Daniel Dennett

[For Prose]

Hey everyone,

 

I was hoping to have some discussion around one of my favorite philosophers and cognitive scientists; Daniel Dennett. He is no stranger to these forums. All someone has to do is search his name to find many articles where he is mentioned.

 

To start out, maybe we could discuss this excerpt from his book "Breaking the Spell". You can find it here.

 

Or here. http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/education/Daniel%20Dennett%20-%20Teach%20Our%20Children%20Well.pdf

 

I would like to hear and talk about what you think on the matter. And I realize that it is something that could not realistically happen, at least not anytime in the near future...

[andrewcellini]

recently picked up a copy of consciousness explained. i really enjoyed his lectures on the subject.

[PeterJ]

Favourite philosopher? Has he ever solved a problem?

[For Prose]

Favourite philosopher? Has he ever solved a problem?

 

One of, and please, throw out more than just "Has he ever solved a problem?". That is quite vague and I don't know what you are looking for.

[iNow]

"There's simply no polite way to tell people they've dedicated their lives to an illusion."

[PeterJ]

Well, the Buddha found one.

Sorry ForProse. It is just that I struggle to remember one thing that Dennett has contributed. I admire him for various reasons but his ability to solve problems is not one of them, and this is the philosopher's principle job. I also dislike the way he misleads his readers with clever words. I consider him to be dishonest.

[andrewcellini]

Well, the Buddha found one.

what problems did buddha solve?

[For Prose]

Well, the Buddha found one.

Sorry ForProse. It is just that I struggle to remember one thing that Dennett has contributed. I admire him for various reasons but his ability to solve problems is not one of them, and this is the philosopher's principle job. I also dislike the way he misleads his readers with clever words. I consider him to be dishonest.

 

I can agree and see what you mean by that. And not that it is right, but I feel the same way about creationists, so when I read Dennett, it sometimes feels like he just uses some of the same "tricks" and utilizes clever words. Most preachers I know do the same thing (Still not saying I agree with the approach).

 

For me, I feel that Dennett only misleads readers who are not aware with his mentality. If I was not exposed to him from someone who knew much regarding his works, I may have been or felt mislead.

I don't really read Dennett to learn things I that I didn't already know I guess. I read his work because he finds ways of putting things I already know in a different context. Like the quote iNow posted.

[PeterJ]

Andrew - If you look into metaphysics you'll see he solves all metaphysical problems for a fundamental theory. But this is irrelevant. The Buddha is not being promoted as a philosopher. Dennett is. Still, if we compare explanations of consciousness it's pretty obvious who has the better one.

 

ForProse - I'd agree that his prose is brilliant. But this is actually the problem. It is used in support of sophistry. If his prose was less good then this would a lot more obvious. Agree also that the same tactics are used by all sides in the debate. So it's up to us to thread our way through the issues being very wary.

[Strange]

Favourite philosopher? Has he ever solved a problem?

 

What problems has any philosopher solved? (When doing philosophy rather than, say, mathematics or whatever other practical things they do.)

 

Is philosophy supposed to solve problems; I thought its purpose was simply to analyse them and think of new questions.

[PeterJ]

Yes, this is a common view. But not mine. My background is in business, not academia, and I prefer to get on and solve problems. On this I part company from the western tradition, for which your comments would apply. You ask what problems philosophy solves. I was asking this at one time. Then I discovered that it solves them all. But this would take us off-topic. My point was only that Prof. Dennett has done no more than add some even more complicated footnotes to Plato. I wouldn't expect him to disagree, so don't see this as a terrible insult but just the way it is.

[Strange]

But this would take us off-topic.

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/86245-what-problems-does-philosophy-solve/

[andrewcellini]

The Buddha is not being promoted as a philosopher. Dennett is. Still, if we compare explanations of consciousness it's pretty obvious who has the better one.

buddha described his conceptions very vaguely using mystical imagery and there is no empirical support to his ideas. compare this with dennett's multiple drafts theory which is actually testable and falsifiable. how can you say the buddha has any good philosophy when the bulk is assertion from revelation (or rather, meditation) and is also guilty of sophistry?

Edited October 27, 2014 by andrewcellini

[PeterJ]

Multiple drafts is an interesting and useful idea, and not far from what the Buddha proposes, but it is not an explanation of consciousness. .

 

The Buddha's philosophy is, as you say, difficult to discern from the sutras unless we already know what it is. But Nagarjuna later explains it fully. It is a neutral metaphysical position. That is to say, it rejects the idea that Mind or Matter are fundamental.

 

As for empirical evidence, you're right, but only as long as you restrict 'empirical' to mean the data of the physical senses. If we include all direct experience then the Buddha speaks from nothing else but empiricism. But let's not get into that here.

 

The topic is Dan Dennett, and I was just causing trouble by suggesting that he is only a good philosopher by the standards of his tradition, which is a tradition for which consciousness and the whole of metaphysics is inexplicable. I suppose I was bemoaning the narrowness of our university philosophy that he could be in the charts.

[For Prose]

I suppose I was bemoaning the narrowness of our university philosophy that he could be in the charts.

 

I welcome the bemoaning. Otherwise I would have titled this thread "Why You Like Daniel Dennett So Much"

 

I don't want to stray too far from the discussion on ol' Dan, but what sorts of philosophers would you consider your favorites Peter? I ask because I want to see where you are coming from.

[andrewcellini]

Multiple drafts is an interesting and useful idea, and not far from what the Buddha proposes, but it is not an explanation of consciousness. .

it is an explanation of consciousness, it just doesn't account for all properties of consciousness (the hard problems of consciousness). it describes how an object physically can be demonstrated to be conscious. dennett denies the existence of qualia as defined as "ineffable and untestable" which is to say he does not think that it is a real thing because they are inherently subjective objects, or are conceived to be. he argues that qualia are just difficult to explain in detail to satisfy perception in a conscious agent.

[PeterJ]

The ''hard' part of the problem would be the only bit that matters philosophically. The rest is psychology, neuroscience and so forth. He does not solve the ancient Mind-Matter problem, and this is the problem we would need to solve for an explanation of consciousness. What you say above may be true, but it doesn't help us understand any philosophical problems. It comes across as a statement of faith. Nothing changed with the publication of his explanation. It's not nearly weird enough to work in physics.

Edited October 28, 2014 by PeterJ

[andrewcellini]

The ''hard' part of the problem would be the only bit that matters philosophically. The rest is psychology, neuroscience and so forth. He does not solve the ancient Mind-Matter problem, and this is the problem we would need to solve for an explanation of consciousness.

the hard part is the only "interesting" part of the entire problem. the entire problem is a matter of philosophy and science and is lacking a strong theoretical base.

 

What you say above may be true, but it doesn't help us understand any philosophical problems. It comes across as a statement of faith. Nothing changed with the publication of his explanation. It's not nearly weird enough to work in physics.

you must admit that dismissing qualia as they are currently defined is one way to approach the problem. i don't see how this can be misconstrued with faith.

[PeterJ]

For Prose - Before answering your question I should say again that I admire DD for various reasons and would place him in a different league to his biologist friend. Really I was getting at a much wider issue, which is the respect we award to philosophers of mind who do not even claim to have solved any problems or acquired much understanding of consciousness, and the lack of attention we pay to people who spend their entire lives studying nothing else who do claim to have solved problems and understand consciousness very well. It is as if there is a uncharted spot on the map of knowledge marked 'Here be dragons'.

 

The most prominent philosopher to have presented a solution for all metaphysical problems would be the Buddhist sage Nagarjuna, who provided the philosophical foundation for Middle Way Buddhism. He does so in the form of a logical proof. It's a nightmare to follow in detail but the result is straightforward. The English philosopher Francis Bradley gives a similar proof in his metaphysical essay Appearance and Reality. I find it difficult to see DD as standing up to any comparison of contributions to metaphysics and philosophy of mind.

 

It is not that I expect everyone to know these philosophers, but it cannot be right that they continue to be ignored despite their claim that they have the only possible solution for consciousness. Dennett's inability to find one and his total rejection of Nagarjuna's solution may not be a coincidence, and he should be honest enough to see this. It's unfair to single him out, but he's in the title.

Edited October 28, 2014 by PeterJ

[overtone]

One of Dennett's contributions was a refutation of some common and invalid conclusions regarding free will people drew from various experiments on the neurological basis of decisionmaking.

 

If all he is is a set of footnotes to Plato, that would seem a reasonable and valuable role for a modern Western philosopher to play - new settings keep coming up, and bringing Plato to bear on them is a good thing to do. If all he ever does is prevent certain invalid philosophical approaches from being established as "scientific" or whatever, one would presume the Buddhist enlightened would approve. Isn't that the main reason a Buddhist would study philosophy - to be able to refute misleading argument that prevents enlightenment?

 

Meanwhile, happy as I am to hear that someone has solved the Mind/Matter problem (which never seemed all that fundamental a confusion to me, btw), such basic advances or insights are not the be-all of philosophy. Newton was a great thinker, but we still give the designer of the Golden Gate bridge lots of credit.

[starlarvae]

what problems did buddha solve?

 

He ostensibly solved the problem of suffering, via the Four Noble Truths:

1) All is suffering (We are born into this world)

2) Suffering is caused by unfulfilled desires (not getting what you want, or getting what you don't want)

3) To eliminate suffering, just get rid of your desires (then you'll have none unfulfilled)

4) The eightfold path: Right Living, Right Speech, etc. -- essentially a boy scout manual on clean living, a way to shed your desires.

[PeterJ]

Good question, But perhaps this is not quite the way to look at it. The Buddha was concerned primarily with soteriology, and a search of the sutras reveals little overt discussion of philosophical or scientific problems. His soteriology rests on or implies an ontology, however, or metaphysical scheme, or, if you like, 'theory of everything'.

 

As a metaphysical description of Reality it is necessary to rely on Nagarjuna, for he later proves the metaphysical implications of the Buddha's soteriology, or, some would say, proves that it must be correct.

 

Nagarjuna solves all metaphysical problems by adopting a neutral metaphysical position. This would be the position associated with 'nondualism', and it helps explain the phrase 'Middle Way' as it came to be applied to Nagarjuna's form of the doctrine.

 

My teas is cooked so I must stop here, but a lot of this stuff is googlable.

Edited November 29, 2014 by PeterJ

[Endy0816]

Can't say I'm familiar with this particular philosopher, but his work does at least sound interesting.

 

Broadly I view science and philosophy to be intermingled. Anyone know Zeno, Aristotle, Pythagoras? Jumping to closer to modern, Ernst Mach?

 

Now some are just building castles in the air or offering complete bunkum for one form of gain or another. That is not so useful.

 

Aside:

I view the elimination of causes of suffering as valid, but reject the notion that suffering is eternal or absolute in this world. Mostly founded upon the world not being all that bleak overall and advancing scientific knowledge towards eliminating the causes of unavoidable suffering.

Edited November 30, 2014 by Endy0816

[PeterJ]

Nagarjuna should be firmly embedded in the curriculum yet is widely ignored. When someone claims to have solved metaphysics and nobody has yet falsified their proof then they should not be ignored. They should be studied in case they succeeded. Students are betrayed by this kind of censorship.

 

The suffering referred to by Buddhists would not be quite what you appear to think it is, Endy. It would not be something that science can solve or eliminate, and nor would it render the world bleak. There would be no unavoidable suffering since suffering would not be truly real. It would be because of this that suffering (unsatisfactoriness) can be transcended. This would be a practical task, not the task of philosophy, but philosophy can describe how and why the cessation of suffering is possible.

 

Whether Nagarjuna's philosophy is a true description or schematic of the world is an interesting question but not the point here. He claims to have solved problems and at least technically-speaking he succeeds. This is not the case with Dan Dennett or indeed more than a handful of currently popular mainstream philosophers. Kant puts forward many of the ideas we would need for N's view, and although he is considered a pillar of the western tradition he is ignored as well. So is Hegel, Bradley, Schopenhauer and all the others who share Nagarjuna's view fully or mostly.

 

In my view scientists should not trust the philosophical establishment to do the work and should undertake it themselves. Otherwise, on the evidence so far, philosophy in academia will never catch up with physics. If I seem anti-science here sometimes, well, I am in some ways, but this is nothing compared to my contempt for academic philosophy. Scientists who do not study it for themselves are at the mercy of self-publicising fools whose only skill is sophistry and who have no idea how the world works.

 

Pardon the rant, but it makes me mad.

 

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[Endy0816]

Well, the physical aspects science clearly has the potential to do something about. Death, sickness, pain, etc.

 

I do suspect some level of unsatisfactoriness would yet remain. Interesting food for thought at any rate.

 

I'll take a look at Nagarjuna, but as for him being ignored; Science is premised upon nonacceptance until something is proven true. Put another way it doesn't matter that nobody can disprove that an invisible, intangible truck passes by my house each night. What matters is that I cannot prove my claim.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Endy0816