???????!, ? ????????!

Does it look any better to anyone else?

I’m interested — though skeptical, to be honest — in what you say about feedback systems being free agents. As it happens, I’m doing a university course called “Self, Agency and the Will” at the moment, and I’ll be writing an essay fairly soon. Can you tell me more about your view on this?

Thanks for alerting me to DD’s lecture. He certainly is a good speaker and he does most of it merely with words

While i agree that the predictability of an outcome says nothing about whether it was the consequence of a choice or not, his position is still that FW is illusory. I think this is mistaken and comes from a simplistic view of cause and effect. My view is that linear, billiard ball causality doesn’t apply to feedback systems which can be genuinely free agents (within their capacity, of course).

cheers

Richard

Re intersubjectivity, I believe the mind develops mainly through social interaction, and that this view is becoming quite mainstream. [Added later: here's a paper by Evan Thompson, from the Journal of Consciousness Studies, entitled Empathy and Consciousness, which is very good on this issue.]

Assuming that any critic of Dennett is threatened by having consciousness explained is like assuming any critic of Israel is anti-Semitic. In fact, I go further than him, in stating clearly that, in strictly third-person, objective terms, “phenomenal consciousness” is meaningless, so in that context, in effect, consciousness doesn’t exist. Much of what he says implies that but he seems scared of saying it clearly, probably because he doesn’t appreciate that subjective and intersubjective considerations more than make up for the negativity of the objective aspect.

When I first studied philosophy, I was a Nagel fan, and Dennett was my ideological arch-enemy. Over many years I gradually swung around, almost to the opposite extreme. I now think he was probably the most important philosopher of mind of the latter half of the twentieth century (and some of Nagel’s output is just rubbish). But even so, Dennett’s neglect of simulation (and affect: see the essay) was a serious omission that is becoming more and more obvious. See, for instance, Gallese’s “shared manifold” concept.

A new-born child has yet to acquire any memes, but for Dennett “Human consciousness is itself a huge com-
plex of memes…” (CE, 210), so the new-born is not conscious. A reasonable fall-back is that it is sentient, but for Dennett sentience is nothing but sensitivity (KoM, 97): the new-born is just a sensitive mechanism. For me, the piece that’s missing from that jigsaw picture is simulation+affect, or in other words, empathy. I dare say that “in real life” Dennett is as empathetic as anyone else. But that begs the question: why is it such a glaring omission in his theory? I can only suppose that, being intersubjective, it was not considered worthy of inclusion. Which is rather a serious mistake for a philosopher of mind to make. But he was a man of his time. Not so long ago academics in the arts and humanities used to ignore popular culture for reasons that are not quite the same, but interestingly similar.

The title was intended to be provocative, and it seems to be working!

Incidentally, Dennett has children and grandchildren and I think, with your friend, would be just as horrified by someone suggesting that they were somehow less than human.

PS the title of your post is unhelpful.

I’d also ask that you spell out your own vision and motives a little. Your tone certainly suggests being threatened by having consciousness explained. But you really shouldn’t be. As a father of three myself, I can assure you, watching a mind develop is every bit as fantastic and wonderful an experience as it ever was.

I find that comment flattering, as well as encouraging. My uni course is taking up a lot of time, but I’ll try to work on the site too. Meanwhile, I’ll add your site to my blogroll, which I should have done long ago.

Robin

I’m looking forward to learning some of this stuff on the back of your posts, so I’m waiting to see what you have to say. Let’s hear it!

David