for the simple reasoning that an extremely practical person is aware of some deficit so to speak and rather than admit that which is no easy thing to do you take the opinion as a future safeguard of that fact ever getting out one day, 'well that may be true about me but it's because there is no free will or everything is causal in nature including me, so you see how that's not my fault.' And those who embrace the hard problem of consciousness have a more relaxed nature so to speak more likely to embrace wonder where extremely practical people in my opinion are incapable of wonder or extremely reluctant to take that path for its own sake. I think it worth mentioning as a seperate claim that people with a narcissistic tint to their characters always take the physicalist viewpoint. I don't feel the need to explain further why they would do that only to say -of course they would try to uphold a bleaker picture in terms of the wonder of man and life.
This is super materialist nihilist complacency ... also with big logic gaps: why someone who accept that his consciousness is an illusion want to live a virtual (super nerd thing) eternity ??
Consciousness and drug addiction and hypnosis is very interesting 🧐 combos !! Why consciousness is so weak that for example even a simple suggestion in hypnosis one can change conscious feeling of sweet chocolate like a hot spicy one !!!!! Drugs and coffee addictions are mind addictions felt by consciousness or the other way? Is mind and consciousness are one and the same? Alcohol pleasure is felt by consciousness and wants more???
Is the sense of being a Being also a qualia? Could there be a selfless sense of being a Being? Does it require consciousness? And what im curious about is premonition and dreams of things that do actually happen in the future. And the experience of floating around outside the body. Theres so much that cant be accounted for if one is 100% body only. Non of the above would be necessary so why does it happen?
Dan Dennett does a great job showing that all the hyperbole, woo, and "supercalifragilisticexpialidociousness" surrounding consciousness. He offers great insight and direction for further study into consciousness.
Even if there is a perfect copy of me, complete with all my memories and experiences and flaws and so forth- that doesn't change the fact that I have a sense of self distinct from, that copy, I have a sense of self preservation, and I'm not going to want to die. No person would voluntarily die because you tell them there's a perfect copy of them back home- like I said that information does nothing to change your sense of being a distinct person all your own. Ppl would be like "Great, then I'll continue to live here and that copy of me can live there." The only way you would stop it is to kill them without their consent. Would that be murder? Who's volunteering for that job? Not me. And I know my luck, you wouldn't barely get done killing me and someone would call "The copy is a dud, don't do it!" - Uh oh- woops.
I suggest that My experience of "me" could only be reproduced from duplication of every position of every atom of me in exact relation to every environmental interaction since my birth.
when you dream you are perfectly "you" without any real environmental connection...and yet those dreams have influenced you too. So in your "very hard" determinist views even ALL dreams have to be counted on :p
BUT how do we know that Daniel Denett is not a philosophical zombie tricking us to think that philosophical zombies doesn't exist just so he can be famous? (just kidding, read his book "Consciousness explained" it's an amazing book).
All talk of uploading our 'brains' to computers sounds incoherent to me. All of our thoughts, feelings, motivations and actions are based on feedback from the gut and body. Without hunger, movement, stress, resolution of stress, our disembodied brains are non-entities.
So Dennett's progressive, counterintuitive views are good ("that's how we make progress"), while those leaning toward something resembling panpsychism are just grasping for attention with flashy but silly theories...?🙄
Not exactly fair. He doesn't say they're flashy (if he does, then he shouldn't). If they were flashy then they'd probably be counterintuitive. Panpsychism is also pretty old philosophy compared to Dennett's, so it's not even flashy in that sense.
@@cookiej1 you're correct, that was my addition and it probably wasn't fair, although I maintain the general idea that his attitude felt a tad hypocritical. Also, I think some of these theories are generationally flashy as they seem to disappear and be "rediscovered" with different nuances from time to time.
Dennett is essentially using Panpsychism to explain why philosophical zombies don't exist. Because if his hypothesis is true that there is no difference in computational experience between a zombie brain and a brain with qualia, that means that anything in nature that is capable of computing - which is everything - hence has to have conscious experience. Isn't that basically Panpsychism?
@@danzigvssartre It is not hard for me to believe that the ripples or waveforms in the fabric of spacetime that constitute steaming coffee are experienced as qualia. It might only be the difference in how they appear from the inside vs how they appear from the outside.
If Dennet conceded on Free Will being silly then he and I would agree perfectly on almost everything. Sadly one of the greatest thinkers of our time is afraid of going all the way down and plays "politics" on the Free Will debate because he thinks the species couldn't handle it and went with the Soft Deterministic diplomatic cop out. ...finally on the messy topic of "illusions" I will just remark that phenomenology has an Ontology of its own, after all phenomena are REAL. Just as Illusions are REAL illusions! In that sense "Qualia" do exist in what I call a specific domain of operations and in the case of Consciousness a given domain of Experiencing. My small beef with Dennet over the years has always been about how such a clear cut good thinker is afraid of pushing the "agenda" for clarity harder. Maybe he is the unfortunate sort of almost getting it but failing at the cross line or maybe he is just playing "politics" to babysit the conceptual transitions that we are about to face in the unfolding of XXI century.
I automatically dismiss the ideas of anyone who denies an inner world of experience which is so much more real than the babblings of a philosopher devoted to the denial of that obvious truth. Whether it be Searle's view that consciousness is actually real but is only a product of the material brain, or Richard Swineburns view of a soul, I can accept either argument. But that consciousness itself isn't real but is only an illusion? Next philosopher, please.
Jesus Christ he makes my head hurt 😞 "Bag of tricks"? Kuhn times the square root of last year's argument. "They don't like it when I say illusion" - That's because it doesn't add anything to the table, but ol' man Dennet. "Natures bag of tricks...", huh? Then who's being tricked? Boomer says what?
"Consciousness"? That just means being awake, doesn't it? Isn't this video about "self-consciousness?" Is there a problem with the prefix 'self'? Because that takes one into another whole new territory, called personality! 👍 Persons can recognize other persons as being unique, consciously. Of course "conscience", a related topic, sometimes refers to morals. It seems to me that "consciousness" often takes morality into the picture when it is focused on actions, or behaviors. Of course there's an assumed flip-side of believing that this is just a mechanistic universe... and doesn't "consciousness" throw a curve ball into the whole mechanistic argument? No machine has an awareness of "self", no machine has a personality, (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress not withstanding).
Please can you go next to India and Asian religion Buddhism toaism and other Hindu religions? talk about what they think what conscious is and the nature of reality, I think you wel get some marvelous answers and more honest answers than christian theologians becouse you don't get anywhere whit them.
In one interview Daniel accuses philosophers who take panpsychism seriously as seeking some sort of "fame". Compares them to spoon benders and other "woo" peddlers who just want there to be some hocus pocus "supercalifragilistic" magic behind consciousness. Are these the kind of responses you expect from a philosopher? ad hominem attacks back to back. Daniel rejects the basis of the problem at hand: why do some collections of atoms have subjective experience and others don't. He can reject the problems existence if he wishes but I don't think his arguments are worthy of praise.
I thnk he did answer that. Living organisms evolved the sense of conciousness to guide there own behavior in order to survive and reproduce. That is what natural selection does. Rocks, sand, water and air are not living, do not have the complexity nor need nor capability to have conciousness, so they don't. Claiming everything has conciousness is claiming magic.
@@blaster-zy7xx evolutionary arguments for consciousness do not answer the question at hand. The question again is this: rocks, animals and brains are all made of the same stuff (electrons, quarks etc.) yet the claim is only brains have conciousness and subjective experience. How is this possible? How does subjective experience magically come about from stuff which has no subjective experience?
@@danzigvssartre panpsychism takes consciousness as being primary, just as materialism takes matter as primary. Both worldviews take axiomatic views on the primary substance of reality
@@COSMICSMI2LE Right. Atoms are the building blocks of material mechanics. Solder, silicone and glass don't make a functioning computer unless they are configured in the right way and running software. But computers running software and showing TH-cam videos is not magic and neither is consciousness. Life is what configures the atoms into living organisms that are organized according the natural selection. Consciousness is just another trick that life has stumbled upon and developed to enhance the chances of survival; no different that the ability to fly, run fast or camouflage oneself in order to increased the chances of survival and reproduction. A static organism doesn't need conciseness to survive therefore trees, grass, and vegetables do not need consciousness. But a moving predictor or prey organism benefits greatly from an awareness of the environment. Note how we can observe a spectrum of consciousness as we go up the ladder of organism complexity, from microscopic life to insects, to salamanders, to birds to dogs to humans. And As far as well can tell, there is no universal consciousness, no deity consciousness or any master planner of any kind. Simple life struggles to survive and reproduce giving raise to Natural Selection. That struggle for survival has yielded many emergent complex survival techniques developed through millions of years of evolution Consciousness is just one of many tools in the bag of tricks that evolution has developed to increase the chances of survival.
You are conscious (aware) but {of=from/about} SOME-thing: - PHYSIS = non manmade things - LOGOI = manmade things, these are expressions- = assertions- = objectizations = fakements !!!OF!!! [=faking] the consciousness (PSYCHE) Your assertion is religious, it is related to the presuppositional-assertion forwarded by Calvinists (iow abonminable haeretics) "truth must exist in the first place so you can deny- reject truth in the ssecond pülace All that you DO reject, it is the assertion OF [faking] truth.
@@memyselfni7583 I don't think so. yin and yang, goodness and badness, brightness and darkness each is an awareness = NO-thing from/about SOME-thing Did you know that your brain fabricates the awareness (property) called "darkness" but in the awake state?
Definition of Consciousness: -an ALL encompassing AWARENESS based on biological sensory instruments and mechanisms that are compiled in a biologically central location AND used for sentience until that biological entities biological life supports systems ceases.
The interviewer questioned whether consciousness is an illusion, as if he is nagging in the same point; because eventually, we will have another word to study, which is illusion. Afterwards, we will return to the same nagging question, what is illusion, is illusion is consciousness. Lol.
@@PaulTopping1 I don't get your point, but let me show my point to stop the endless nagging. I define consciousness as the inner movie, and the free will. Let me illustrate the problem, you cannot make, for example, a human hand to move without the free will of the owner, or the free will of the experimenter (in case we eclectically stimulate the designated area in the motor cortex). Do you see the point here? We must have a reason to make the hand to move, together with the inner movie, that may define consciousness! For your information, to date, there is no solid definition to consciousness; for that reason, my lab decided to study another question express as " where is consciousness?". Because when we clearly localize it, thus we will be able to find it and describe it. See the following video for better illustration: th-cam.com/video/I1G3Jx-Q1YY/w-d-xo.html
@@ScientificReview Your "inner movie" is the so-called Homunculus argument and has been thoroughly debunked. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument. Not sure what "endless nagging" you're talking about.
Dennett has been scratching the surface of consciousness for decades and seriously thinks he's got the whole thing figured out. It's quite tragic really.
Or he's right. If you have no reason to add unnecessary components to explain something, you shouldn't do it. Dan's just following the shortest logical route according to Occams razor. The theory of consciousness according to people like you is overrated, overengineered and ridiculously inplausible.
@@francesco5581 Except that science can demonstrate that it isn't. The point is that you're just making wild inprobable guesses the moment you're going beyond what science can demonstrate. Dan's theory is compatible with what neuroscience confirms. You can't say the same about any of the new age cuckoo hypothesises.
@@grattata4364 Science failures to explain what consciousness is and how is generated lead many materialists to say that then it's an illusion. So the illusion explanation is the same as multiverses were invented to give the materialists an escape door from the obvious fine tuning of the universe. Thats why recently scientists/philosophers are looking for other explanations (Chalmers, Tononi, Kastrup, Koch, Hoffman, Faggin, Penrose, Maoz, Tollaksen, Hammeroff...)
@@francesco5581 How could consciousness be an illusion? It's the only thing we know for sure instantaneusly and with absolute evidence. It's just the only thing we can't deny. Self may be an illusion, mind may be an illusion, matter, space, time... all may be an illusion... For something to be an illusion means that it is ostensible, that it emerges from the behaviour of something deeper... And now, the fact that there is *conscious experiences* or simply "consciousness", in its simplest conception, can't be an illusion, it is just what it is and it can't be denied.
This host just craves personal immortality as a Cartesian soul and won't rest until he finds a satisfying argument in support of it (there isn't one). His desire to be "closer to truth" is really the quest for a justification he knows is impossible.
I am genuinely surprised that this guy is considered a philosipher. He says trivial things as if they are insighful, has a condescending dogmatic attitude, is arrogant and doesn't seem to be sufficiently self aware. No offense intended but honestly that's my impression. Also, the questions could have been better. He was hardly poked when there was such a need to do that.
Everything has consciousness? How is that sematnically menaingless compared to sdiufhapoiguhadpfigh? Sure I'm drunk but there's meaning through semanitcs and understanding comapred to reandom letters.
@@MartinPeel Jumbled up random letters isn't semantics, that is just random information. Semantically useless is like referring to planet Earth as a chair since you can sit on it. While technically true it is semantically useless to consider Earth a chair because by that definition you would have to call everything in the universe that could be "sat on" a chair. But now the word chair means so many things that it is no longer a useful category or concept. It's a form of semantic inflation, as the definitional boundary conditions on a word or concept is widened the defined meaning of that word gets diluted.
Dennett is just ridiculously mislead by his dogmatism. Notice how he doesn't catch obvious counter implications on his own view with the example of "pannyftysm", where he invokes underdetermination by data applied to both theories of panpsychism and pannyftysm. That is to say: if the data can be equally explained by each of the 2 theories, or if the data is not sufficient to adhere to one position instead of the other, then we are not justified to believe that there is preferable theory between the 2. Dennett is just embarissingly refusing to reconsider his own positions which are by now, ancient, and that puts him into a position of insincere, dishonest dumb old wannabe wise man of scientism. It is crazy how he shows complete lack of self awareness when criticising counter intuitive views, while at the other instace he says "scientists seek only for counter intuitive views"
I admire Dennett, but after several years of studying philosophy, I find that he's fairly narrow-minded. He says that "counter intuitive" views are good for science but then when the "new philosophers" give counter intuitive views against his, he says they're charlatans doing it for fame.
How is it narrow-minded? He is himself a philosopher saying that philosophers gain fame by promoting counter-intuitive views. In this sense he is similarly subject to the same charge - though notoriety is not necessarily a bad thing, nor means that one is either right or wrong. But his views takes into account the neuroscience in which he roots them. What I understand him saying is that: Counter intuitive views are good in science but are fame-seeking in neuroscience-dismissing philosophy of consciousness. Science and philosophy are not quite the same. Also, "open minded" views can be wrong.. and they are not necessarily "open" minded if they're merely counter intuitive. Similarly "narrow minded" views can be correct, nor necessarily correct due to being intuitive. There's no necessary connection between them in either case. Consider views of a flat earth vs a globe. How would open vs closed mindedness, unintuitive vs intuitiveness, and correct vs incorrectness play out? Then how would it play out in a geocentric vs heliocentric view?
🐟 06. CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: Consciousness means “that which knows” or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). There is BOTH a localized knowing and a Universal Awareness, as explicated in the following paragraphs. Higher species of animal life have sufficient cognitive ability to KNOW themselves and their environment, at least to a measurable degree. Just where consciousness objectively begins in the animal kingdom is a matter of contention but, judging purely by ethological means, it probably starts with vertebrates (at least the higher-order birds and fishes). Those metazoans which are evolutionarily lower than vertebrates do not possess much, if any, semblance of intellect, necessary for true knowledge, but operate purely by reflexive instincts. For instance, an insect or amphibian does not consciously decide to seek food but does so according to its base instincts, directed by its idiosyncratic genetic code. Even when a cockroach flees from danger, it is not experiencing the same kind of thoughts or feelings a human or other mammal would experience. The brain is merely a conduit or TRANSDUCER of Universal Consciousness (i.e. Brahman), explaining why the more intelligent the animal, the more it can understand its own existence (or at least be aware of more of its environment - just see how amazingly-complex dolphin and whale behaviour can be, compared with other aquatic species), and the reason why it is asserted that a truly enlightened human must possess a far higher level of intelligence than the average person. The processing unit of a supercomputer must be far larger, more complex and more powerful than the processor in a pocket calculator. Therefore, it seems logical to conclude that the scale of discrete (localized) consciousness is dependent on the animal's brain capacity. See Chapter 17 to understand the distinction between enlightenment and mere awakening. Three STATES of awareness are experienced by humans and possibly all other species of mammals: the waking state (“jāgrata”, in Sanskrit), dreaming (“svapna”, in Sanskrit), and deep-sleep (“suṣupti”, in Sanskrit). Beyond these three temporal states is the fourth “state” (“turīya” or “caturīya”, in Sanskrit). That is the unconditioned, eternal “state”, which underlies the other three. The waking state is the LEAST real (that is to say the least permanent, or to put it another way, the farthest from the Necessary Ground of Existence, as explained towards the end of this chapter). The dream state is closer to our eternal nature, whilst dreamless deep-sleep is much more analogous to The Universal Self (“brahman”), as it is imbued with peace. Rather than being an absence of awareness, deep-sleep is an awareness of absence (that is, the absence of phenomenal, sensual experiences). So, in actual fact, the fourth state is not a state, but the Unconditioned Ground of Being, or to put it simply, YOU, the real self/Self, or Existence-Awareness-Peace (“sacchidānanda”, in Sanskrit). Perhaps the main purpose of dreams is so that we can understand that the waking-state is practically indistinguishable to the dream-state, and thereby come to see the ILLUSION of this ephemeral world. Both our waking-state experiences and our dream-state experiences occur solely within the mental faculties (refer to Chapter 04 for an elucidation of this phenomenon). If somebody in one of your dreams were to ask your dream-state character if the dream was real, you (playing the part of that character) would most likely say, “yes, of course this is real!” Similarly, if someone were to ask your waking-state character if this world is real, you would almost undoubtedly respond in kind. An apt analogy for Universal Consciousness is the manner in which electricity powers a variety of appliances and gadgets, according to the use and COMPLEXITY of the said device. Electricity powers a washing machine in a very simple manner, to drive a large spindle for laundering clothes. However, the very same electrical power may be used to operate a computer to manifest an astonishing range of outputs, such as playing audiovisual tracks, communication tasks and performing extremely advanced mathematical computations, depending on the computer's software and hardware. The more advanced/complex the device, the more complex its manifestation of the same electricity. Using the aforementioned computer analogy: the brain is COMPARATIVELY equivalent to the computer hardware, deoxyribonucleic acid akin to the operating system working in conjunction with the memory, the intellect is equivalent to the processing unit, individuated consciousness is analogous to the software programme, whilst Universal Awareness is likened to the electricity which enlivens the entire computer system. A person who is comatosed has lost any semblance of local consciousness, yet is being kept alive by the presence of Universal Consciousness. So, then, one could complain: “That's not fair - why can only a genius be enlightened?” (as defined in Chapter 17). The answer is: first of all, as stated above, every species of animal has its own level of intelligence on a wide-ranging scale. Therefore, a pig or a dog could (if possible) ask: “That's unfair - why can only a human being be enlightened?” Secondly, it is INDEED a fact that life is unfair, because there is no “tit for tat” law of action and reaction, even if many supposedly-great religious preceptors have stated so. They said so because they were preaching to wicked miscreants who refused to quit their evil ways, and needed to be chastized in a forceful manner. It is not possible to speak gentle words to a rabid dog to prevent it from biting you. There is evidence of Consciousness being a universal field, in SAVANT SYNDROME, a condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrate certain abilities far in excess of the norm, such as superhuman rapid mathematical calculation, mind-reading, blind-seeing, or astounding musical aptitude. Such behaviour suggests that there is a universal field (possibly in holographic form) from which one can access information. Even simple artistic inspiration could be attributed to this phenomenon. The great British singer-songwriter, Sir James Paul McCartney, one day woke with the complete tune of the song, “Yesterday”, in his mind, after hearing it in a dream. American composer, Paul Simon, had a similar experience when the chorus of his sublime masterpiece, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, simply popped into his head. Cont...
In recent years, the term “CONSCIOUSNESS” has been used in esoteric spiritual circles (usually capitalized) to refer to a far more Homogeneous Consciousness (“puruṣa”, in Sanskrit), due to the fact that the English language doesn’t include a single word denoting the Universal Ground of Being (for instance “Brahman”, “Tao”, in other tongues). The word “Awareness” (capitalized) is arguably a more apposite term for this concept. The typical person believes that the apparatus which knows the external world is his mind (via the five senses), but more perceptive individuals understand that the mind itself is cognizable by the intellect. Wise souls recognize that the sense of self (the pseudo-ego) is the perceiver of their intellects, whereas awakened persons have realized that the true self/Self is the witness of ALL these temporal phenomena. The true self is synonymous with Consciousness, or with Infinite Awareness, or the Undifferentiated Unified Field (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit). The dialectic exercise in the following three paragraphs should help one to understand the nature of the fundamental conscious observer, that is, the ULTIMATE observer of all phenomena (i.e. the subject/Subject, which is the authentic self, as opposed to material objects): If one were to ask you whether you are the same person or individual you were at birth (or even at conception), you would probably respond in the affirmative. So, then, what PRECISELY is it about you which has remained constant since conception? In other words, what is the self-identity you had as an infant, which is the present “you”? It cannot be any part of your body or mind, since none of the atoms or molecules in your zygote body are extant, and “you” certainly did not possess a mind at conception. If you are reasonably intelligent, you may claim that your genome is the same now as it was then. However, it has recently been scientifically demonstrated that genetic code can (and usually does) change throughout an individual’s lifetime. Furthermore, nobody actively conceives of their essential nature being a bunch of genes! More intelligent souls would probably counter thus: “The thing which stays the same from my birth to the present time is my sense of self.” This too, is fallacious, since the sense of self does not emerge until at least a couple of years after birth. An infant has no ideation of itself as an individual actor. You may then say “I was a (male/female) human being” but that doesn’t specify any PARTICULAR human (you, yourself). So, then, what EXACTLY is it which remains “you” from conception till death? That is the “I am” which precedes any artificial sense of self. In other words, rather than saying “I am a man/woman/human/king/pilot/etc.”, simply the impersonal sense of “I am”. That is the true self, which is the Universal Self. Therefore, your essential nature is Cosmic Consciousness, usually called “God” by theists (see also Chapter 10). The Tao (The Reality [lit. The Way, The Path, or The Road]) which can be expressed in language is not the REAL Tao. All concepts are, by nature, relative, and at most, can merely point to the Absolute. That explains why some branches of theology use the apophatic method of discerning The Infinite (“neti neti”, [not this, not that], in Sanskrit). Also known in Latin as “via negativa” or “via negationis” theology, this philosophical approach to discovering the essential nature of Reality, gradually negates each description about Ultimate Reality, but not Reality Itself. Ultimate Reality (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit [from “bṛh” - lit. “Expansion”, in English]) alone is real - “real” in the sense that it is the never-mutable substratum of ALL existence. The wisest of the philosophers of ancient India distinguished the “real” from the “unreal” (“sat/asat”, in Sanskrit) by whether or not the “thing“ was eternal or ephemeral (cf. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1:3:28, Bhagavad-gītā 2:16, et altri). Gross material objects (such as one's own body) and subtle material objects (such as thoughts) are always changing, and therefore not “real”. REALITY is clearly seen by those self-realized persons who have experienced spiritual awakenings (which occur either spontaneously, or after a gradual process over many months or years), yet only intellectually understood by those who have merely studied spiritual topics (that is, those who have practiced one of the four systems of religion described in Chapter 16, but have yet to awaken to their essential nature). “If you remain as you are now, you are in the wakeful state. This is abolished in the dream state. The dream state disappears, when you are in deep sleep. The three states come and go, but you are always there. Your real state, that of Consciousness itself, continues to exist always and forever and it is the only Reality.” ************* “The ego is the identified consciousness. When the impersonal Consciousness identifies itself with the personal organism, the ego arises.” ************* “The only true meditation is the constant impersonal witnessing of all that takes place in one’s life as mere movements in the universal Consciousness.” ************* “Consciousness must first be there, before anything else can BE. All inquiry of the seeker of truth, must therefore, relate to this consciousness, this sense of conscious presence, which as such, has no personal reference to any individual.” ************* “Insofar as you keep watching the mind and discover yourself as its witness, nothing else can project itself on the screen of consciousness. This is so, because two things cannot occupy the attention, at the same moment.Therefore, delve within and find out where thoughts arise. Seek the source of all thought and acquire the Self-knowledge, which is the awakening of Truth.” ************* “Just as the difference between the space in a pot and the space outside it disappears when the pot is demolished, so also does duality disappear when it is realized that the difference between the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist.” ************* “All there is, is, is consciousness. That is the Source from which the manifestation has come. ...And the mind is merely a reflection of that Consciousness.” ************* “All there is is Consciousness, not aware of Itself in Its noumenal Subjectivity, but perceived by Itself as phenomenal manifestation in Its objective expression. If this is understood in depth, there is nothing more to be understood.” Ramesh S. Balsekar, Indian Spiritual Teacher. “As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.” ************* “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, German Theoretical Physicist.
"Illusion" is the wrong word to use in consciousness. It confuses things. I think Dennett is being obstinate using it. Wish he'd find a better description.
Dennett rejects Panpsychism as embarrassing magical thinking that explains nothing. Why not say Materialism is also embarrassing magical thinking that explains NOTHING!
I loved reading “Consciousness Explained” as an undergraduate twenty years ago. It’s a great book, but I disagree with just about everything Dennett says.
@@SebastianLundh1988 🐟 06. CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: Consciousness means “that which knows” or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). There is BOTH a localized knowing and a Universal Awareness, as explicated in the following paragraphs. Higher species of animal life have sufficient cognitive ability to KNOW themselves and their environment, at least to a measurable degree. Just where consciousness objectively begins in the animal kingdom is a matter of contention but, judging purely by ethological means, it probably starts with vertebrates (at least the higher-order birds and fishes). Those metazoans which are evolutionarily lower than vertebrates do not possess much, if any, semblance of intellect, necessary for true knowledge, but operate purely by reflexive instincts. For instance, an insect or amphibian does not consciously decide to seek food but does so according to its base instincts, directed by its idiosyncratic genetic code. Even when a cockroach flees from danger, it is not experiencing the same kind of thoughts or feelings a human or other mammal would experience. The brain is merely a conduit or TRANSDUCER of Universal Consciousness (i.e. Brahman), explaining why the more intelligent the animal, the more it can understand its own existence (or at least be aware of more of its environment - just see how amazingly-complex dolphin and whale behaviour can be, compared with other aquatic species), and the reason why it is asserted that a truly enlightened human must possess a far higher level of intelligence than the average person. The processing unit of a supercomputer must be far larger, more complex and more powerful than the processor in a pocket calculator. Therefore, it seems logical to conclude that the scale of discrete (localized) consciousness is dependent on the animal's brain capacity. See Chapter 17 to understand the distinction between enlightenment and mere awakening. Three STATES of awareness are experienced by humans and possibly all other species of mammals: the waking state (“jāgrata”, in Sanskrit), dreaming (“svapna”, in Sanskrit), and deep-sleep (“suṣupti”, in Sanskrit). Beyond these three temporal states is the fourth “state” (“turīya” or “caturīya”, in Sanskrit). That is the unconditioned, eternal “state”, which underlies the other three. The waking state is the LEAST real (that is to say the least permanent, or to put it another way, the farthest from the Necessary Ground of Existence, as explained towards the end of this chapter). The dream state is closer to our eternal nature, whilst dreamless deep-sleep is much more analogous to The Universal Self (“brahman”), as it is imbued with peace. Rather than being an absence of awareness, deep-sleep is an awareness of absence (that is, the absence of phenomenal, sensual experiences). So, in actual fact, the fourth state is not a state, but the Unconditioned Ground of Being, or to put it simply, YOU, the real self/Self, or Existence-Awareness-Peace (“sacchidānanda”, in Sanskrit). Perhaps the main purpose of dreams is so that we can understand that the waking-state is practically indistinguishable to the dream-state, and thereby come to see the ILLUSION of this ephemeral world. Both our waking-state experiences and our dream-state experiences occur solely within the mental faculties (refer to Chapter 04 for an elucidation of this phenomenon). If somebody in one of your dreams were to ask your dream-state character if the dream was real, you (playing the part of that character) would most likely say, “yes, of course this is real!” Similarly, if someone were to ask your waking-state character if this world is real, you would almost undoubtedly respond in kind. An apt analogy for Universal Consciousness is the manner in which electricity powers a variety of appliances and gadgets, according to the use and COMPLEXITY of the said device. Electricity powers a washing machine in a very simple manner, to drive a large spindle for laundering clothes. However, the very same electrical power may be used to operate a computer to manifest an astonishing range of outputs, such as playing audiovisual tracks, communication tasks and performing extremely advanced mathematical computations, depending on the computer's software and hardware. The more advanced/complex the device, the more complex its manifestation of the same electricity. Using the aforementioned computer analogy: the brain is COMPARATIVELY equivalent to the computer hardware, deoxyribonucleic acid akin to the operating system working in conjunction with the memory, the intellect is equivalent to the processing unit, individuated consciousness is analogous to the software programme, whilst Universal Awareness is likened to the electricity which enlivens the entire computer system. A person who is comatosed has lost any semblance of local consciousness, yet is being kept alive by the presence of Universal Consciousness. So, then, one could complain: “That's not fair - why can only a genius be enlightened?” (as defined in Chapter 17). The answer is: first of all, as stated above, every species of animal has its own level of intelligence on a wide-ranging scale. Therefore, a pig or a dog could (if possible) ask: “That's unfair - why can only a human being be enlightened?” Secondly, it is INDEED a fact that life is unfair, because there is no “tit for tat” law of action and reaction, even if many supposedly-great religious preceptors have stated so. They said so because they were preaching to wicked miscreants who refused to quit their evil ways, and needed to be chastized in a forceful manner. It is not possible to speak gentle words to a rabid dog to prevent it from biting you. There is evidence of Consciousness being a universal field, in SAVANT SYNDROME, a condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrate certain abilities far in excess of the norm, such as superhuman rapid mathematical calculation, mind-reading, blind-seeing, or astounding musical aptitude. Such behaviour suggests that there is a universal field (possibly in holographic form) from which one can access information. Even simple artistic inspiration could be attributed to this phenomenon. The great British singer-songwriter, Sir James Paul McCartney, one day woke with the complete tune of the song, “Yesterday”, in his mind, after hearing it in a dream. American composer, Paul Simon, had a similar experience when the chorus of his sublime masterpiece, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, simply popped into his head. Cont...
In recent years, the term “CONSCIOUSNESS” has been used in esoteric spiritual circles (usually capitalized) to refer to a far more Homogeneous Consciousness (“puruṣa”, in Sanskrit), due to the fact that the English language doesn’t include a single word denoting the Universal Ground of Being (for instance “Brahman”, “Tao”, in other tongues). The word “Awareness” (capitalized) is arguably a more apposite term for this concept. The typical person believes that the apparatus which knows the external world is his mind (via the five senses), but more perceptive individuals understand that the mind itself is cognizable by the intellect. Wise souls recognize that the sense of self (the pseudo-ego) is the perceiver of their intellects, whereas awakened persons have realized that the true self/Self is the witness of ALL these temporal phenomena. The true self is synonymous with Consciousness, or with Infinite Awareness, or the Undifferentiated Unified Field (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit). The dialectic exercise in the following three paragraphs should help one to understand the nature of the fundamental conscious observer, that is, the ULTIMATE observer of all phenomena (i.e. the subject/Subject, which is the authentic self, as opposed to material objects): If one were to ask you whether you are the same person or individual you were at birth (or even at conception), you would probably respond in the affirmative. So, then, what PRECISELY is it about you which has remained constant since conception? In other words, what is the self-identity you had as an infant, which is the present “you”? It cannot be any part of your body or mind, since none of the atoms or molecules in your zygote body are extant, and “you” certainly did not possess a mind at conception. If you are reasonably intelligent, you may claim that your genome is the same now as it was then. However, it has recently been scientifically demonstrated that genetic code can (and usually does) change throughout an individual’s lifetime. Furthermore, nobody actively conceives of their essential nature being a bunch of genes! More intelligent souls would probably counter thus: “The thing which stays the same from my birth to the present time is my sense of self.” This too, is fallacious, since the sense of self does not emerge until at least a couple of years after birth. An infant has no ideation of itself as an individual actor. You may then say “I was a (male/female) human being” but that doesn’t specify any PARTICULAR human (you, yourself). So, then, what EXACTLY is it which remains “you” from conception till death? That is the “I am” which precedes any artificial sense of self. In other words, rather than saying “I am a man/woman/human/king/pilot/etc.”, simply the impersonal sense of “I am”. That is the true self, which is the Universal Self. Therefore, your essential nature is Cosmic Consciousness, usually called “God” by theists (see also Chapter 10). The Tao (The Reality [lit. The Way, The Path, or The Road]) which can be expressed in language is not the REAL Tao. All concepts are, by nature, relative, and at most, can merely point to the Absolute. That explains why some branches of theology use the apophatic method of discerning The Infinite (“neti neti”, [not this, not that], in Sanskrit). Also known in Latin as “via negativa” or “via negationis” theology, this philosophical approach to discovering the essential nature of Reality, gradually negates each description about Ultimate Reality, but not Reality Itself. Ultimate Reality (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit [from “bṛh” - lit. “Expansion”, in English]) alone is real - “real” in the sense that it is the never-mutable substratum of ALL existence. The wisest of the philosophers of ancient India distinguished the “real” from the “unreal” (“sat/asat”, in Sanskrit) by whether or not the “thing“ was eternal or ephemeral (cf. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1:3:28, Bhagavad-gītā 2:16, et altri). Gross material objects (such as one's own body) and subtle material objects (such as thoughts) are always changing, and therefore not “real”. REALITY is clearly seen by those self-realized persons who have experienced spiritual awakenings (which occur either spontaneously, or after a gradual process over many months or years), yet only intellectually understood by those who have merely studied spiritual topics (that is, those who have practiced one of the four systems of religion described in Chapter 16, but have yet to awaken to their essential nature). “If you remain as you are now, you are in the wakeful state. This is abolished in the dream state. The dream state disappears, when you are in deep sleep. The three states come and go, but you are always there. Your real state, that of Consciousness itself, continues to exist always and forever and it is the only Reality.” ************* “The ego is the identified consciousness. When the impersonal Consciousness identifies itself with the personal organism, the ego arises.” ************* “The only true meditation is the constant impersonal witnessing of all that takes place in one’s life as mere movements in the universal Consciousness.” ************* “Consciousness must first be there, before anything else can BE. All inquiry of the seeker of truth, must therefore, relate to this consciousness, this sense of conscious presence, which as such, has no personal reference to any individual.” ************* “Insofar as you keep watching the mind and discover yourself as its witness, nothing else can project itself on the screen of consciousness. This is so, because two things cannot occupy the attention, at the same moment.Therefore, delve within and find out where thoughts arise. Seek the source of all thought and acquire the Self-knowledge, which is the awakening of Truth.” ************* “Just as the difference between the space in a pot and the space outside it disappears when the pot is demolished, so also does duality disappear when it is realized that the difference between the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist.” ************* “All there is, is consciousness. That is the Source from which the manifestation has come. ...And the mind is merely a reflection of that Consciousness.” ************* “All there is, is Consciousness, not aware of Itself in Its noumenal Subjectivity, but perceived by Itself as phenomenal manifestation in Its objective expression. If this is understood in depth, there is nothing more to be understood.” Ramesh S. Balsekar, Indian Spiritual Teacher. “As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.” ************* “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, German Theoretical Physicist.
The realization of our own finitude makes life much more meaningful. Once we fully realize and accept our impermanence it gives us a different quality of thinking. Life increases in value; our life and the lives of others. Could this state of mind be consciousness? Could some people be conscious and most others not?
I may be wrong, but I keep getting the impression that Dennett, by growing a nice beard, adopted a Greek philosopher's "look" to go with his academic post.
But he called it “Pan Nifty-ism.” Surely that can’t be a condescending and dismissive non-argument? Surely not from such a highly respected philosopher and thinker?
edit: lol, I should have finished the video first. :D later he even mentioned those points and even theseus ship. funny that he used the same picture :D to the point: AI & Consciousness & Immortality: I think he is missing the point, that those AI is not "me" but just a copy of me. If I die, than I am still dead. There only exist something that is perfectly identicly to me. the idea that it is still me is imo a kind of metaphysical thinking. imagining, that there is a metaphysical I that is immortal and appears again and again. It is like Theseus ship. following materialism there is not really an "I". There is just a programming that makes "me". and it could exist theoreticly twice at the same time. so the immortality is useless if it consideres just a copy of my programming.
The failure that is going over and over again, is that if you make a perfect copy of yourself into something totally different as a computer, you copy the data, but not the program that it is running on. Even if we have all the data, we don't know anything about the human operating system itself, what drives interactions between neurons so that we become aware of ourselves and implement and use knowledge and experience on a physical layer ( setting as a base, that who and what we are is our brain ). And the interactions from our brain with our eyes, our skin, our organs, the complexity of it all is something we totally don't understand and therefore the idea of copying an amount of data in a computer is a human being is far too much a simple idea. Biological matter like hormones and tissue cant be one on one replaced with silicon based memory and processors. Like Einstein once said, Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
As a consciousness researcher I often find myself fighting two never-ending battles ... The battle of dogma , with some qualified scientists and the battle of woo .. with almost everyone else
@@danzigvssartre I agree... and that's why I try not to use it as a silencer. That however, does not mean that every idea is worth the time and is equally valid. still a vague and "subjective" distinction
@@danzigvssartre woo is clearly all non reductionist , non naturalist ontology about matter and mind.. you got a problem with that or you are going to cry qualia?
Agree with lots of stuff Dennet says but... Not sure he understands "the first person wiew"... If you upload someone's mind/brain/ neurons to some machine,his answer is that that machine/another body/whatever would have OUR first person wiew!? Maybe he knows better but sure doesnt resonate with my wiews.
The first iota of consciousness must have emerged when the first tiny creatures evolved will to target and capture prey in conjunction with a co-evolving register of emptiness:fullness and/or active:idle state(s) in the digestive tract. So consciousness was a kind of emergent supervisor of the equilibrium-seeking relationship between ganglion and gut (particularly helpful to delivering the sense that the outcome was worth the target-and-capture effort).
I wonder if "Consciousness" naturally follows from "Knowledge". For example, my computer can store memory but it does not contain knowledge of what that memory represents. If computers begin to not just hold memory (videos, pictures, text etc.) but also knowledge of what that memory represents...will that effectively make the computer "Conscious"?
ON CONSCIOUSNESS... We swim in an ocean of consciousness and our “equipment” utilizes it as its animating force within the limitations of the mechanism. Humans are built differently than an amoeba so we utilize consciousness differently as a result. Some humans alter their ability to utilize more consciousness or have slightly different equipment to begin with. Others have deficits in the design or have damage and therefore limitations in how consciousness is being used. It is a neutral force and can be manipulated to suit the circumstances. We establish a template built upon expectations and create a default construction that can become our sense of self. This persists even after we die for awhile but eventually we drop it. -Mike Marable, Author of How To Have Good Life After You’re Dead
Dennett is much smarter than I am, but I truly believe he’s just mistaken. His view conflates meta consciousness with phenomenal consciousness and he’s ignoring our a posteriori knowledge… that all is in consciousness! It’s so simple: consciousness is fundamental. It’s so plain and obvious in our experience and there is so much empirical evidence which supports this view as well. Why add all of these layers of complexity and abstraction?! It’s not necessary.
Consciousness been a conundrum for nearly a century, but only for materialists who insist that metaphysics is a quaint way of looking at things. Eben Alexander, MD survived an attack by bacteria on his brain, putting him in a coma for a week, providing this trained scientist with his own experience of life after death. On recovery he sat in on the medical discussion about what had happened to him in which he could analyze the consciousness he had experienced in view of what medical science understands. All explanations required a functioning brain, especially a neocortex, which, in his case was being eaten by microbes. He wrote "Proof of Heaven" to share what he had learned from his Near-Death Experience. "I understood how blind to the full nature of the spiritual universe...I had been, who had believed that matter was the core reality. p. 57. I explored this revelation in "Surviving the Micronova."
It seems that the current view is that consciousness in people in an illusion, but consciousness in AI is an existential threat. There seems to be a contradiction there somewhere.
@@ManiBalajiC do you really think that a copper wire can be self aware ? OR you are one of those people that since ive put the program line "IF Mani Balaji ask if you are conscious THEN answer YES !!!" you will scream "it's over, they are self aware !! now they will wipe us !!! "
A student asked his philosophy professor: "How do I know that I exist?" "Who's asking?" the professor replied.
The professor was Morris Raphael Cohen.
@@brianholly3555 Actually, no. It was Sidney Morgenbesser, philosophy prof at Columbia University in 1950s
First being, you are life then I think therefore I am 😊
volume/audio not great, just FYI (especially Robert's side)
I think Dennett is right in what he says about the lack of a continuous self. I don't think that I am the same person I was 20 years ago in any sense that matters. The only thing connecting current me to the "me" of 20 years ago is that I have some memories of the things that person did back then.
One of those shows that makes you realize just how much of the _soooooo_ much you don't know you don't even know you didn't even know!
Yet people pretend to know like idiots
the episodes with Daniel Dennett and Marvin Minsky are some of my favorites
Very few animals "noticing their noticings". I liked that! (and it serves well as yet another paraphrase of the illusion of a persistent self. (reminds me of "object persistence", which is a concept we don't learn until later in infancy. Seems like the notion of a persisting self that notices its noticings -and rememebers them -offers an evolutionary edge. )
Another great moment - and as such new to me - was the problem of Theseus' ship. That philosophical problem that seems to emerge as soon as you have seemingly identical twins is greatly brought across in the movie "The Island" and that particular scene where the hitman needs to make a quick decision over taking out the duplicate, i.e. the "product", and not the real person/customer and needs to swiftly ascertain which is which ( or who is who). For anyone still intending to watch, I won't spoiler this scene. It's a great and IMHO underrated movie touching on some of the concepts from this interview and Prof. Darnell's book(s). Enjoyed this one again! (and 100% agree with the interviewee). Nice!
'Illusion' as Dennett uses the term should not be taken to mean 'deception'. As he explains in this video with his 'desktop illusion' metaphor, consciousness is a special _representation_ of reality, a 'user interface' that is compact and easy to think about. This helps us to survive. In the same way, the user interface of your phone or computer is a benevolent 'illusion' - it is a way of looking at the underlying data.
The activity of the 'unconscious' mind-body system, including its torrents of sensory input, is _vastly_ more complex than the conscious mind can perceive, or needs to know about.
The Freudian idea of the unconscious as a primitive beast is mistaken - the unconscious is (in some ways, not all) wiser than the superficial stream of consciousness that we confuse with our SELVES. As the ancients said, "Listen to your heart".
This man's theory has endured and proved to be truthful in many ways. The mystery of life is not reduced to his limitations, but his ideas can shed light on the Mystery non the less.
I dont think so
Mind uploading/simulation theory/conscious A.I. entails that conscious experience can come about through running an electric current through switches and turning them on and off in some special way. For example, switching operations XYZ would give rise to the pain of stubbing a toe, switching operations ABC would give rise to the appreciation of the beauty of a sunset, and operations EJO would produce nothing. Does anyone really think that if you string a bunch of switches together, run a current through them, and turn them on and off in some special way, you can generate a conscious experience? That's just as magical thinking as claiming rubbing a lamp a certain way will release a genie.
Of course not, but if we could use neuronal switching, i can't see why not.
Putting it as simply as Steve does makes it appear a ridiculous argument. But the brain has billions of cells which “hold” various levels of memory and, as importantly, trillions and trillions of interconnections. Plus inputs from the senses.
If it were possible to engineer an entity - of whatever components, silicon or wetware - that was of comparable complexity I wouldn’t bet on it not being conscious at least on some level.
@@Wol747 If we make the system really really complex, it will become conscious. Somehow. Again, magical thinking. It doesn't matter how complex you make the system of switches, it won't become conscious.
@@Wol747 What is the argument for complexity equaling consciousness?
@@stevecoats5656
I said I wouldn't bet against it.
Some of the finest minds the planet has ever seen have been unable to even define consciousness at it's fundamental level, let alone explain it. If it's the result of a sufficiently complex system, and that could be called "magic" then so be it.
Dennett up to his usual trick of straw manning opposing ideas. Idealism is not based on any kind of 'magical' thinking. It derives directly from the notion ( espoused as far back as 250 years ago by Kant ) that we have zero one-to-one perception of reality. Something akin to Donald Hoffman's 'user interface' is inescapable. In fact no neuroscientist argues that we see reality 'as it is'. It thus follows that as the user interface is the only means by which we know 'the world'.....we ought to question whether what we observe really 'is' reality or not.
huge respect for Dennett for standing on the side of common sense... so many is still looking for the "real magic" when they're dealing with the problem of consciousness... probably only because they are protecting some weak beliefes - like "self", "soul", some "cosmic, universal morality", "god", "afterlife" etc... I consider these defenders of the soul and self as an intellectual trolls... They are playing with arguments only for the sake of finding some interesting, funny retoric when they perfectly know that "self" is already only a dust... brain science is bringing enough of the arguments to abolish these strange claims... "Closer to truth" as always - is doing a great job! ;)
This is very uncharitable and betrays a lack of familiarity with the literature. Hardly all of the people who disagree with the likes of Dennett do so because they are "protecting" beliefs about the soul or the afterlife. Most of them are atheists and/or naturalists like Dennett. Otherwise, they might think there are independently good reasons to believe in something like the soul which makes Dennett's views unattractive. That is totally rational, even if they might be wrong. They are not trolls. They are serious philosophers who defend their views just as earnestly as Dennett has and have made real contributions to the discourse.
There are no trolls. Self is an illusion as is consciousness as is free will. We are the most unfortunate things in the universe. Forced to have this sense that we are aware and matter when in reality not only do we not, but we are powerless to do anything but suffer and watch what we love die and what we build turn to ash. If there were any free will, every single person would commit suicide. It’s the only choice reason would allow
Love your videos.
In a recent interview with Sam Harris, he also noted a similar split between two camps. In this interview, it's between the neuroscientists and the philosophers. For Sam, it's not an issue of argumentation. People just have fundamental differences in their ground state intuition.
For the neuroscientists, the "hard problem" is as meaningful as asking "why do rivers have bends". It's a pseudo-problem. This is esp. the case when gets into the details of all the mechanisms at play, and have a basic outline of the processes.
For the philosophers, the functionalist explanation is insufficient to explain the "qualia" of the inner experience. They feel there is something extra. Mechanistic science has not proven its case. For them, the inner feeling, is more primary.
Another aspect of the problem may be practical (e.g., if one were a neurologist). Suppose one were to receive a blow of a hammer to the back of the head, or all the oxygen in the room were sucked out, or just simply receiving general anesthesia. Something will happen to one's consciousness.
>>For the neuroscientists, the "hard problem" is as meaningful as asking "why do rivers have bends". It's a pseudo-problem. This is esp. the case when gets into the details of all the mechanisms at play, and have a basic outline of the processes.
There is an “arrogant” or errant conflation separating humans from the animal world going on now for thousands of years even though no animal or organism can just get up and leave this planet or the solar system or the universe (that we have knowledge of otherwise I think we probably would have e heard about it by now).
Human children that don’t learn language by the age of four will always have underdeveloped area of the brain associated with language which then effects other area of their brains development. Many “wolf children” have been studied and found. Are these children not “conscious”?
There is a serious serious serious lack of examples coming from neurology of which proposing many different ideas like blind people or deaf people or blind and deaf people or drunk people who black out yet still interact with other people don’t remember the night before or drugs know to disassociate people from their bodies and so on and so forth.
“Consciousness” is the entire kit and caboodle but even blind people are conscious so apparently sight doesn’t have something to do with it. Deaf people are conscious so apparently sound has little to do with it. Deaf and blind people the same.
People in comas have been known to
dream and also wake up years later. Isolating all the very interesting ideas and focusing on genetics and starting there may be a better idea.
Qualia is a cool idea but everyone can experience qualia so is it really that special? Subjective vs. objective experience. Objectively it is hard to deny some things. Earthquakes, meteor strikes, tsunamis and pretty much every natural disaster out there. Wars don’t seem to be to subjective. Maybe how the war started but not the real consequences. So, why is everyone so stuck on the subjective? Restaurants create an ambiance, and use psychology to develop menus and increase sales yet the customer (not very educated on restaurants) may not know why certain menu items appear in the order they appear or the color or shape of a plate to give a certain “feeling” about a dish. Well the person creating the dish does have a very good idea about what they want that person to experience.
Emotions can be logically and in fact are logical even if the emotion doesn’t fit the scenario. It’s a recognizable emotion but the inner experience of that person is confusing objectively and subjectively without explanation to others.
Most of this stuff is new age babble but cool none the less. Also a lot of these ideas have been around for thousands of years already just repurposed and given a new name.
It may just be a unique property to humans which could be curiosity, imagination, adaptability and the proper biology to be lucky enough to manipulate materials to suite our needs for survival. Culture is just a form of survival so no big deal there.
Ideas are very powerful and humans feel and have emotions and attach ideas to these emotions and many wonderful things have been invented because if these ideas.
Extrapolating the simple out of the complexity may be a better idea. I’m sorry to be so very blunt but many of these intellectuals have very sheltered lives. They have not expanded their own ability of awareness and experience surrounding overcoming many inherent biological reflexes like breath holding, meditation, fasting, withholding from sexual pleasure and so on and so forth. Genetics has stopped investigating things like an intelligence gene due to possible discrimination so it is science that is holding itself back BUT all these very creative ideas are fun none the less.
@@charlie-km1et
Phew! Lots of ideas, but where are they going?
if you google "why do rivers have bends" there is a simple physical explanation that has to do with small changes in topography causing a differential in the river currents on different sides of the river, setting off a chain reaction where it becomes more and more bent, and that is why it happens. it's not a pseudo-problem. it's a problem that physics explains easily. why can't science offer a simple explanation like this for consciousness? that's the point.
@@JB-kn2zh nailed it... Not today but one day we will probably have answers for consciousness also
Need to do some audio compression and boost the volume is very low
Would like to see Dr. Anil Seth on CTT someday
another "we are nothing, we are an illusion" ..isnt sufficient Dennett ??
@@francesco5581 Ancient literature from Upanishads termed this existence as "Maya" meaning illusion of this phenomenal world.
@@lokeshmayannagowda8336 yes but they support the opposite... we are the illusion of a material universe.
I wanna see a debate between Donald Hoffman and Daniet Dennett, it would be a great discussion imho.
Great stuff. Truth. Agree.
what’s embarrassing is the conviction that A network of some sort of bio transistors create a type of software interface which could actually understand the hardware. Makes me think of Mario how to figure out its CPU
That’s the whole idea though behind the thought experiment though. Some people would imagine or say that human brains are just “natural” computers that have advanced to the point where it tries to figure itself out. Almost no animal under us in complexity does that. We’re pretty much the only animal that really cares what’s physically inside our own brains and beyond.
Anyway, moving on, the idea continues that if we make AI advanced enough from the ground level (with the correct learning algorithms and whatnot) it might eventually start to wonder what it is and what it’s made of.)
I guess you could argue “well you must have programmed it in such a way that it would eventually ask those kinds of questions.” - but then we could argue that nature did the same thing with us.
'Pan-niftism' is a crap comparison and a straw-man. He already said that each neuron should be considered an agent. One could sidestep his argument in exactly the same way that he is sidestepping the idea that a particle, which can store some information, has an elementary type of agency or proto-agency.
He also often relies on appeals to 'common sense' when he calls things 'nonsense'. This is a failure to really address what he thinks is wrong with the argument.
He also said one of the stupidest things I've ever heard an educated person say. Saying a philosophical zombie has a "stream of unconsciousness" is like saying a desert has "rivers and lakes of unwater". That argument was close to being "not even wrong".
Another closer to truth video that I can't hear.
Because truth shouldn't be heard :D
Why? You rather have magical sugar and godly caramel sprinkled on your theory of consciousness?
Our consciousness must be a piece of a bigger realm where we the inhabitants get a small portion
How am I supposed to get any work done with you dangling Dan Dennett in my direction?
Destiny finds us dawdling in dereliction of duty here ourselves.
It's really not that much of a mystery if you step back and think about it objectively.
Basic fact: humans are Homo sapiens, a species that evolved from the Great Ape. We are closely related to chimpanzees and bonobos. We have orders of magnitude more brain power and complexity than our DNA cousins. We have much more complex speech. We are much more complex organisms that these cousins, but we are essentially great apes.
Regarding consciousness, it cannot be an illusion. We must be conscious to experience an illusion. I hope you see the issue there.
Consciousness arises from physical matter organized in a specific way, along with a complex of energy, chemicals, and electricity. If you understand the complex brain processing of vision, audition, olfaction, taste, and touch, then you should not have trouble understanding how consciousness arises in the brain.
Regarding subjective first-person experience (qualia), that is the brain making use of the senses internally to create an experience of say "red" or of "smelling banana" or whatever. It is all done by the brain.
Regarding free will, evolution has provided Homo sapiens with the capability to interrupt deterministic processes that are leading to certain decisions and actions - we can interrupt the process and change the direction (that is, change our mind). That said, we are constrained by our genetics, our upbringing, our life experiences, and any biases at the time of decisions. Within those constraints, we have limited free will.
No such thing as "virtual immortality." Panpsychism is not true within common understanding of consciousness.
Just my take on things -- not a philosophical argument.
Now, the task is to determine how the brain does all this. That is, lay out the circuit diagrams.
Can we get a tour of the artwork :)
These guys should read Ryan Holliday, he’s a really good philosopher.
So what is his theory again ? Basically the same material point of view , with some more fancy details that doesn't get us anywhere close to solving the hard problem ...
Yeah his "solution" is to basically deny the existence of the problem.
"special, magic pearl of me" uniquely points at the root of the world's problems.
the anti-philosophic zombie argument at 19:00 fails unless you grant that all software is conscious
I had 'epiphany' on dualism. Ok why?! We as communicators react almost always by putting up a barrier. Simplest resolution in communication. Some not many people we meet can go beyond that barrier that is the 'good or extra good' people. Ok dualism is simply putting up barriers like not good people. Like simplifications of underlying more deep ideas. That's it ok great talk again!
I don't remember if I heard of Ship of Theseus specifically, but yes, a cool predicament. Materially we are continually regenerating, and our original atoms are mostly gone, but somehow we feel like the same person.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The concept is one of the oldest in Western philosophy, having been discussed by Heraclitus and Plato by c. 500-400 BC.
The reality of the life of a tree is also compelling, where the living tree is all on the newest ring, while the inner rings can rot away and the tree can live, at least until the rot weakens the tree and it all falls down.
Perhaps humans are similar to degrees, can never be the original smaller self physically or mentally, but the memories of those stages creates self-identity and grounds us in time as a whole being across our whole life, partially not yet lived, but knowing our choices now help create who our future self will be.
Without this grounding, we might be more adaptable, be better able to see what is at present, but the grounding means we have knowledge and experience to defend a certain identity which we want to continue, and reject external pressures to be something else.
If you want to make a soldier, start with a 13 year old, and you can mold his mind to your vision, make him a weapon you can use, but try the same to a 30 year old, and you're dealing with someone with more experience to know they can say no, and not need your approval or acceptance of your perspective.
Funny how you'll find those who try to reject the hard problem of consciousness are more of the practical types of human (nerdy types) Daniel Dennett is no nerd but he is overly practical to a fault in my opinion. Although I like Daniel Dennett I argue that the more practically bound you are as a person the more likely you will be a physicalist for the simple reasoning that an extremely practical person is aware of some deficit so to speak and rather than admit that which is no easy thing to do you take the opinion as a future safeguard of that fact ever getting out one day, 'well that may be true about me but it's because there is no free will or everything is causal in nature including me, so you see how that's not my fault.' And those who embrace the hard problem of consciousness have a more relaxed nature so to speak more likely to embrace wonder where extremely practical people in my opinion are incapable of wonder or extremely reluctant to take that path for its own sake. I think it worth mentioning as a seperate claim that people with a narcissistic tint to their characters always take the physicalist viewpoint. I don't feel the need to explain further why they would do that only to say -of course they would try to uphold a bleaker picture in terms of the wonder of man and life.
As if Immortality is the only thing what will change, Humanity will adapt anyway
This is super materialist nihilist complacency ... also with big logic gaps: why someone who accept that his consciousness is an illusion want to live a virtual (super nerd thing) eternity ??
Consciousness and drug addiction and hypnosis is very interesting 🧐 combos !! Why consciousness is so weak that for example even a simple suggestion in hypnosis one can change conscious feeling of sweet chocolate like a hot spicy one !!!!!
Drugs and coffee addictions are mind addictions felt by consciousness or the other way?
Is mind and consciousness are one and the same? Alcohol pleasure is felt by consciousness and wants more???
Is the sense of being a Being also a qualia? Could there be a selfless sense of being a Being? Does it require consciousness? And what im curious about is premonition and dreams of things that do actually happen in the future. And the experience of floating around outside the body. Theres so much that cant be accounted for if one is 100% body only. Non of the above would be necessary so why does it happen?
Dan Dennett does a great job showing that all the hyperbole, woo, and "supercalifragilisticexpialidociousness" surrounding consciousness. He offers great insight and direction for further study into consciousness.
Even if there is a perfect copy of me, complete with all my memories and experiences and flaws and so forth- that doesn't change the fact that I have a sense of self distinct from, that copy, I have a sense of self preservation, and I'm not going to want to die. No person would voluntarily die because you tell them there's a perfect copy of them back home- like I said that information does nothing to change your sense of being a distinct person all your own. Ppl would be like "Great, then I'll continue to live here and that copy of me can live there." The only way you would stop it is to kill them without their consent. Would that be murder? Who's volunteering for that job? Not me. And I know my luck, you wouldn't barely get done killing me and someone would call "The copy is a dud, don't do it!" - Uh oh- woops.
FFS buy a mic!
i will possibly add more details within 2-3 weeks but not later than 2 months
I suggest that My experience of "me" could only be reproduced from duplication of every position of every atom of me in exact relation to every environmental interaction since my birth.
I suggest that the Pauli exclusion principle necessitates such a phenomenon be unique
when you dream you are perfectly "you" without any real environmental connection...and yet those dreams have influenced you too. So in your "very hard" determinist views even ALL dreams have to be counted on :p
@@encyclopath MWI! problems solved. :)
@@freethot333 many worlds interpretation? That did occur to me…
This guy is superb quite funny and candid and precise in his theory
So nice not seeing an unmade bed in the background!
BUT how do we know that Daniel Denett is not a philosophical zombie tricking us to think that philosophical zombies doesn't exist just so he can be famous?
(just kidding, read his book "Consciousness explained" it's an amazing book).
All talk of uploading our 'brains' to computers sounds incoherent to me. All of our thoughts, feelings, motivations and actions are based on feedback from the gut and body. Without hunger, movement, stress, resolution of stress, our disembodied brains are non-entities.
Did Dennett just deny the psychophysiologic aspects of chronic pain?
So Dennett's progressive, counterintuitive views are good ("that's how we make progress"), while those leaning toward something resembling panpsychism are just grasping for attention with flashy but silly theories...?🙄
Not exactly fair. He doesn't say they're flashy (if he does, then he shouldn't). If they were flashy then they'd probably be counterintuitive. Panpsychism is also pretty old philosophy compared to Dennett's, so it's not even flashy in that sense.
@@cookiej1 you're correct, that was my addition and it probably wasn't fair, although I maintain the general idea that his attitude felt a tad hypocritical. Also, I think some of these theories are generationally flashy as they seem to disappear and be "rediscovered" with different nuances from time to time.
Dennett is essentially using Panpsychism to explain why philosophical zombies don't exist. Because if his hypothesis is true that there is no difference in computational experience between a zombie brain and a brain with qualia, that means that anything in nature that is capable of computing - which is everything - hence has to have conscious experience. Isn't that basically Panpsychism?
I thought I was the only one that saw how ridiculous what he was saying was.
Consciousness is the source of everything. Energy is vibration of consciousness. Unfortunately we are stuck in lower state of consciousness called Ego
Consciousness is flow of energy
Consciousness is steam leaving a cup of coffee?
@@danzigvssartre It is not hard for me to believe that the ripples or waveforms in the fabric of spacetime that constitute steaming coffee are experienced as qualia. It might only be the difference in how they appear from the inside vs how they appear from the outside.
If Dennet conceded on Free Will being silly then he and I would agree
perfectly on almost everything. Sadly one of the greatest thinkers of
our time is afraid of going all the way down and plays "politics" on the
Free Will debate because he thinks the species couldn't handle it and
went with the Soft Deterministic diplomatic cop out.
...finally on the messy topic of "illusions" I will just remark that
phenomenology has an Ontology of its own, after all phenomena are REAL.
Just as Illusions are REAL illusions!
In that sense "Qualia" do exist in what I call a specific domain of operations and in the case of Consciousness a given domain of Experiencing.
My small beef with Dennet over the years has always been about how such a
clear cut good thinker is afraid of pushing the "agenda" for clarity
harder.
Maybe he is the unfortunate sort of almost getting it but failing at the
cross line or maybe he is just playing "politics" to babysit the
conceptual transitions that we are about to face in the unfolding of XXI
century.
I would love to hear him respond sincerely to Bernardo Kastrop's objective idealism
you see how fast he is to dismiss what does not fit his well established "views"
@@francesco5581 I think he wants to come across as open-minded, but I question that
very good but stopped watching due to loud constant drinking background noice
I automatically dismiss the ideas of anyone who denies an inner world of experience which is so much more real than the babblings of a philosopher devoted to the denial of that obvious truth. Whether it be Searle's view that consciousness is actually real but is only a product of the material brain, or Richard Swineburns view of a soul, I can accept either argument. But that consciousness itself isn't real but is only an illusion? Next philosopher, please.
For a guy who has been making videos and profiting from them for years, this was supper crappy audio! Come on guy, hook up a freekin Microphone!
Jesus Christ he makes my head hurt 😞
"Bag of tricks"? Kuhn times the square root of last year's argument. "They don't like it when I say illusion" - That's because it doesn't add anything to the table, but ol' man Dennet. "Natures bag of tricks...", huh? Then who's being tricked? Boomer says what?
"Consciousness"? That just means being awake, doesn't it? Isn't this video about "self-consciousness?" Is there a problem with the prefix 'self'? Because that takes one into another whole new territory, called personality! 👍 Persons can recognize other persons as being unique, consciously.
Of course "conscience", a related topic, sometimes refers to morals. It seems to me that "consciousness" often takes morality into the picture when it is focused on actions, or behaviors.
Of course there's an assumed flip-side of believing that this is just a mechanistic universe... and doesn't "consciousness" throw a curve ball into the whole mechanistic argument? No machine has an awareness of "self", no machine has a personality, (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress not withstanding).
Please can you go next to India and Asian religion Buddhism toaism and other Hindu religions? talk about what they think what conscious is and the nature of reality, I think you wel get some marvelous answers and more honest answers than christian theologians becouse you don't get anywhere whit them.
Robert has outdone himself here.
How so?
Urizen Dennet at it again...
💕❤
In one interview Daniel accuses philosophers who take panpsychism seriously as seeking some sort of "fame". Compares them to spoon benders and other "woo" peddlers who just want there to be some hocus pocus "supercalifragilistic" magic behind consciousness. Are these the kind of responses you expect from a philosopher? ad hominem attacks back to back. Daniel rejects the basis of the problem at hand: why do some collections of atoms have subjective experience and others don't. He can reject the problems existence if he wishes but I don't think his arguments are worthy of praise.
You forgot his “Pan Nifty-ism argument”:
a truly gigantic intellectual knockdown of panpsychism of Kantian proportions.
I thnk he did answer that. Living organisms evolved the sense of conciousness to guide there own behavior in order to survive and reproduce. That is what natural selection does. Rocks, sand, water and air are not living, do not have the complexity nor need nor capability to have conciousness, so they don't. Claiming everything has conciousness is claiming magic.
@@blaster-zy7xx evolutionary arguments for consciousness do not answer the question at hand. The question again is this: rocks, animals and brains are all made of the same stuff (electrons, quarks etc.) yet the claim is only brains have conciousness and subjective experience. How is this possible? How does subjective experience magically come about from stuff which has no subjective experience?
@@danzigvssartre panpsychism takes consciousness as being primary, just as materialism takes matter as primary. Both worldviews take axiomatic views on the primary substance of reality
@@COSMICSMI2LE Right. Atoms are the building blocks of material mechanics. Solder, silicone and glass don't make a functioning computer unless they are configured in the right way and running software. But computers running software and showing TH-cam videos is not magic and neither is consciousness. Life is what configures the atoms into living organisms that are organized according the natural selection. Consciousness is just another trick that life has stumbled upon and developed to enhance the chances of survival; no different that the ability to fly, run fast or camouflage oneself in order to increased the chances of survival and reproduction. A static organism doesn't need conciseness to survive therefore trees, grass, and vegetables do not need consciousness. But a moving predictor or prey organism benefits greatly from an awareness of the environment. Note how we can observe a spectrum of consciousness as we go up the ladder of organism complexity, from microscopic life to insects, to salamanders, to birds to dogs to humans. And As far as well can tell, there is no universal consciousness, no deity consciousness or any master planner of any kind. Simple life struggles to survive and reproduce giving raise to Natural Selection. That struggle for survival has yielded many emergent complex survival techniques developed through millions of years of evolution Consciousness is just one of many tools in the bag of tricks that evolution has developed to increase the chances of survival.
Dennett is the biggest charlatan in philosophy
Ya definitely can't talk about Consciousness without being conscious of it
You are conscious (aware) but {of=from/about} SOME-thing:
- PHYSIS = non manmade things
- LOGOI = manmade things, these are expressions- = assertions- = objectizations = fakements
!!!OF!!! [=faking] the consciousness (PSYCHE)
Your assertion is religious, it is related to the presuppositional-assertion
forwarded by Calvinists (iow abonminable haeretics)
"truth must exist in the first place so you can deny- reject truth in the ssecond pülace
All that you DO reject, it is the assertion OF [faking] truth.
@@kleenex3000 all you did was describe yin and yang
@@memyselfni7583 I don't think so.
yin and yang, goodness and badness, brightness and darkness
each is an awareness = NO-thing from/about SOME-thing
Did you know that your brain fabricates the awareness (property) called "darkness" but in the awake state?
Definition of Consciousness:
-an ALL encompassing AWARENESS based on biological sensory instruments and mechanisms that are compiled in a biologically central location AND used for sentience until that biological entities biological life supports systems ceases.
The interviewer questioned whether consciousness is an illusion, as if he is nagging in the same point; because eventually, we will have another word to study, which is illusion. Afterwards, we will return to the same nagging question, what is illusion, is illusion is consciousness. Lol.
Illusion is simple to define in this context. It simply means that consciousness is not what it seems to us. It doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
@@PaulTopping1 I don't get your point, but let me show my point to stop the endless nagging. I define consciousness as the inner movie, and the free will. Let me illustrate the problem, you cannot make, for example, a human hand to move without the free will of the owner, or the free will of the experimenter (in case we eclectically stimulate the designated area in the motor cortex). Do you see the point here? We must have a reason to make the hand to move, together with the inner movie, that may define consciousness!
For your information, to date, there is no solid definition to consciousness; for that reason, my lab decided to study another question express as " where is consciousness?". Because when we clearly localize it, thus we will be able to find it and describe it. See the following video for better illustration: th-cam.com/video/I1G3Jx-Q1YY/w-d-xo.html
@@ScientificReview Your "inner movie" is the so-called Homunculus argument and has been thoroughly debunked. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument. Not sure what "endless nagging" you're talking about.
@@PaulTopping1 Perhaps you're less evolved to have undebunked inner movies that require free will...
Daniel Dennett = closed-minded materialist.
Dennett has been scratching the surface of consciousness for decades and seriously thinks he's got the whole thing figured out. It's quite tragic really.
Or he's right. If you have no reason to add unnecessary components to explain something, you shouldn't do it. Dan's just following the shortest logical route according to Occams razor. The theory of consciousness according to people like you is overrated, overengineered and ridiculously inplausible.
@@grattata4364 the shortest logical way to explain a star field is that it was painted on a vault above us .
@@francesco5581 Except that science can demonstrate that it isn't. The point is that you're just making wild inprobable guesses the moment you're going beyond what science can demonstrate. Dan's theory is compatible with what neuroscience confirms. You can't say the same about any of the new age cuckoo hypothesises.
@@grattata4364 Science failures to explain what consciousness is and how is generated lead many materialists to say that then it's an illusion. So the illusion explanation is the same as multiverses were invented to give the materialists an escape door from the obvious fine tuning of the universe. Thats why recently scientists/philosophers are looking for other explanations (Chalmers, Tononi, Kastrup, Koch, Hoffman, Faggin, Penrose, Maoz, Tollaksen, Hammeroff...)
@@francesco5581 How could consciousness be an illusion? It's the only thing we know for sure instantaneusly and with absolute evidence. It's just the only thing we can't deny.
Self may be an illusion, mind may be an illusion, matter, space, time... all may be an illusion... For something to be an illusion means that it is ostensible, that it emerges from the behaviour of something deeper... And now, the fact that there is *conscious experiences* or simply "consciousness", in its simplest conception, can't be an illusion, it is just what it is and it can't be denied.
This host just craves personal immortality as a Cartesian soul and won't rest until he finds a satisfying argument in support of it (there isn't one). His desire to be "closer to truth" is really the quest for a justification he knows is impossible.
I love the bearded man’s voice :-) but consciousness’s main job is not self control. I would say consciousness main job is to know things.
Dennett seems to be able to BS around his confusion in a way that escapes confrontation by the interviewer. Interesting ideas in the video, though.
What's on Dennett's head? I hope he lives for 1000 years.
For a man who is enamored by a robotic dog...
I am genuinely surprised that this guy is considered a philosipher. He says trivial things as if they are insighful, has a condescending dogmatic attitude, is arrogant and doesn't seem to be sufficiently self aware. No offense intended but honestly that's my impression.
Also, the questions could have been better. He was hardly poked when there was such a need to do that.
Claiming that "Everything is Conscious" is semantically meaningless.
Everything has consciousness? How is that sematnically menaingless compared to sdiufhapoiguhadpfigh? Sure I'm drunk but there's meaning through semanitcs and understanding comapred to reandom letters.
@@MartinPeel Jumbled up random letters isn't semantics, that is just random information. Semantically useless is like referring to planet Earth as a chair since you can sit on it. While technically true it is semantically useless to consider Earth a chair because by that definition you would have to call everything in the universe that could be "sat on" a chair. But now the word chair means so many things that it is no longer a useful category or concept. It's a form of semantic inflation, as the definitional boundary conditions on a word or concept is widened the defined meaning of that word gets diluted.
Dan is psudo-intellectual and thinks consciousness is magic.
Dan thinks consciousness is the exact opposite of magic, and is just merely the functionality of electrical activity in the brain
pfffft..
This is a clown.
Dennett is a waste of time if you actually want the truth.
Dennett is just ridiculously mislead by his dogmatism. Notice how he doesn't catch obvious counter implications on his own view with the example of "pannyftysm", where he invokes underdetermination by data applied to both theories of panpsychism and pannyftysm. That is to say: if the data can be equally explained by each of the 2 theories, or if the data is not sufficient to adhere to one position instead of the other, then we are not justified to believe that there is preferable theory between the 2. Dennett is just embarissingly refusing to reconsider his own positions which are by now, ancient, and that puts him into a position of insincere, dishonest dumb old wannabe wise man of scientism. It is crazy how he shows complete lack of self awareness when criticising counter intuitive views, while at the other instace he says "scientists seek only for counter intuitive views"
I admire Dennett, but after several years of studying philosophy, I find that he's fairly narrow-minded. He says that "counter intuitive" views are good for science but then when the "new philosophers" give counter intuitive views against his, he says they're charlatans doing it for fame.
As though only a charlatan could consider views such as panpsychism and idealism seriously
How is it narrow-minded? He is himself a philosopher saying that philosophers gain fame by promoting counter-intuitive views. In this sense he is similarly subject to the same charge - though notoriety is not necessarily a bad thing, nor means that one is either right or wrong. But his views takes into account the neuroscience in which he roots them. What I understand him saying is that: Counter intuitive views are good in science but are fame-seeking in neuroscience-dismissing philosophy of consciousness. Science and philosophy are not quite the same.
Also, "open minded" views can be wrong.. and they are not necessarily "open" minded if they're merely counter intuitive. Similarly "narrow minded" views can be correct, nor necessarily correct due to being intuitive. There's no necessary connection between them in either case. Consider views of a flat earth vs a globe. How would open vs closed mindedness, unintuitive vs intuitiveness, and correct vs incorrectness play out? Then how would it play out in a geocentric vs heliocentric view?
@@amirguri1335 in your own words, define “IDEALISM”. ☝️🤔☝️
🐟 06. CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS:
Consciousness means “that which knows” or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). There is BOTH a localized knowing and a Universal Awareness, as explicated in the following paragraphs.
Higher species of animal life have sufficient cognitive ability to KNOW themselves and their environment, at least to a measurable degree. Just where consciousness objectively begins in the animal kingdom is a matter of contention but, judging purely by ethological means, it probably starts with vertebrates (at least the higher-order birds and fishes). Those metazoans which are evolutionarily lower than vertebrates do not possess much, if any, semblance of intellect, necessary for true knowledge, but operate purely by reflexive instincts. For instance, an insect or amphibian does not consciously decide to seek food but does so according to its base instincts, directed by its idiosyncratic genetic code. Even when a cockroach flees from danger, it is not experiencing the same kind of thoughts or feelings a human or other mammal would experience.
The brain is merely a conduit or TRANSDUCER of Universal Consciousness (i.e. Brahman), explaining why the more intelligent the animal, the more it can understand its own existence (or at least be aware of more of its environment - just see how amazingly-complex dolphin and whale behaviour can be, compared with other aquatic species), and the reason why it is asserted that a truly enlightened human must possess a far higher level of intelligence than the average person. The processing unit of a supercomputer must be far larger, more complex and more powerful than the processor in a pocket calculator. Therefore, it seems logical to conclude that the scale of discrete (localized) consciousness is dependent on the animal's brain capacity.
See Chapter 17 to understand the distinction between enlightenment and mere awakening.
Three STATES of awareness are experienced by humans and possibly all other species of mammals:
the waking state (“jāgrata”, in Sanskrit), dreaming (“svapna”, in Sanskrit), and deep-sleep (“suṣupti”, in Sanskrit). Beyond these three temporal states is the fourth “state” (“turīya” or “caturīya”, in Sanskrit). That is the unconditioned, eternal “state”, which underlies the other three.
The waking state is the LEAST real (that is to say the least permanent, or to put it another way, the farthest from the Necessary Ground of Existence, as explained towards the end of this chapter). The dream state is closer to our eternal nature, whilst dreamless deep-sleep is much more analogous to The Universal Self (“brahman”), as it is imbued with peace. Rather than being an absence of awareness, deep-sleep is an awareness of absence (that is, the absence of phenomenal, sensual experiences). So, in actual fact, the fourth state is not a state, but the Unconditioned Ground of Being, or to put it simply, YOU, the real self/Self, or Existence-Awareness-Peace (“sacchidānanda”, in Sanskrit).
Perhaps the main purpose of dreams is so that we can understand that the waking-state is practically indistinguishable to the dream-state, and thereby come to see the ILLUSION of this ephemeral world. Both our waking-state experiences and our dream-state experiences occur solely within the mental faculties (refer to Chapter 04 for an elucidation of this phenomenon). If somebody in one of your dreams were to ask your dream-state character if the dream was real, you (playing the part of that character) would most likely say, “yes, of course this is real!” Similarly, if someone were to ask your waking-state character if this world is real, you would almost undoubtedly respond in kind.
An apt analogy for Universal Consciousness is the manner in which electricity powers a variety of appliances and gadgets, according to the use and COMPLEXITY of the said device. Electricity powers a washing machine in a very simple manner, to drive a large spindle for laundering clothes. However, the very same electrical power may be used to operate a computer to manifest an astonishing range of outputs, such as playing audiovisual tracks, communication tasks and performing extremely advanced mathematical computations, depending on the computer's software and hardware. The more advanced/complex the device, the more complex its manifestation of the same electricity.
Using the aforementioned computer analogy: the brain is COMPARATIVELY equivalent to the computer hardware, deoxyribonucleic acid akin to the operating system working in conjunction with the memory, the intellect is equivalent to the processing unit, individuated consciousness is analogous to the software programme, whilst Universal Awareness is likened to the electricity which enlivens the entire computer system.
A person who is comatosed has lost any semblance of local consciousness, yet is being kept alive by the presence of Universal Consciousness.
So, then, one could complain: “That's not fair - why can only a genius be enlightened?” (as defined in Chapter 17).
The answer is: first of all, as stated above, every species of animal has its own level of intelligence on a wide-ranging scale. Therefore, a pig or a dog could (if possible) ask: “That's unfair - why can only a human being be enlightened?”
Secondly, it is INDEED a fact that life is unfair, because there is no “tit for tat” law of action and reaction, even if many supposedly-great religious preceptors have stated so. They said so because they were preaching to wicked miscreants who refused to quit their evil ways, and needed to be chastized in a forceful manner. It is not possible to speak gentle words to a rabid dog to prevent it from biting you.
There is evidence of Consciousness being a universal field, in SAVANT SYNDROME, a condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrate certain abilities far in excess of the norm, such as superhuman rapid mathematical calculation, mind-reading, blind-seeing, or astounding musical aptitude. Such behaviour suggests that there is a universal field (possibly in holographic form) from which one can access information. Even simple artistic inspiration could be attributed to this phenomenon. The great British singer-songwriter, Sir James Paul McCartney, one day woke with the complete tune of the song, “Yesterday”, in his mind, after hearing it in a dream. American composer, Paul Simon, had a similar experience when the chorus of his sublime masterpiece, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, simply popped into his head.
Cont...
In recent years, the term “CONSCIOUSNESS” has been used in esoteric spiritual circles (usually capitalized) to refer to a far more Homogeneous Consciousness (“puruṣa”, in Sanskrit), due to the fact that the English language doesn’t include a single word denoting the Universal Ground of Being (for instance “Brahman”, “Tao”, in other tongues). The word “Awareness” (capitalized) is arguably a more apposite term for this concept.
The typical person believes that the apparatus which knows the external world is his mind (via the five senses), but more perceptive individuals understand that the mind itself is cognizable by the intellect. Wise souls recognize that the sense of self (the pseudo-ego) is the perceiver of their intellects, whereas awakened persons have realized that the true self/Self is the witness of ALL these temporal phenomena.
The true self is synonymous with Consciousness, or with Infinite Awareness, or the Undifferentiated Unified Field (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit).
The dialectic exercise in the following three paragraphs should help one to understand the nature of the fundamental conscious observer, that is, the ULTIMATE observer of all phenomena (i.e. the subject/Subject, which is the authentic self, as opposed to material objects):
If one were to ask you whether you are the same person or individual you were at birth (or even at conception), you would probably respond in the affirmative. So, then, what PRECISELY is it about you which has remained constant since conception? In other words, what is the self-identity you had as an infant, which is the present “you”? It cannot be any part of your body or mind, since none of the atoms or molecules in your zygote body are extant, and “you” certainly did not possess a mind at conception. If you are reasonably intelligent, you may claim that your genome is the same now as it was then. However, it has recently been scientifically demonstrated that genetic code can (and usually does) change throughout an individual’s lifetime. Furthermore, nobody actively conceives of their essential nature being a bunch of genes!
More intelligent souls would probably counter thus: “The thing which stays the same from my birth to the present time is my sense of self.” This too, is fallacious, since the sense of self does not emerge until at least a couple of years after birth. An infant has no ideation of itself as an individual actor. You may then say “I was a (male/female) human being” but that doesn’t specify any PARTICULAR human (you, yourself).
So, then, what EXACTLY is it which remains “you” from conception till death? That is the “I am” which precedes any artificial sense of self. In other words, rather than saying “I am a man/woman/human/king/pilot/etc.”, simply the impersonal sense of “I am”. That is the true self, which is the Universal Self. Therefore, your essential nature is Cosmic Consciousness, usually called “God” by theists (see also Chapter 10).
The Tao (The Reality [lit. The Way, The Path, or The Road]) which can be expressed in language is not the REAL Tao. All concepts are, by nature, relative, and at most, can merely point to the Absolute. That explains why some branches of theology use the apophatic method of discerning The Infinite (“neti neti”, [not this, not that], in Sanskrit). Also known in Latin as “via negativa” or “via negationis” theology, this philosophical approach to discovering the essential nature of Reality, gradually negates each description about Ultimate Reality, but not Reality Itself.
Ultimate Reality (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit [from “bṛh” - lit. “Expansion”, in English]) alone is real - “real” in the sense that it is the never-mutable substratum of ALL existence. The wisest of the philosophers of ancient India distinguished the “real” from the “unreal” (“sat/asat”, in Sanskrit) by whether or not the “thing“ was eternal or ephemeral (cf. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1:3:28, Bhagavad-gītā 2:16, et altri).
Gross material objects (such as one's own body) and subtle material objects (such as thoughts) are always changing, and therefore not “real”.
REALITY is clearly seen by those self-realized persons who have experienced spiritual awakenings (which occur either spontaneously, or after a gradual process over many months or years), yet only intellectually understood by those who have merely studied spiritual topics (that is, those who have practiced one of the four systems of religion described in Chapter 16, but have yet to awaken to their essential nature).
“If you remain as you are now, you are in the wakeful state. This is abolished in the dream state.
The dream state disappears, when you are in deep sleep. The three states come and go, but you are always there.
Your real state, that of Consciousness itself, continues to exist always and forever and it is the only Reality.”
*************
“The ego is the identified consciousness. When the impersonal Consciousness identifies itself with the personal organism, the ego arises.”
*************
“The only true meditation is the constant impersonal witnessing of all that takes place in one’s life as mere movements in the universal Consciousness.”
*************
“Consciousness must first be there, before anything else can BE. All inquiry of the seeker of truth, must therefore, relate to this consciousness, this sense of conscious presence, which as such, has no personal reference to any individual.”
*************
“Insofar as you keep watching the mind and discover yourself as its witness, nothing else can project itself on the screen of consciousness.
This is so, because two things cannot occupy the attention, at the same moment.Therefore, delve within and find out where thoughts arise.
Seek the source of all thought and acquire the Self-knowledge, which is the awakening of Truth.”
*************
“Just as the difference between the space in a pot and the space outside it disappears when the pot is demolished, so also does duality disappear when it is realized that the difference between the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist.”
*************
“All there is, is, is consciousness. That is the Source from which the manifestation has come.
...And the mind is merely a reflection of that Consciousness.”
*************
“All there is is Consciousness, not aware of Itself in Its noumenal Subjectivity, but perceived by Itself as phenomenal manifestation in Its objective expression. If this is understood in depth, there is nothing more to be understood.”
Ramesh S. Balsekar,
Indian Spiritual Teacher.
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.”
*************
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck,
German Theoretical Physicist.
"Illusion" is the wrong word to use in consciousness. It confuses things. I think Dennett is being obstinate using it. Wish he'd find a better description.
Dennett rejects Panpsychism as embarrassing magical thinking that explains nothing. Why not say Materialism is also embarrassing magical thinking that explains NOTHING!
beautiful and eloquent old man
I loved reading “Consciousness Explained” as an undergraduate twenty years ago. It’s a great book, but I disagree with just about everything Dennett says.
in your own words, define “CONSCIOUSNESS”. ☝️🤔☝️
It’s so dry, how did you survive it?
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices It's a "what-it's-like"-aspect of existence.
@@SebastianLundh1988
🐟 06. CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS:
Consciousness means “that which knows” or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). There is BOTH a localized knowing and a Universal Awareness, as explicated in the following paragraphs.
Higher species of animal life have sufficient cognitive ability to KNOW themselves and their environment, at least to a measurable degree. Just where consciousness objectively begins in the animal kingdom is a matter of contention but, judging purely by ethological means, it probably starts with vertebrates (at least the higher-order birds and fishes). Those metazoans which are evolutionarily lower than vertebrates do not possess much, if any, semblance of intellect, necessary for true knowledge, but operate purely by reflexive instincts. For instance, an insect or amphibian does not consciously decide to seek food but does so according to its base instincts, directed by its idiosyncratic genetic code. Even when a cockroach flees from danger, it is not experiencing the same kind of thoughts or feelings a human or other mammal would experience.
The brain is merely a conduit or TRANSDUCER of Universal Consciousness (i.e. Brahman), explaining why the more intelligent the animal, the more it can understand its own existence (or at least be aware of more of its environment - just see how amazingly-complex dolphin and whale behaviour can be, compared with other aquatic species), and the reason why it is asserted that a truly enlightened human must possess a far higher level of intelligence than the average person. The processing unit of a supercomputer must be far larger, more complex and more powerful than the processor in a pocket calculator. Therefore, it seems logical to conclude that the scale of discrete (localized) consciousness is dependent on the animal's brain capacity.
See Chapter 17 to understand the distinction between enlightenment and mere awakening.
Three STATES of awareness are experienced by humans and possibly all other species of mammals:
the waking state (“jāgrata”, in Sanskrit), dreaming (“svapna”, in Sanskrit), and deep-sleep (“suṣupti”, in Sanskrit). Beyond these three temporal states is the fourth “state” (“turīya” or “caturīya”, in Sanskrit). That is the unconditioned, eternal “state”, which underlies the other three.
The waking state is the LEAST real (that is to say the least permanent, or to put it another way, the farthest from the Necessary Ground of Existence, as explained towards the end of this chapter). The dream state is closer to our eternal nature, whilst dreamless deep-sleep is much more analogous to The Universal Self (“brahman”), as it is imbued with peace. Rather than being an absence of awareness, deep-sleep is an awareness of absence (that is, the absence of phenomenal, sensual experiences). So, in actual fact, the fourth state is not a state, but the Unconditioned Ground of Being, or to put it simply, YOU, the real self/Self, or Existence-Awareness-Peace (“sacchidānanda”, in Sanskrit).
Perhaps the main purpose of dreams is so that we can understand that the waking-state is practically indistinguishable to the dream-state, and thereby come to see the ILLUSION of this ephemeral world. Both our waking-state experiences and our dream-state experiences occur solely within the mental faculties (refer to Chapter 04 for an elucidation of this phenomenon). If somebody in one of your dreams were to ask your dream-state character if the dream was real, you (playing the part of that character) would most likely say, “yes, of course this is real!” Similarly, if someone were to ask your waking-state character if this world is real, you would almost undoubtedly respond in kind.
An apt analogy for Universal Consciousness is the manner in which electricity powers a variety of appliances and gadgets, according to the use and COMPLEXITY of the said device. Electricity powers a washing machine in a very simple manner, to drive a large spindle for laundering clothes. However, the very same electrical power may be used to operate a computer to manifest an astonishing range of outputs, such as playing audiovisual tracks, communication tasks and performing extremely advanced mathematical computations, depending on the computer's software and hardware. The more advanced/complex the device, the more complex its manifestation of the same electricity.
Using the aforementioned computer analogy: the brain is COMPARATIVELY equivalent to the computer hardware, deoxyribonucleic acid akin to the operating system working in conjunction with the memory, the intellect is equivalent to the processing unit, individuated consciousness is analogous to the software programme, whilst Universal Awareness is likened to the electricity which enlivens the entire computer system.
A person who is comatosed has lost any semblance of local consciousness, yet is being kept alive by the presence of Universal Consciousness.
So, then, one could complain: “That's not fair - why can only a genius be enlightened?” (as defined in Chapter 17).
The answer is: first of all, as stated above, every species of animal has its own level of intelligence on a wide-ranging scale. Therefore, a pig or a dog could (if possible) ask: “That's unfair - why can only a human being be enlightened?”
Secondly, it is INDEED a fact that life is unfair, because there is no “tit for tat” law of action and reaction, even if many supposedly-great religious preceptors have stated so. They said so because they were preaching to wicked miscreants who refused to quit their evil ways, and needed to be chastized in a forceful manner. It is not possible to speak gentle words to a rabid dog to prevent it from biting you.
There is evidence of Consciousness being a universal field, in SAVANT SYNDROME, a condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrate certain abilities far in excess of the norm, such as superhuman rapid mathematical calculation, mind-reading, blind-seeing, or astounding musical aptitude. Such behaviour suggests that there is a universal field (possibly in holographic form) from which one can access information. Even simple artistic inspiration could be attributed to this phenomenon. The great British singer-songwriter, Sir James Paul McCartney, one day woke with the complete tune of the song, “Yesterday”, in his mind, after hearing it in a dream. American composer, Paul Simon, had a similar experience when the chorus of his sublime masterpiece, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, simply popped into his head.
Cont...
In recent years, the term “CONSCIOUSNESS” has been used in esoteric spiritual circles (usually capitalized) to refer to a far more Homogeneous Consciousness (“puruṣa”, in Sanskrit), due to the fact that the English language doesn’t include a single word denoting the Universal Ground of Being (for instance “Brahman”, “Tao”, in other tongues). The word “Awareness” (capitalized) is arguably a more apposite term for this concept.
The typical person believes that the apparatus which knows the external world is his mind (via the five senses), but more perceptive individuals understand that the mind itself is cognizable by the intellect. Wise souls recognize that the sense of self (the pseudo-ego) is the perceiver of their intellects, whereas awakened persons have realized that the true self/Self is the witness of ALL these temporal phenomena.
The true self is synonymous with Consciousness, or with Infinite Awareness, or the Undifferentiated Unified Field (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit).
The dialectic exercise in the following three paragraphs should help one to understand the nature of the fundamental conscious observer, that is, the ULTIMATE observer of all phenomena (i.e. the subject/Subject, which is the authentic self, as opposed to material objects):
If one were to ask you whether you are the same person or individual you were at birth (or even at conception), you would probably respond in the affirmative. So, then, what PRECISELY is it about you which has remained constant since conception? In other words, what is the self-identity you had as an infant, which is the present “you”? It cannot be any part of your body or mind, since none of the atoms or molecules in your zygote body are extant, and “you” certainly did not possess a mind at conception. If you are reasonably intelligent, you may claim that your genome is the same now as it was then. However, it has recently been scientifically demonstrated that genetic code can (and usually does) change throughout an individual’s lifetime. Furthermore, nobody actively conceives of their essential nature being a bunch of genes!
More intelligent souls would probably counter thus: “The thing which stays the same from my birth to the present time is my sense of self.” This too, is fallacious, since the sense of self does not emerge until at least a couple of years after birth. An infant has no ideation of itself as an individual actor. You may then say “I was a (male/female) human being” but that doesn’t specify any PARTICULAR human (you, yourself).
So, then, what EXACTLY is it which remains “you” from conception till death? That is the “I am” which precedes any artificial sense of self. In other words, rather than saying “I am a man/woman/human/king/pilot/etc.”, simply the impersonal sense of “I am”. That is the true self, which is the Universal Self. Therefore, your essential nature is Cosmic Consciousness, usually called “God” by theists (see also Chapter 10).
The Tao (The Reality [lit. The Way, The Path, or The Road]) which can be expressed in language is not the REAL Tao. All concepts are, by nature, relative, and at most, can merely point to the Absolute. That explains why some branches of theology use the apophatic method of discerning The Infinite (“neti neti”, [not this, not that], in Sanskrit). Also known in Latin as “via negativa” or “via negationis” theology, this philosophical approach to discovering the essential nature of Reality, gradually negates each description about Ultimate Reality, but not Reality Itself.
Ultimate Reality (“Brahman”, in Sanskrit [from “bṛh” - lit. “Expansion”, in English]) alone is real - “real” in the sense that it is the never-mutable substratum of ALL existence. The wisest of the philosophers of ancient India distinguished the “real” from the “unreal” (“sat/asat”, in Sanskrit) by whether or not the “thing“ was eternal or ephemeral (cf. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1:3:28, Bhagavad-gītā 2:16, et altri).
Gross material objects (such as one's own body) and subtle material objects (such as thoughts) are always changing, and therefore not “real”.
REALITY is clearly seen by those self-realized persons who have experienced spiritual awakenings (which occur either spontaneously, or after a gradual process over many months or years), yet only intellectually understood by those who have merely studied spiritual topics (that is, those who have practiced one of the four systems of religion described in Chapter 16, but have yet to awaken to their essential nature).
“If you remain as you are now, you are in the wakeful state. This is abolished in the dream state.
The dream state disappears, when you are in deep sleep. The three states come and go, but you are always there.
Your real state, that of Consciousness itself, continues to exist always and forever and it is the only Reality.”
*************
“The ego is the identified consciousness. When the impersonal Consciousness identifies itself with the personal organism, the ego arises.”
*************
“The only true meditation is the constant impersonal witnessing of all that takes place in one’s life as mere movements in the universal Consciousness.”
*************
“Consciousness must first be there, before anything else can BE. All inquiry of the seeker of truth, must therefore, relate to this consciousness, this sense of conscious presence, which as such, has no personal reference to any individual.”
*************
“Insofar as you keep watching the mind and discover yourself as its witness, nothing else can project itself on the screen of consciousness.
This is so, because two things cannot occupy the attention, at the same moment.Therefore, delve within and find out where thoughts arise.
Seek the source of all thought and acquire the Self-knowledge, which is the awakening of Truth.”
*************
“Just as the difference between the space in a pot and the space outside it disappears when the pot is demolished, so also does duality disappear when it is realized that the difference between the individual consciousness and the Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist.”
*************
“All there is, is consciousness. That is the Source from which the manifestation has come.
...And the mind is merely a reflection of that Consciousness.”
*************
“All there is, is Consciousness, not aware of Itself in Its noumenal Subjectivity, but perceived by Itself as phenomenal manifestation in Its objective expression. If this is understood in depth, there is nothing more to be understood.”
Ramesh S. Balsekar,
Indian Spiritual Teacher.
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.”
*************
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck,
German Theoretical Physicist.
The realization of our own finitude makes life much more meaningful. Once we fully realize and accept our impermanence it gives us a different quality of thinking. Life increases in value; our life and the lives of others. Could this state of mind be consciousness? Could some people be conscious and most others not?
I may be wrong, but I keep getting the impression that Dennett, by growing a nice beard, adopted a Greek philosopher's "look" to go with his academic post.
He strawmanned the hell out of panpsychism here, seemingly deliberately making it sound more goofy than it actually is.
But he called it “Pan Nifty-ism.” Surely that can’t be a condescending and dismissive non-argument? Surely not from such a highly respected philosopher and thinker?
Can you describe what it is so as not to make it sound goofy?
edit: lol, I should have finished the video first. :D later he even mentioned those points and even theseus ship. funny that he used the same picture :D
to the point: AI & Consciousness & Immortality: I think he is missing the point, that those AI is not "me" but just a copy of me. If I die, than I am still dead. There only exist something that is perfectly identicly to me. the idea that it is still me is imo a kind of metaphysical thinking. imagining, that there is a metaphysical I that is immortal and appears again and again. It is like Theseus ship. following materialism there is not really an "I". There is just a programming that makes "me". and it could exist theoreticly twice at the same time. so the immortality is useless if it consideres just a copy of my programming.
The failure that is going over and over again, is that if you make a perfect copy of yourself into something totally different as a computer, you copy the data, but not the program that it is running on. Even if we have all the data, we don't know anything about the human operating system itself, what drives interactions between neurons so that we become aware of ourselves and implement and use knowledge and experience on a physical layer ( setting as a base, that who and what we are is our brain ). And the interactions from our brain with our eyes, our skin, our organs, the complexity of it all is something we totally don't understand and therefore the idea of copying an amount of data in a computer is a human being is far too much a simple idea. Biological matter like hormones and tissue cant be one on one replaced with silicon based memory and processors. Like Einstein once said, Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
As a consciousness researcher I often find myself fighting two never-ending battles ... The battle of dogma , with some qualified scientists and the battle of woo .. with almost everyone else
Just what is “woo,” other than a dismissive description used to put down ideas that don’t fit with one’s own?
@@danzigvssartre I agree... and that's why I try not to use it as a silencer. That however, does not mean that every idea is worth the time and is equally valid. still a vague and "subjective" distinction
I'm an 'Iron Solipsist'. That is, I think you're the only one here. You. Not me.
@@maynardtrendle820 It's like the philosophy of mind version of sub/dom :))
@@danzigvssartre woo is clearly all non reductionist , non naturalist ontology about matter and mind.. you got a problem with that or you are going to cry qualia?
Agree with lots of stuff Dennet says but... Not sure he understands "the first person wiew"... If you upload someone's mind/brain/ neurons to some machine,his answer is that that machine/another body/whatever would have OUR first person wiew!? Maybe he knows better but sure doesnt resonate with my wiews.
The first iota of consciousness must have emerged when the first tiny creatures evolved will to target and capture prey in conjunction with a co-evolving register of emptiness:fullness and/or active:idle state(s) in the digestive tract. So consciousness was a kind of emergent supervisor of the equilibrium-seeking relationship between ganglion and gut (particularly helpful to delivering the sense that the outcome was worth the target-and-capture effort).
I wonder if "Consciousness" naturally follows from "Knowledge". For example, my computer can store memory but it does not contain knowledge of what that memory represents. If computers begin to not just hold memory (videos, pictures, text etc.) but also knowledge of what that memory represents...will that effectively make the computer "Conscious"?
Consciousness is the only reason we know it's not completely objective.
ON CONSCIOUSNESS...
We swim in an ocean of consciousness and our “equipment” utilizes it as its animating force within the limitations of the mechanism. Humans are built differently than an amoeba so we utilize consciousness differently as a result. Some humans alter their ability to utilize more consciousness or have slightly different equipment to begin with. Others have deficits in the design or have damage and therefore limitations in how consciousness is being used. It is a neutral force and can be manipulated to suit the circumstances. We establish a template built upon expectations and create a default construction that can become our sense of self. This persists even after we die for awhile but eventually we drop it. -Mike Marable, Author of How To Have Good Life After You’re Dead
Dennett is much smarter than I am, but I truly believe he’s just mistaken. His view conflates meta consciousness with phenomenal consciousness and he’s ignoring our a posteriori knowledge… that all is in consciousness! It’s so simple: consciousness is fundamental. It’s so plain and obvious in our experience and there is so much empirical evidence which supports this view as well. Why add all of these layers of complexity and abstraction?! It’s not necessary.
Consciousness been a conundrum for nearly a century, but only for materialists who insist that metaphysics is a quaint way of looking at things. Eben Alexander, MD survived an attack by bacteria on his brain, putting him in a coma for a week, providing this trained scientist with his own experience of life after death. On recovery he sat in on the medical discussion about what had happened to him in which he could analyze the consciousness he had experienced in view of what medical science understands. All explanations required a functioning brain, especially a neocortex, which, in his case was being eaten by microbes. He wrote "Proof of Heaven" to share what he had learned from his Near-Death Experience. "I understood how blind to the full nature of the spiritual universe...I had been, who had believed that matter was the core reality. p. 57. I explored this revelation in "Surviving the Micronova."
The sound is terrible. With my phone on max volume, I can barely hear the discussion. Couldn't watch more than 3 mins.
It seems that the current view is that consciousness in people in an illusion, but consciousness in AI is an existential threat. There seems to be a contradiction there somewhere.
Consciousness in an AI which can literally have a power of god in mere 50 years which we can never achieve in 1000s of years is surely a threat.
@@ManiBalajiC do you really think that a copper wire can be self aware ? OR you are one of those people that since ive put the program line "IF Mani Balaji ask if you are conscious THEN answer YES !!!" you will scream "it's over, they are self aware !! now they will wipe us !!! "
“They yearn for magic”