Some thoughts on Dennett
Added December 2009: This now needs a health warning. It was written before I knew anything about theory-theory and simulation theory, and though my basic stance has changed little if any, I’d now express some of these ideas quite differently. (Also, some of the internal links might not work.)
In Susan Blackmore’s Conversations on Consciousness [Bla05], Daniel Dennett says that a philosophical zombie “could cry at sad movies, be thrilled by joyous sunsets, enjoy ice cream. . . and yet not be conscious at all.” (p81)
This might seem a trivial point, but it’s a typical example of Dennett’s thinking, or at least his writing. To be thrilled, or to enjoy, of course, one has to be conscious. He should have said “appear to be thrilled” and “act as if enjoying.” These concepts are inter/subjective, even if Dennett thinks they should not be. Of course this is probably just a slip, but there are many other such slips in his writing, which some people, such as myself, find quite off-putting. If these are genuine mistakes, then they’re uncharacteristically sloppy, and if not, then this is the philosophical equivalent of sleight-of-hand, and intellectually dishonest.
Moving on to actual philosophical issues…
Here is how it [the intentional stance] works: first you decide to treat the object whose behavior is to be predicted as a rational agent; then. . . you predict that this rational agent will act to further its goals in the light of its beliefs. [Den87, p17]
I believe what we usually do when trying to guess what someone else in a given situation might do is to say to ourselves “what would I do?” Rationality will often play a part in that, but projection of the self, identification with the other, is psychologically much more basic.
It could be argued that my story reduces to Dennett’s: that, with sufficient qualification in the way of beliefs, desires and context generally, we can all be treated as rational agents, and that is what we do with each other, in principle. The answer to that is that my view is more practical, on a more appropriate level, closer to the actual action, and has greater explanatory power.
Dennett’s zimbo “would think it was conscious, even if it wasn’t.” [Den91, p311] And Dennett thinks “Nobody is conscious—not in the systematically mysterious way that supports such doctrines as epiphenomenalism!” [Den91, p406]
There’s a very easy way to circumnavigate all such difficulties: consider the consciousness of any entity to be entirely a matter of opinion. Of course we want to say, if others consider us not to be conscious, that they’re wrong, but why? Isn’t it just because they might thus fail to consider our feelings? That’s a legitimate concern, but they’d not be factually wrong—if that’s wrong, then it’s morally so. Inter/subjectively, people are conscious, and so is anything else to which we find it useful to attribute consciousness, i.e. with which we might identify. Objectively, the word has no meaning, therefore nor does the question as to whether any entity is conscious.
Some might want to put “or desirable” after “useful” in the previous paragraph, but I would argue that the attribution of consciousness is only legitimate where it is genuinely useful to do so—that the concept is “naturally” instrumental, so usefulness is validity, and desirability is insufficient. Thus, attribution is not merely subjective, but intersubjective, because, as it concerns identification, we only find it useful where there are genuine similarities between attributor and attributee. Some opinions are more useful (and more natural) than others. See Intersubjective panpsychism.
“It is tempting to suppose that some concept of information could serve eventually to unify mind, matter, and meaning in a single theory.” [DH87] (emphasis in the original)
I do agree with this and in fact I think it’s quite easily achieved. The concept of physical information is now well established: it is the form or structure of matter, so every material thing is considered to embody its own description. So if we add what I call “the formal stance” to Dennett’s array of stances, in which we focus on form, i.e. information, rather than substance, i.e. rather than taking the physical stance, we get physical information. The common concept of information is intentional, being always about something, but it is always encoded in physical information, and what’s encoded is in the eye of the decoder, thus intentional information is inter/subjective. Meaning is basically intentional information. Mind is the user/processor/creator of intentional information. It could be considered a virtual processor, running on the hardware of the brain. More on this under Mind, matter, meaning, and information.
[Bla05] Susan Blackmore. Conversations on Consciousness. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005.
[Den87] Daniel C. Dennett. The Intentional Stance. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987.
[Den91] Daniel C. Dennett. Consciousness Explained. Allen Lane, London, 1991.
[DH87] Daniel C. Dennett and John Haugeland. Intentionality. In Gregory [Gre87].
[Gre87] Richard L. Gregory, editor. The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.
May 16, 2007
Posted in: Dennett, consciousness, differentials, information, philosophy
6 Responses
Robin,
Where you think Dennett goes wrong: that is the point where you do not get it!
Actually the philosophical zombie could ,if he would possibly exist, produce all these kinds of reactions without having consciousness about them.
The philosophical zombie, as the name suggests, is a philosophical entity and exists the way it exists by definition!
And the definition is that is it exactly like a human being, just he is not conscious like we are.
By the way: the philosophical zombie resembles human beings, when they act unconsciously…
That is to me a underestimated aspect of the idea as I understand it from Chalmers.
This starts by harmless to useful things: that we are mostly unconscious of the traffic while driving are car, because we are chiefly focussed on a conversation – to extremely harmful situations when we make decisions thinking we are led by some conscious aspect, when in reality we are completely driven by something else. When we wake up from that dream, we may even realize, that something has happened that we really would never have wanted!
Dennett goes wrong many times when he pretends to explain consciousness, his main error is undue simplification, but in the example you give, he is correct.
best
Hans Ricke
Hi Hans.
I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood my point there.
Yes, the philosophical zombie can, by definition, produce any behaviour a person can, without being conscious. What I’m saying is that Dennett says the zombie can be thrilled, or enjoy, which it cannot, because these are not behaviours, but states of mind. To be thrilled by or enjoy anything absolutely requires consciousness, while to behave as if thrilled or enjoying does not.
The context makes it clear that Dennett means “behaving as if”, but what he actually says is not merely “behaving as if” but actually being thrilled and enjoying. My complaint is not about his philosophy, at this point, but his style of writing.
Thanks very much for taking the trouble to leave a comment. I wish more people would do that, not just say to themselves “that’s mildly interesting” or “that’s just rubbish” and move on.
Hi Robin,
you are right, I misunderstood! Thank you for clarifying.
But let me play devil’s advocate and try to see if the p.z. can be thrilled or not, can he feel or not.
What is a thrill and what is a feeling? Do they have to be conscious?
If the feeling of joy can be reduced to a reaction of say endorphin, then we could probably say the zombie feels something.
We are facing a problem while exploring these aspects: human beings are the role model for consciousness and the zombie too. And in reality human beings can be in states of mind that resembles zombies or robots a lot.
There is compulsive thinking, there is reacting according to a conditioning that people are not aware of.
In one word: human beings can be very much unconscious! Almost like zombies… They are not like zombies when they are conscious, as long as they are conscious and only as far as their consciousness reaches.
The last point brings up the question when consciousness is relevant and when it is essential, of core importance…
Obviously consciousness is not required for so many body functions, in fact we would get into trouble having to consciously decide about heartbeats.
Consciousness is of the essence when we interact with other people, when we make decisions.
Best
Hans
Hi again Hans.
You say “If the feeling of joy can be reduced…” but I’m convinced feelings can never be reduced. Most modern philosophers, including me, would say that if a proposition is untestable, it’s unscientific, and it is impossible to test for consciousness, therefore unscientific to propose that a particular process produces it.
The rest of what you say there, I more-or-less agree with.
Robin,
I’m currently exploring your site, so forgive me if you have covered this elsewhere, but where do the minds (if we can use that word) of animals fit into this? Can a dog be thrilled by or enjoy something? And is a dog conscious?
Regards,
David
Hi David, thanks for your interest.
I’d say first that “And” is out of place, because if it can enjoy, it’s conscious. Second, I have no doubt that dogs are conscious. Third, though, attribution of consciousness is always intersubjective, it is not an objective quality, so technically, it’s a matter of opinion, not one of fact, as to whether anything is conscious. But some opinions are more natural, practical and pro-social than others, and I’d find it very strange if anyone tried to argue that dogs are not conscious. I consider mistreating them to be morally wrong, very seriously so in extreme cases.
Please note, I’m not developing this site any more, the new one is http://www.dalbrack.org . Commenting isn’t yet possible there but will be soon. Your site http://www.intropy.co.uk/ seems interesting and I’ll spend some time on it later today.
Edit (24 May 2009): for a number of reasons I have abandoned development of http://www.dalbrack.org and returned to working on this one.
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