Shamik Chakravarty
The meme is dumb. Dennett doesn't say we're p zombies. He says consciousness is not the Cartesian theatre we see it is. Doesn't mean there's nothing it is like. It's just that its nature is different, namely that there are multiple drafts in the brain and consciousness occurs when a draft is accessed.
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Arty Salt
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Shamik Chakravarty you are correct, that's what he means. I think that the meme presents Dennett not as Dennet himself, but as an avatar or amalgamation of like-minded but a bit more radical people who do indeed claim what he claims in the meme.
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David Chimes
Shamik Chakravarty Don't ruin the joke, I was busy enjoying his beard.
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Daniel Hampel
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Be careful not to confuse “illusion” with “not real”.
To say something is illusory is simply to say that the material reality of a phenomenon may run counter to our intuitions of that phenomenon.
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Pem Salvan
Daniel Hampel I needed to understand your point more. Thanks for sharing this.
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Arty Salt
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Daniel Hampel that's another important term for semantics right there! For me, it could mean both. People use these interchangeably. Most people I've personally interacted with, regardless if they're into philosophy or not, use the term "illusion" as "not real". My own field is Psychology, where illusion means a distortion of reality - as opposed to "hallucination", which downright means "not real".
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Wes Morris
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for some reason, whenever someone makes the claim we need to clearly establish terms it turns on the inevitable switch of experience wherein it is extremely rare that a productive conversation ensues because the conversation never gets past lawyering on terms. *sigh* I appreciate the sentiment but think that unless we're sure we understand one another, regardless of the minutia of the detail. This too is challenging as most are unwilling or unable to dis-invest in their own position to agree on terms.
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Node Viscera
Illusion is lack of awareness.
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Arty Salt
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Node Viscera I personally agree. But in my experience, most people mean "not real", so that's my default expectation when I read the word.
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Albert Åkesson
I love this point exactly because I'm a big fan of professor Daniel Dennett and his Multiple Draft Model.
It's true, also illusions may have applications. Just becsuse they depend on some other deeper reality compared to what it seems to be, realaizing this doesn't make it go away. It's like a magic trick that makes you flip your attention.
But the last part of the meme is just stupid. Professor Dennett never goes like that.
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Arty Salt
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Albert Åkesson haha yes he doesn't talk about his beard a lot, does he? Dennett doesn't mean that consciousness is literally an illusion, but what you're saying makes me curious: how do you define consciousness?
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Marco Servetto
as an italian I have no idea what consciousness means. We do not even have that word.
I tought I got it by living in an english speaking country for 12+ years, but... if illusion is a state of consciousness, then no... I have still no idea what this consciousness is. How can there be 'states' of it? is it the same term we discuss with AI consciousness or is it just an overloaded therm?
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Arty Salt
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Marco Servetto wow Italian really doesn't have a word for consciousness? I'm from Greece and the term in greek is "συνείδηση", which, interestingly, is the same as the word "conscience". In neuroscience, consciousness is generally understood as the state of being aware and able to think about one's own existence, thoughts, and surroundings. It involves subjective experiences, self-awareness and the ability to perceive and respond to stimuli. States of consciousness refer to different levels or modes of awareness that a person can experience, such as wakefulness, sleep, dreaming, and altered states like meditation or intoxication.
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Marco Servetto
in Italian we have 'coscienza' and 'consapevolezza' and together they kind of means the english 'consciousness', but... not like I'm sure.
Note that according to the definition of consciousness you provide:
-even reasonably simple videogame NPCs are conscious.
-those 'states' are not connected with conscisuness but are just mediated via it, in the same way colors are a property of both light and eyballs design.
If so, I would really not think of them as a property of consiusness
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Arty Salt
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Philip Galanter that's true, but some words are more abstract than others. Even if we can't eliminate abstraction entirely, it’s about finding a balance between the abstract and the practical to keep the conversation meaningful.
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Jay Latos
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these words generally do have agreed upon meaning inside epistemology, don't they?
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Arty Salt
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Jay Latos inside epistemological circles, yes, but the nuances and interpretations still vary significantly between philosophers and within different contexts. Especially for those of us who aren't experts (most people in this group I think) semantics is a vastly bigger problem.
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David Levkovitz
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And the little girl's statement contradicts Dennett's statement about consciousness how exactly?
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Arty Salt
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David Levkovitz the little girl suggests that if an illusion is a state of consciousness, then calling consciousness an illusion is contradictory, because it implies that consciousness would have to exist for the illusion to occur.
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Rick Fetters
The ambiguity of words severely constrains the utility and progress of philosophy. This imprecision prevents a high-level of confidence in many philosophical conclusions. This imprecision does allow magnificent constructions to be crafted which seem unassailable. Until they are.
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Manuel Endorphin Razorblade
Rick Fetters I'm tired.
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Ronald Green
If you think that defining terms will do the trick, why not just refer to the dictionary? We won't need philosophy once you can define 'consciousness', 'knowledge', 'belief', and all those difficult words we don't understand. So no, it's not a matter of semantics; it's a matter of philosophy.
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Rikard Berg Bretz
So you are saying we need clear and shared definitions of our terms?
Isn't that an obvious fact?
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Rikard Berg Bretz
I don't get it - if someone claims consciousness is an illusion, why would they agree to it being a state of consciousness?
Dennett only talked about mental states.
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Paulo David
That's the same thing.
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Danny Alfaro
Why did Socrates only ask questions until he got his interlocutor into the state of “elenchus?”
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Paul Brocklehurst
"This meme (apart from being hilarious)"
> In your opinion.
"makes me think of how often philosophical conversations (especially in epistemology) go around in circles because of semantics."
> Well *sometimes* perhaps.
"Terms, like "consciousness", "knowledge", "belief" and "truth" are foundational yet inherently abstract,"
> Inherently? Seriously?
"leading to discussions where it's like two people trying to solve a puzzle together, but one is working on a jigsaw and the other on a crossword - each thinks they're collaborating, but they're really on completely different tasks."
> But they're both puzzles yeah?
"But what can we do about this?"
> How about stop pretending that Daniel Dennett said the things you're quoting him saying & being a lot more *honest* instead. Can you quote him saying *either* of these statements? - Nope!
"One way to reduce this circularity is to clearly define key terms at the beginning of a discussion."
> Okay go ahead then...
"By establishing a shared understanding of terms, participants can avoid talking past each other."
> But you've already said you think terms, like "consciousness", "knowledge", "belief" and "truth" are foundational yet inherently abstract, so how can you do what you're claiming can't be defined anyway?
"It might also help to "ground" philosophical discussions by linking abstract concepts to real-world examples or practical implications."
> Okay go ahead then...
"This approach can help both parties understand each other's thoughts more clearly, thus anchor the conversation and prevent it from becoming purely semantic. Thoughts?"
> The one word you ought to spend more time considering here isn't mentioned at all: 'illusion'. An illusion *might* be equivalent to a 'delusion' perhaps but it might also be a *misconstrual* i.e. Unquestionably real but not what it may seem to be. What Dennett *does* say in truth is that yes consciousness *is* something (essentially brain function in & of itself) but it's almost always misconstrued to be something it's not i.e. something *more* than simple brain function - & yet there's virtually no agreement on what that 'something' is really supposed to be so why should it come as any surprise that Dennnett calls their ideas misconstrued? It reminds me of people who feel very sure they've identified aliens visiting Earth in space craft but they want to say the that what they've identified are UNidentified Flying Objects instead but hide this by using the term "UFO" instead to avoid saying as much & they can't agree on whether they're spheroid in shape of saucer shaped or cigar shaped etc. - which is exactly what one would expect if everyone was misconstruing something much more mundane isn't it?
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Fabian Ngui
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It's a theory of knowledge. The task is to know what knowledge is worthwhile. We all differ on that. Why? Because there is always knowledge beyond the observable world
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Wes Boyd
Consciousness isn't an illusion. Free will is likely one though
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Wes Morris
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Just Wes to Wes, I agree on the first part.
What do you think though, I think there is such a thing as "free will" but constrained to what is possible and what your perception allows you to contemplate, along with circumstance. One can consider that perhaps all possible elements that comprise the completion of a "choice" could be sifted from the hypothetical "universal dataset" if you will, or one could look at it like a fuzzy logic application of baye's theorem on dynamic probabilities. I think it's simpler to think of the likely statistical aspect of it as a solution to the heuristic of your perceived and actual circumstance. So your choices are not a static, but dynamic function in a uniquely constructed space.
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Wes Boyd
Also just Wes to Wes, the reason I'm firmly convinced about our semblance of free will being illusory, is because our behavior depends on quite a few internal and external variables...we have a will, but its no more "free" than the wind.
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Róbert Lunacsek
No, it is not.
