Daniel Dennett - Why is Consciousness so Baffling? (Part 1/2)
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- čas přidán 9. 06. 2024
- How does consciousness weave its magical web of inner awareness-appreciating music, enjoying art, feeling love? Even when all mental functions may be explained, the great mystery-what it 'feels like' inside-will likely remain. This is the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness. What could even count as a theory of consciousness, even in principle?
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Daniel Clement Dennett III is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist and is currently the Co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and Professor at Tufts University.
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Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
easily the best monologue by David Letterman
Time to scroll through the comment section to see what the experts have to say about all of this.
I'm seeing a lot of expert "rebuttals" already
@@ROForeverMan Stop trolling.
Closer to Truth uploads seem to function like beacons that attract every self-taught armchair philosopher on the planet to come shout their own favorite flair of dogma into the digital aether.
@@ROForeverMan I concur
Hopefully we didn't disappoint
"One mans illusion is another mans gold."
Excellent talk! I'd like to hear more of the function of the sense of self in human evolution, particularly social behaviors.
I've been slowly working my way through his book "From Bacteria to Bach and back" , find myself re-reading chapters, some of it is quite challenging. Good read, highly recommended.
please share the primary ideas you get from his book.
@@BulentBasaran I'm no expert in this subject nor In Dennet's work overall, however in his book he writes that our brain could be considered standard hardware, like a blank computer, void of any code, we start with the same hardware and that consciousness is the software that starts of life with simple instructions (genetically passed down?), but this software, our consciousness is "social learning" / self-developing / expanding with each new experience & learning. The more we learn about the world around us the more the software develops/expands.
Also, that it's not a single thing that you can point to, we do not know where it resides he's Dennet explains it's not a single thing, but a large cloud/team of billions of parts of the mind each doing simple instructions, some without any knowledge of the other or what the bigger picture looks like.
Also it's 17:42 on a friday I'm tired and i'm leaving the office and the internet for an un-plugged weekend. Take my opinion on Dennet's ideas as untrusted.
@@initialb123 That's a great synopsis, Ali. Thank you. I agree with the analogy that brain is like a piece of hardware. However, it is a dynamically reconfigurable one like Xilinx FPGAs, if the latter could be reprogrammed as it worked in the field. The mind, then, is like software, and just like the brain, it is also much superior in its speed of revisions compared to an app like CZcams. The latter gets an update once a week or a month. The former, our minds and our thoughts, on the otherhand is very fickle. We could change our minds very quickly on many things... So, I agree with Dennett that mind and body are very much connected. Yet, I and many others disagree with him and other physicalist that our awareness or consciousness is one and the same with the mind or with thoughts.
To recap, the analogy goes like this:
Hardware, software v user.
Brain, mind v you.
Another way to put it is:
You are not hardware. Neither are you software. You are aware.
@@BulentBasaran I don't like the FPGA idea, it's too restrictive. Instead I consider the brain a general purpose processor which allows for us to "run" our consciousness which is a neural network, millions of variables and billions of nodes, we all have the same hardware (grey mater) but it's our experiences and learning that defines how we eventually become to know ourselves as being self-aware conscious / sentient beings with the ability to communicate as much with others who have identical looking brains but very different ideas. The science behind machine learning & neural nets is mind blowing. It mimics how our brains could function rather well, we can see the hardware, we can see the output, but the actual connections and paths inside a machine learning lattice are hidden from us, like a needle in the worlds biggest haystack so massive, you could consider it an abstraction layer.
@@ROForeverMan Sure, in the same way nothing exists, everything is just your perception in your own reality. I was referring to the generally accepted name for the blob of grey matter between your ears.
I wish more people would talk to each other like this.
Dennetting is what being does for amusement.
Thank you!
@@ROForeverMan Better than your nonsense.
Where your attention goes, your energy flows. Your perceptions and thoughts are the co-creators of your perceived reality. Escape thought and see reality as it is.
A few questions;
When we talk about consciousness, do we mean awareness, or thinking ?
Is there any similarity between the brain and the eye, both of which seem able to be unfocused or focused ?
Is it significant that awareness has no duality or process, while thinking has both ?
Is thinking about what we think about, or is the main action the pursuit of efficiency ?
Is efficiency served by the growth of the status of time ?
Why ?
Is the subjective reality of time ever intelligently valid within an understanding constrained by life to be immediate ?
If time can never be immediately valid, is it a device, and what is it doing ?
Is the growth of the status of time in understanding in any way equivalent to Karl Friston`s Free Energy Principle ?
Is the growth of time the growth of modelling ?
Is modelling about modelling, or about the reality being modelled ?
If understanding is immediate, can thinking, cognition or science get closer to it by the growth of the informative process ?
What is an "aha moment "?
What is the point in asking a lot of questions ?
Unattributable awareness is consciousness yes. But not thinking, why? because how do you know that you are thinking, so thinking is objectified, i.e. you know what you're thinking about. Consciousness is you. It's all you. You are the whole. But it doesn't seem that way.
@@you_are_soul nice approach. You started moving on the right path (giving answers) but stopped.. It might be seen in any way. No use is word game.
Awareness of course is the answer which donot hv duality after reaching a certain level of awareness. Thinking goes with the mind + STM & LTM.... Your Q's are remarkable. You could've hv posted one by one. Interpretation may differ but formula of study, reasoning and experience is there to guide. You can try on your own also. Or hv a live program with one who can throw the required light. @Peter your queries are related with different subjects in large. It will be chaos to deal in one place.
He doesn't seem to be conscious of the fact that illusions require consciousness... Without consciousness to observe the illusions, who will report them? lol
I doubt that there’s much, if anything, you are conscious of that he isn’t.
there is complete absence of any notion as to how particles could produce an illusion of qualia/subjectivity
taking the notion that particles COULD requires more magic thinking than qualia being fundamental
@@backwardthoughts1022 👍 to qualia! And to each their own!
I have a feeling/qualia that you understand that! Haha... psychology 101!
@@joshtocker6255 there is no 'to each their own'.
if qualia is an illusion then carpet bombing humans is ok since zombies are meaningless.
whereas if qualia is fundamental, extremely destructive causes were taken ie. the qualia of killing others will produce extreme hellish qualia for those who undertook the action
@@backwardthoughts1022 yup, that is a backward thought.
Whenever I listen to Dennett, I often find myself agreeing with his individual points, but utterly confused as to how they're supposed to work in favor of his main point of the self and/or consciousness being a mere illusion, which sounds like such an absurd proposition to me no matter how many times I hear him explain his reasoning.
TBH I think a lot of the confusion is semantic in nature, because Dennett seems to equate the self/consciousness almost entirely to a sort of superficial ego-consciousness and a lot of what he's saying here makes perfect sense if you make that distinction. But even then... his whole story about qualia makes no sense. His example is a slightly flat note, and his argument is that the congnitive process of perceiving the flat note involves many parameters that escape our attention. Fair enough, but that says precisely nothing at all about why we have qualia, i.e. why we experience these cognitive processes in the first place. Because what he's describing is essentially computation, but the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness is not about computation and its complexity, but why it's accompanied by experience. It seems to me that he never quite answers that in a satisfying way, other that claiming it's a sort of illusion (which is of course a semantic misnomer, because an “illusion” as it's normally understood can in fact only ever occur within consciousness).
He has a really nice beard though.
I completely agree. Describing "experience" or "feelings" as illusions are convenient, but totally fail. He can call it an illusion, but then pain, or pleasure, or stress, or happiness, etc.. I feel is very much real. Tell a burn victim his or her pain is just an illusion.
Dennett has created his own, unique brand of "woo woo."
I may be wrong but I don't think that Dennett's position on consciousness is that it's an illusion, full stop. I think his argument is that consciousness is a collection of functions occurring within the brain or systems like it. It's the idea of consciousness as this discrete, unified thing that exists in and of itself which Dennett argues is an illusion. If I understand him right.
@@jeremypeters1109 Yeah, I can see that.
@@ROForeverMan I don't see how you can definitively say that. I think that materialist models of consciousness have much more explanatory power than idealist models of existence.
It baffling when we try to understand it through a materialist lens because it's fundamental to reality.
Here’s a thought, in my mind the base layer of reality is consciousness , at the quantum level of reality we are all connected .🤔IMO
In a slightly different take on the Dunning-Kruger effect, Daniel Dennett isn't conscious enough to realize that he isn't conscious enough to understand what consciousness and the inner-self truly are.
This might be the most ironic comment I've seen all year. I'm impressed.
I've almost never heard dennett speak something that wasn't a strawman or equivocation....he knows exactly what hes doing
hes what chomsky calls a typical idiot intellectual too stupid to understand and begin from historical reality that the notion of particles/the world as a machine died with newton much to his dismay when he proved it
Or you're assuming that they're something that is mostly imagination, i.e. make-believe.
@@MathewSteeleAtheology whereas asserting that fat protein and electricity can produce illusions of subjectivity is clearly less magical thinking than subjectivity as fundamental....
@@backwardthoughts1022 That's not an argument.
this is a pretty old interview. was it uploaded again?
Love this guy.
@@ROForeverMan Better than your nonsense.
What might produce center of narrative gravity in brain? Is there a focal point for the sensory perceptions in brain?
Dr Danny Dennet is that cool kid in class, turning around at his desk to talk abstract consciousness to the cute girl you never had the balls to approach with such flirtatious witt & wisdom.
Bob Kuhn is cute, but he seems quite approachable. Dan shouldn't have been so intimidated.
Cool kid?
What conscious world are you living in?
@@nergispaul9022
Dan is self conscious
Could quantum field / wave probabilities bring unified sense of consciousness?
We should recreate our destiny, for the brighter future
Maybe something in brain can bring sensory perceptions together, which adds something to make the whole more than sum of parts? Whether what brings sensory perceptions in brain together is quantum field(s) or something else?
once youve read, watched, donald hoffman express his theories about the fundamental nature of reality and consciousness. old school thought processes like the ones in this video seem so antiquated. they cant let go of the idea that the brain creates consciousness.. instead of the idea that consciousness creates the brain and every other aspect that we call “reality”
@@controllerbrain there’s just no evidence for the brain creating consciousness, whereas there’s plenty of evidence for consciousness creating the brain. Check out Bernardo Kastrup
@@JamesBS Yeah, no evidence. Idealism, though, that's where all the evidence is. Which evidence, nobody knows, since Hoffmann's conscious realism rests on the impossibility of fitness functions producing veridical perceptions, but it's there. You just gotta believe.
Our life existence is really mysterious
If everything is purely material/physical/mathematical/objective, then how is there a subject? A highly relevant question might be: "How do you get subjects out of objects like atoms and molecules or any kind of mathematical formula?"
@@ROForeverMan Exactly. You can't get subjects from objects. There's not even a theoretical description in any major field of science for how to get a subject from any arrangement of objects.
@@ROForeverMan That, and there's a lot of scientism going on in science these days. A lot of it has to do with emotional attachment to the doctrine of physicalist philosophy and the lack of scrutiny of that philosophy and its underlying assumptions.
Even though it does seem consciousness is something otherworldly I really do think Dennett is right. I suspect it is nothing special compared to everything else in existence (apart from it's complexity perhaps) but some of us desperately want it to be and that's the problem
Yep and Robert is one of those guys. That's why he gave stuart hameroff such are hard time with his orch or theory. Didn't like how it "reduces" consciousness to processes in the brain
This a very scientific approach of what consciousness could be which is most respectable. People like to feel special and unique, so when something is unexplained they make up stories which make them feel better. Stories such as the Earth is the center of the Universe and everything revolves around humans. Or that God is "good" in spite of an overwhelming amount of negativity in each of our lives.
Consciousness is merely a tool used so that the characters of Spacetime "feel" their worldline experience. The Universe is a machine. And humans are nothing but cogs of the machine.
Is desire for consciousness the problem or is it the answer?
Consciousness is the result of a loop of neurons acting as a generator. It works the same way as when you turn up an amplifier too high and the loudspeaker begins to make its own sound in a loop between the microphone, the amplifier and the loudspeaker. When this "generator loop" is running, all the involved neurons are activated again and again creating this "inner feeling" which is Qualia.
Why was the interview held in a church? Did the organizer want to see if DD would burn up on entry?
If time is an illusion then we create that illusion with our 3 sets of 3 dimensions (spacial, temporal, spectra) like a Venn Diagram with 1D, 2D, 3D line, width, height and
7D, 8D, 9D continuous, emission, absorption causing the illusion of time "turning".
G is an incomplete whole with one square angle drawn in Earth.
O is a Whole measure.
D is a split whole with two square angles drawn in Earth.
Brilliant man in many ways, so why doesn't he get it...Awakening is exactly the phenomenon that allows anybody to see that fuller reality of being...seeing through the illusion...🤔
I think he fails to identify and question some of his core assumptions. His talks fail to cohere. He is a physicalist, as much as I can gather, meaning that he believes that the mind (in his mind just another name for consciousness) is a fully physical construct, like rocks, chairs and stars.
@@BulentBasaran yes, well life is much easier when you insist that the questions about life are themselves invalid, which is what he's done.
I think consciousnes is a signal or some form of energy whose presense allow us to decode/encode our experiences, including illusions which are also experienced that were decoded/encoded incorrectly based on lack of adequate sensory signals or experiences to interpret these signals.
If consciousness is a result of a part of our brain and if it is matter, then it means that it dies with us, but if it is a form of energy (quantum of course) then how/if this energy is conserved is interesting to think through
Some people are good at talking like they know something, when they don't really know.
"I think consciousness plays tricks on us." ???????????
We are that which experiences all that is experienced.
Perhaps experience is not what we think it is but nothing is playing tricks on us. That is an astoundingly ridiculous idea.
This was recorded over 5 years ago. I wish C2T would provide the true dates. This is old info. Last I heard, Dennett had experienced ayuahasca and is now vehemently studying Idealism.
Dan Dennett studies a broad range philosophical ideas. He studies idealism and religion to see how computational neuroscience can give rise to those beliefs.
Do you have a link for Dennett experiencing ayahuasca and studying idealism please?
@@ROForeverMan Telling me to link something shows me that you do not want to find out information. You really do not want to know anything on the subject and are happy with your illusion of knowledge.
How sure are we that only humans have a "center of narrative gravity?" What evidence is there that other species with functioning nervous systems, prefrontal cortices etc do NOT have an inner monologue? Is Dennett suggesting that language itself is the monologue creator, and that absent language, that narrative center of gravity wouldn't exist? I think there's probably still subjective experience there.
Dennet just spent 10 minutes saying nothing other than the self is an illusion without further explanation and some basic perception science. However the clue to his puzzlement is in the language he uses, for example when he says... "...the qualia only makes sense if you've got an inner witness..." Obviously the 'inner witness' and the 'you' are the same person. Conscious simply is. That's all there is, and everything else is a form of consciousness which itself has no form or size. Space is in consciousness and everything else is in space.
It's easy when you define your terms.
..but then he'd be out of a job
Daniel spent the whole interview turned backwards. Makes my back ache just thinking about it.
If it weren't for the influence of Daniel Dennett and his disciples (frankish, etc), we would've figured out what consciousness is by now. The amount of damage he's caused is unimaginable.
We have been looking for consciousness for centuries through introspection and no one could explain consciousness. At some point we have to look at the option that consciousness is an illusion.
@@kos-mos1127 ummm.... we have the neural coorelates for concentration meaning we have scientifically confirmed that sustained perfect concentration for hours exists. such ppl claim and explain the mind much much much more deeply than dennetts illusions of knowledge. also they solved set theory 1800 yrs ago but that's even harder than falsifying qualia
@@backwardthoughts1022 I do not think people focusing explain the mind any deeper then someone that is high.
Such an elaborate scheme for the purpose of helping an organism preserve itself, of which Daniel Dennett appears to be doing quite well at. Back in 1979 his book "Content and Consciousness" was reading material for my Modern Philosophy class.
Because you are immersed in consciousness, you cannot depart your experience to escape yourself and become objective as an outside observer might be to assess your condition. This is also why we cannot see God or know if there is God, because there is a parable of duplicity in the consciousness where in you are not alone as a single identity, you have a companion spirit enabling you to have a dialog with a second or third person within your own mind, to wit, if you believe then you are experiencing the rational reason of cause , why we believe in God. The God within us, argues for God to be outside of us as well. It is sort of a trigonometry solution, the inside angle is congruent and attached to the outside angle. If we were not alive as conscious persons, we would never think about God. But we think about God , proving we are conscious in fact.
Wow, the mental gymnastics...
Daniel has some great insightful answers behind an illusionary interpretation of reality, and I assume he's including a universally observed constant speed of light, which is so far beyond our sensory input.
If humans could experience it, we would see everything around us move in slow motion compared to ourselves. Seeing the past would become obvious. It would become obvious that the future exists and the Universe is block timed.
Post this understanding, consciousness can be understood more in-depth. Consciousness is a part of block time. It is indowed upon each "living" organism to "feel" it's worldline predetermined movie.
The real question is not what consciousness is, but more WHY is it here? What is the purpose of experiencing an intentionally unfair Universe?..
if we take the quantum notions of static universes and fundamental symmetrical objects from which spacetime emerge seriously, it follows that consciousness/conscious agents function to collapse those fundamentals into our universe in dependence on consciousness' accumulated history each brings, for the purpose of continuing until it learns how to live without screwing up the symmetry into degraded broken versions
into degraded broken model is more convinient to understand
Arvin Ash's channel suggests wave function collapse does not require consciousness. The term "observer" is used in particle interaction of the measurement device and the Quantum particle passing through the double slit. Having said that, it's still called the Measurement Problem because it's unclear why a measurement changes the pattern on the screen.
@No way The original comment never suggested science can answer the "why". But it certainly can answer the how. Which is where science goes down the proven designed Universe rabbit hole.
My final paragraph was meant to elicit thought provoking questions to our designed Universe. I want you to think about this; Your life is primarily negative. Why would it be designed that way?..
I myself declare that I feel I am nothing but an abstraction. Said I.
I have heard all your podcasts on conciousness from various experts you have visited .
You will get complete and satisfying answer to your life long quest in bhagvat Gita as it is by a. C bhaktivedenta swami prabhupad .
Millions of people have .
Interview Christopher Langan,
Whether consciousness is an illusion or not is irrelevant to the question of 'What can I do with it in spite of the claim that it's just an illusion?" or "Even i it IS just an illusion, if I can use it to "code for" survival, physical health, material success, etc, then who cares if it's an illusion?"
As the saying goes: _"One mans illusion is another mans gold."_ It's all a matter of perspective.
What you are talking about is _heuristics,_ where a technically-incomplete or not-really-correct interpretation provides some practical benefit. Society is absolutely filled with heuristics; but they have many, often very serious, negative consequences. Racism provides some shining examples of harmful uses of heuristics, and there are countless others. One of the common problems with shortcut thinking is that it makes for broken and inconsistent mental frameworks, which stifle higher understanding and longer-term progress.
@@FalseCogs Some would say that it's illusory heuristics... but that's okay, because these are some damn useful illusions! lol
Is there a reason for having a scientific discussion with an Atheist in a Church?
This is not a new interview. It is nearly a decade old.
An illusion
Perhaps Life may be illusionary however it matters not providing I am blissfully happy in my ignorance.
Why feelings and awareness of consciousness that are misleading in brain?
It's really easy, actually: consciousness is an idea, a term to describe several processes that our brain carries out when working properly. There's no rational justification of any kind to support another explanation which involves something other than the brain, there is only speculation, unjustified assumptions and wishful thinking.
For an idea to arise and one be aware of it requires consciousness.
Conscious cannot be defined as an idea.
@@ROForeverMan As I said, there is only speculation, unjustified assumptions and wishful thinking... no rational justification.
@@S3RAVA3LM A term to describe something (i.e. nominalism) that occurs can be demonstrated to arise linguistically every day. Ever heard the term Yeet? How about Woke? Lit? How about Fire? These are all terms that are used in a new way that's just happened in the last few years. Take that back thousands of years and you have consciousness. Without some sort of justification, you're just disagreeing because you prefer to see it your way.
@@ROForeverMan If your brain is an idea in consciousness have an operation to remove it. You should be alright the brain is just an idea in consciousness.
@@MathewSteeleAtheology sophism.
Consciousness does not mean idea or is an idea; and ideas cannot arise without consciouness.
Read Plato regarding meaning, name giving, rule setting.
Words aren't simply made up terms, they are attributed to the thing itself and are from the thing itself so to describe and vibrate on the level of the things effect.
I always wonder is a Dime a flat disc or really slices of a Sphere or Cylinder!? Substitute “Conscious for Dime”!? And we are the Observer getting a share!?
1.30 ...er seems to sounds a bit like, we can't find it, so it doesn't exist?
How does anyone know that all the other things could exist without the feeling of it? I mean, do you really think you could have a conversation about what consciousness entails if nobody was conscious? Isn't consciousness the thing that's really hard to explain if you aren't conscious, and therefore even talking about it can't happen if you aren't?
Experience of reality, i.e. the feeling you're talking about, comes before any cognitive awareness of that experience. Consciousness is only hard to explain if someone is claiming it's a thing that exists beyond the idea of it.
Because you are conscious and can ask why.
So Dennett giant ego is just an abstraction ?
The center of narrative gravity, is just an abstraction.
When faced with a human being, you can choose to interpret their sophistication and even their sense of self as a biomechanical phenomenon, and technically there is nothing they can say or do to present themselves otherwise.
But you are a conscious being yourself, so you have another perspective, and the existence of that locus of experience isn't really addressed by explaining the external phenomenon of you. It is simply not necessary for you (the one having the experience) to exist in order for the automaton version of you to exist - it could still just as easily be there without your conscious experience.
@@ROForeverMan The analogue of electricity here would be food, water, oxygen, not a subjective experience of conscious existence. I'm not talking here about the ability to convincingly simulate having such an experience. I'm talking about the actual experience itself, from within it.
Look at it this way: I can perfectly simulate that I believe in Santa Claus and exhibit every behavior you would expect from me if I do. There is nothing you could do to truly test the reality of my belief. But I know for sure whether I believe or I'm pretending. Therefore, it is not necessary for my belief to exist for my behavior to be as you observe it.
Or this way: a computer performs tasks that match its hardware and software capabilities. Does that prove to you that it's remotely controlled? Or that it's not? Or is it just irrelevant?
@@ROForeverMan Why not? I can take on an acting gig and simulate having been shot. That did not in fact happen to me (I did not have that experience), but all of my behavior will perfectly match what you would observe if I had indeed been shot. If this event had been presented to you as a recording of a real life event, how could you tell the difference?
Or maybe it's just a photorealistic CGI rendering of me getting shot. Then not only is there noone having the experience of having been shot, there isn't even a conscious being that could potentially have experienced it. But the observation stays exactly identical.
What I'm saying is that 1) effect implies *a* cause, but not any particular cause (for that you need extra information) and 2) phenomenology of human behavior does not imply the existence of a subjective conscious experience.
Still the experience is there and for you, me, and everyone else, *of course* that is what causes what others observe in us. I'm just pointing out that working backwards from our behavior you don't get all the way to that subjective core and therefore this method does not correctly describe the nature of consciousness.
Hope I've made my argument clearer and thank you for this discussion :)
@@ROForeverMan I don't see how that addresses anything that I have stated, but maybe this is as far as we can take it. Thank you and enjoy your journey!
@@ROForeverMan I think that with "causal powers" you are implying "B is caused by A; A exists; therefore B exists". This only works for single events, e.g. "This house burned down; it was caused by a gas leak, therefore the gas leak happened". But if it is true for that house, it doesn't follow that it's true for any burned down house. The same generalized effect can happen for multiple different generalized causes. Therefore an observation of a generalized effect *does not* imply a specific generalized cause.
@@ROForeverMan Sure, I agree, it is not practically possible with anything known to us at the moment. It is possible in limited scenarios (chat-bots and similar) and these might expand in the future. We're fully on the same page here. What I'm getting at is that Dan argues that both our behavior and our subjective conscious experience are sufficiently explained with biochemistry. I agree for behavior and disagree for the experience and argue that the basis for this conclusion is not sound.
Consciousness is the nature of open existence and not closed as work.
At first I thought you were interviewing David Letterman. lol
gosh, you know, daniel dennett is so smart. and i feel i should believe his account, but when robert gave the argument from subtraction at the end, i found dennett's answer so baffling
the fact is there *is* something left over. that's what's shown, i think convincingly, by mary's room. one can't just say "oh there's nothing there" because one can't account for the inner experience under question in one's system. that's cheating!
Human consciousness = 4D algebra unit quaternion w/ updated 0D, 1D, 2D, 3D being the 1st four dimensions.
Consciousness is each of us "turning" 'time'.
Contingent Universe is 1D-9D. 3 sets of 3. We're 4D. Drawn to the center, the whole. 5D.
Seems like its a matter of mind...
He still says we're not even "really" conscious with a straight face. 🤣
Well, he's a zombie, so of course he's going to say that. He speaking from his own zombie pov. lol
The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart:
Deuteronomy 28:28 KJV
I tend to agree. consciousness Is the consequence of the integration of the perception of 5 senses simultaneously. Evolution has designed it this way to facilitate quick survival decisions. Attributing something mystical to consciousness is just a kind of human hubris.
@@ROForeverMan .... The brain's circuitry? Some level of integration is going to be present in lower animals as they , for example, test the food value of something with sight, smell, taste and touch.
@@ROForeverMan Sure. Absolutely nothing is real. After all, you aren't.
@@ROForeverMan ... Nope it's a program in an alien's simulation on the planet Gorthboggle.
Look, anyone can make these unprovable claims. They are really religion and not science. In fact Buddhism early on made similar claims. I would nevertheless urge you not to jump out of a ten story window. That simulated concrete would be covered in simulated blood from your simulated cracked skull.
@@ROForeverMan... Respectfully, you are the one claiming your brain and body do not exist, These are fantastical claims and any person making fantastical claims has the burden of proving them.
@@ROForeverMan.... Not in the actual world. See my comment above.
Like the knowledge you gained from many years spent in an ivory tower, it was just an abstraction.
if it takes a few years for a human brain to become self conscious then what can we say about inorganic matter 🤔 ...
@@ROForeverMan when is the brain idea conceptualized...
@@ROForeverMan so you can think of any brain shape/size you want and then problem solved... ok, why do all people think of the same brain type :)
@@ROForeverMan you have to write a new paper on this topic... :)
Why is David Letterman talking about conciousness
I stuck around until I heard "gravity is an attractive force". It is not. Matter curves spacetime and that particular effect on spacetime by matter is referred to as "gravity". Gravity only appears to be an "attractive force between two objects".
Can someone explain his point on consciousness to me
You are the sum of your parts.Nothing else.
@@ROForeverMan I was merely answering the man's question, believe whatever the F**k you want.
@@ROForeverMan Projection?
@@ROForeverMan No, he just spends his day trolling others comments on youtube to give himself some relevance.
@@ROForeverMan Well, thanks for your genuine concern, may your consciousness emerge.
Is the whole more then the sum of its parts? Well, DD used pitch in music as an example. But music is so much more than whether it's 'in tune' or rhythmically correct. When a listener hears a totally committed performance of a masterwork by a concert artist, they are responding to the qualia of the musician. And very often it is a mass phenomenon. Thousands of listeners have agreed on this 'correspondence' and many recorded performances have become iconic over the century. They often listen in the privacy of their living room, so it's not mass psychosis. DD's notion of perception as presented here doesn't seem to account for this.
Just an illusion…. Just an abstraction… Ah, but herein lies the mystery.
So glad for Dan Dennett grounded perspective on this matter.
I've always been baffled seeing respectable intellectuals talk about this so called "Hard problem".
It's only hard if you make it.
If it's easy then go ahead..explain Consciousness and provide evidence?
All of Dennett’s attempts to wave away the hard problem are super weak. They all amount to acknowledging that questions about consciousness can’t be operationalized, and then shrugging and claiming it means phenomenal consciousness might as well not exist.
"...Dennett grounded perspective..." Indeed, It certainly is...
@@Dion_Mustard I just did in another comment, because it is easy. Here, I'll copy paste:
consciousness is an idea, a term to describe several processes that our brain carries out when working properly. There's no rational justification of any kind to support another explanation which involves something other than the brain, there is only speculation, unjustified assumptions and wishful thinking.
@@MathewSteeleAtheology that doesn't help at all. this does not explain consciousness.
but nice try.
When you mentioned the problems, then you have responsibility to find solutions for it !
Unless no actually true answer is discernible.
Consciousness creates reality, not the other way around. Biocentrism
Perhaps the ancients thought the pineal was where it all came together. The temple within. The Most Holy, untouchable oneness with God in each of us.
The self, our base sense which emerges from a combined sum of all our other senses, is illusory. This means then so are feelings, the love of music etc., no matter how real they appear. Consciousness seems to be the arena that hosts the self, the base operating system if you like, and quite how this emerges is anyone guess.
Its simply due to neurosynaptic density. Human beings have the most complex brains; its no coincidence we have the highest level of consciousness in the animal kingdom
So what was the self-awareness of Helen Keller like? She plainly could think having virtually no sensory input. Consciousness can't be reduced to sense experiences
There is some fiction in your truth, and some truth in your fiction.
Sigh. Seems like every time somebody talks about consciousness (usually trying to e̶x̶p̶l̶a̶i̶n̶ debunk it) they conflate it with language, or sense of self. I can have a conscious experience of the color blue without either of those.
What/who, has the conscious experience then?
@@ROForeverMan so God, has our conscious experience for us??? Is it like a website hosting service? Or is it more like a streaming platform as in, we get the hd contents directly from the G? Furthermore is this service age restricted, like until the 3/4 years? Or is the subscription just not available for that age group? 🤔🤔🤔
@@ROForeverMan that has to be one of the more elaborated way of saying absolutely nothing I have seen in a while.
First I have no idea what you mean by God, obviously you don't use the word in the traditional scene, in that case you should define it
Second, what specific aspects of Godhood do we all possess? And if we all have it how can it still be considered godlike?
Third, what it means "based on a dream" does it mean it isn't exactly the dream? Does it have alterations? What causes this alterations? Is the experience only 50% based on the dream? 70%? 2%?
Fourth, saying "what I experience is based on a story that I experience" has to be one of the best versions of " the floor is made of floor" that I ever seen
@@ROForeverMan obviously you are talking about some concept that approximates Brahman, and that's fine for you to believe that, even though it's not only an unproven concept but an unprovable one as well, but that's not a problem. Where that perspective fails is when you introduce conscience in the mix because that's a measurable thing, and where do you draw the line? When you are born you are not conscious, when do you became God? Are animals God? If not why? If yes, all of them? Even animals without a brain? Are plants God? Bacteria? Where does God begin?if it doesn't and God is everything, why only somethings are conscious? Perhaps conscience has nothing to do with God?
@@ROForeverMan the god part...
As you can imagine saying God is "I am" is not really evidence for God (I'm not sure it even is a sentence), otherwise I could just say: unicorns are "I am". (Boom! Just proven unicorns). Midichlorians are "I am" (Boom! Just became force sensitive)
And actually I think you are focusing on the wrong part, even if this concept of God was proven fact, you still fail do explain or demonstrate how it relates to conscience
If someone defined humanity, then he must proof the values of human being
Proving value requires only a valuer and a second valuer who agrees.
And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand: not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying? But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
Matthew 15:10-14 KJV
Thank you , so fitting all three comments
So, just because you cannot find, on physiological level, the unifying center, it does not exist? What a "deep thought"! 😁 You must be a materialist, right? If I cannot see something, then it does not exist. And that "deep thought" comes after the affirmation that human perception is limited and flawed. What amazing logic. In order not to offend your feelings I will consider you a figment of my "non-existent, illusory" consciousness.
Couldn't it be that what we call consciousness is really the blood of the universe so-to-speak? What do I mean by that? It stands to reason that the universe is a source of creation with all the billions of stars and galaxies that it is composed of and to have all of it connected, consciousness is the invisible thread that holds it all together. Human beings, with their extraoridinary brains tune in to a broader wave-length of the universal consciousness than animals or birds etc. Consicousness makes life what it is: rich in every way imaginable. Morevoer, every living thing tunes into the universe in its own way and this is why all insects, birds and animals follow their consiousness map in their own way. A preying mantis tunes into the universe and follows what it percieves as its daily routine by being tuned into the universe with its specific capabilites. To recap: I think consicousness is the ether of the universe: it is the wisdom.
@@ROForeverMan GGGGGGGGGGGreat to hear from you. Isn't it amazing how every single person has their personal religion locked inside their head. The trouble is many of those people want to impose their vision of what religion is on others. You believe in one thing about the universe and it's normal you want others to believe your versioin as well.
Our bodies are not attuned to analyze our experience as successive events. They are attuned to simply experience those events. Therefore, the "qualia" of conscious experience is not the succession of events that lead one to a response to an event, such as wincing at a bad musical now. Rather, the qualia is continuous with the event itself.
There is no reason to believe that ANY time passes between sound waves being received by your auditory nerves and the feeling that causes you to wince. Yes, it takes time for the facial muscles to contract, and it takes even more time to decide whether or not to hire the clarinetist again, but these are WAY down the line, after billions of signals have already been processed. They are a response to stimuli, not the experience of the stimuli itself.
So then what is the aim of something like meditation? Is it to find a center within the brain? Useless. The aim of meditation must be to find a center of experience within each and every neuron. That is, to resist the wincing, to resist the reaction to stimuli. To resist the world's insistence that you must suffer. To learn to swim gracefully the raging sea of consciousness
This implies the free will of individuals, which isn't a problem since every DNA molecule is unique and therefore creates unique neurons that will have unique experiences and therefore unique responses to those experiences
I hate to annoy Dennett fans but he's so wrong about consciousness it's amusing.
why didn't this show interview the random know it all youtube commenter smh
baffling location choice
He is explaining the Dahma. Same explanation that Gotoma gave in 300 BC.
Meeting in a church to discuss Truth is interesting
You can't even define the term
Ahhh, Dan "I'm in denial concerning my lack of free will" Dennett
What do you mean by free will, and do you think you have it?
@@dustinellerbe4125 Free will - The ability to make adjustments in the present that alter the landscape of possible outcomes in the future in order to promote the interests of 'self'.
Can you think of a single process in nature that can produce outcomes which violate the laws of physics? What deterministic process can produce a flying super-hero with x-ray vision and lasers guns that can be fired through his eyes? What deterministic process can result in the concept of Santa Claus? Is there something in the equations of the Standard Model or Relativity that predicts the entire works of Shakespeare, word for word, spelling and all?
The fact that you reject free-will is actually _evidence_ of free will.
@@undercoveragent9889 all of that is directly determined by your biology, past experiences, and current environmental factors.
I wouldn't call what you described as free will.
You can't even freely have this convo with me without all of the priors that lead to it coming about that you didn't have control over.
@@dustinellerbe4125 So, you define free will as having total control over every process, past, present and future, that can possibly take place in the physical universe.
Anyway, use your equations to determine what I will say in my next post. If determinism is the only game in town then it should be a cinch for you. And see if you can give a coherent definition for what free-will actually is. If I had no biology, past experience or current environmental factors, could I _then_ have free-will?
Next you'll be saying that the heart doesn't actually pump blood. You Liberals are all the same. What is a woman?
@@undercoveragent9889 I'm definitely not a liberal. Hearts do pump blood. A woman is someone born with the female reproductive organs(functional or not). Trans women are not real women. My guess is that you'll agree with me. I could be wrong. I don't claim to be omniscient, nor do I know all of the extrinsic and intrinsic factors that will lead to your response. I can guess however.
At Dennett's deepest level of consciousness he knows without any shadow of doubt that he is completely, absolutely, irrevocably 100% full of pure nonsense.
the digestion of information is not so different from the digestion of other nutrients that make up the sustainance and substance of oneself it would seem. Tha observer/witness.... religeon meets science., religeon can understand science bit science can never understand religeon.
Religion does not understand science. There is no observer/witness.
But just like most of Dennett's other discussions I actually have been a part of, he does very little - actually nothing- to explain how sentience actually arises except to say it's an illusion. Just like his book "Consciousness Explained" there is very little of the "how" offered except to say it's all an illusion...which has prompted many of us deep consciousness thinkers to redub his book "Consciousness Explained Away". Anybody can make a claim of anything being an illusion but this statement adds nothing to what this actually means.
but their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.
2 Corinthians 3:14 KJV
Interviewer: You're super smart. Please, enlighten us to your life's work.
Dan: Could we meet at my place?
Interviewer: No, i'd like you to twist your 80-year-old spine backwards on a wood bench with bad back support in a house of worship you think is bullshit.
Consciousness rented 5 senses to explore Universe. 5 senses with its body is the requirement to view the universe. Our body with 5 senses is timed and perishable. But what was our level of consciousness when 🦖 dinosaurs 🦕 asteroids ☄️ came and gone? What is the evolution of our senses? And MIND? Illusions are part of reality and consciousness?
Maybe these very intelligent folks are lost in the sauce exercising their ability to “look under the rocks”. For me, I don’t understand how some folks are seeing (or want to see) consciousness as a thing rather than something as simple such it’s life’s ability to gather data. Otherwise known as learning. Perhaps, these folks want their personhood to exist after their death in a “package-able thing”. Everything in nature has a harmonious purpose, see how or why it serves other things, for me that’s the key. How or why we’ve existed, do we “end” at death. No, i don’t believe so.