Category: Dennett

Searle, Dennett and Zombies

Another in a series of Substack uploads debunking the brilliant scientistic sophistry of the late Daniel Dennett. 

I have over a thousand dollars in pledges. Should I monetize or not? It seems rude and arrogant not to graciously accept gifts. On the other hand, philosophy for me is a labor of love, a vocation, a high calling . . . . 

The Problem of Consciousness and Galen Strawson’s Non-Solution

The problem can be set forth in a nice neat way as an aporetic triad:

1) Consciousness is real; it is not an illusion.

2) Consciousness is wholly natural, a material process in the brain.

3) It is impossible that conscious states, whether object-directed or merely qualitative, be material in nature.

It is easy to see that the members of this triad are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true.  Any two of the propositions, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining proposition.  

And yet each limb of the triad has brilliant defenders and brilliant opponents. So not only is consciousness itself a mighty goad to inquiry; the wild diversity of opinions about it is as well.  (The second goad is an instance of what I call the Moorean motive for doing philosophy: G. E. Moore did not get his problems from the world, but from the strange and mutually contradictory things philosophers said about the world, e.g., that time is unreal (McTaggart) or that nothing is really related (Bradley).)

The above problem is soluble if a compelling case can be made for the rejection of one of the limbs.  But which one? Eliminativists reject (1); dualists of all types, and not just substance dualists, reject (2); materialists reject (3).  

I agree with Strawson that eliminativism has zero credibility.  (1) is self-evident and the attempts to deny it are easily convicted of incoherence.  So no solution is to be had by rejecting (1).

As for (2), it is overwhelmingly credible to most at the present time.  We live in a secular age.  'Surely' — the secularist will assure us — there is nothing concrete that is supernatural.  God and the soul are just comforting fictions from a bygone era. The natural exhausts the real.  Materialism about the mind is just logical fallout from naturalism.  If all that (concretely) exists is space-time and its contents, then the same goes for minds and their states.

Strawson, accepting both (1) and (2) must reject (3).  But the arguments against (3), one of which I will sketch below, are formidable. The upshot of these arguments is that it is unintelligible how either qualia or intentional states of consciousness could be wholly material in nature.  Suppose I told you that there is a man who is both fully human and fully divine. You would say that that makes no sense, is unintelligible, and is impossible for that very reason. Well, it is no less unintelligible that a felt sensation such as my present blogger's euphoria be identical to a state of my brain.  

What could a materialist such as Strawson say in response? He has to make a mysterian move. 

He could say that our understanding of matter at present does not allow us to understand how conscious experience could be wholly material in nature, but that it is nevertheless wholly material in nature! Some matter is sentient and some matter thinks. My euphoria is literally inside my skull and so are my thoughts about Boston. 

(Compare the orthodox Chalcedonian incarnationalist who says that the man Jesus of Nazareth is identical to the Second Person of the Trinity. Put him under dialectical pressure and he might say, "Look it is true! We know it by divine revelation. And what is true is true whether or not we can understand how it is possible that it be true. It must remain a mystery to us here below.)

Or a materialist mysterian  can say that our understanding of matter will never allow us to understand how conscious experience could be wholly material in nature.  Either way, conscious experience, whether intentional or non-intentional, is wholly material in nature, and falls entirely within the subject-matter of physics, whether a future physics achievable by us, or a physics which, though not achievable by us, is perhaps achievable by organisms of a different constitution who study us.

If I understand Galen Strawson's view, it is the first.  Conscious experience is fully real but wholly material in nature despite the fact that on current physics we cannot account for its reality: we cannot understand how it is possible for qualia and thoughts to be wholly material.   Here is a characteristic passage from Strawson: 

Serious materialists have to be outright realists about the experiential. So they are obliged to hold that experiential phenomena just are physical phenomena, although current physics cannot account for them.  As an acting materialist, I accept this, and assume that experiential phenomena are "based in" or "realized in" the brain (to stick to the human case).  But this assumption does not solve any problems for materialists.  Instead it obliges them to admit ignorance of the nature of the physical, to admit that they don't have a fully adequate idea of what the physical is, and hence of what the brain is.  ("The Experiential and the Non-Experiential" in Warner and Szubka, p. 77)

Strawson and I agree on two important points.  One is that what he calls experiential phenomena are as real as anything and cannot be eliminated or reduced to anything non-experiential. Dennett denied! The other is that there is no accounting for experiential items in terms of current physics.

I disagree on whether his mysterian solution is a genuine solution to the problem. What he is saying is that, given the obvious reality of conscious states, and given the truth of naturalism, experiential phenomena must be material in nature, and that this is so whether or not we are able to understand how it could be so.  At present we cannot understand how it could be so. It is at present a mystery. But the mystery will dissipate when we have a better understanding of matter.

This strikes me as bluster.

An experiential item such as a twinge of pain or a rush of elation is essentially subjective; it is something whose appearing just is its reality.  For qualia, esse = percipi.  If I am told that someday items like this will be exhaustively understood from a third-person point of view as objects of physics, I have no idea what this means.  The notion strikes me as absurd.  We are being told in effect that what is essentially subjective will one day be exhaustively understood as both essentially subjective and wholly objective.  And that makes no sense. If you tell me that understanding in physics need not be objectifying understanding, I don't know what that means either.

As Strawson clearly appreciates, one cannot reduce a twinge of pain to a pattern of neuron firings, for such a reduction eliminates the what-it-is-like-ness  of the experience.  And so he inflates the concept of the physical to cover both the physical and the mental.  But by doing this he drains the physical of definite meaning.  His materialism is a vacuous materialism. We no longer have any idea of what 'physical' means if it no longer contrasts with 'mental.'

If we are told that sensations and thoughts are wholly material, we have a definite proposition only if 'material' contrasts with 'mental.' But if we are told that sensations and thoughts are material, but that matter in reality has mental properties and powers, then I say you are talking nonsense.  You are creating grammatically correct sentences that do not express a coherent thought.

Besides, if some matter in reality senses and thinks, surely some matter doesn't; hence we are back to dualism.

Why is Strawson's  mysterianism any better than Dennett's eliminativism?  Both are materialists. And both are keenly aware of the problem that qualia pose.  This is known in the trade as the 'hard problem.' (What? The other problems in the vicinity are easy?) The eliminativist simply denies the troublesome data. Qualia don't exist! They are illusory!  The mysterian materialist cannot bring himself to say something so manifestly silly. But, unwilling to question his materialism, he says something that is not much better. He tells us that qualia are real, and wholly material, but we don't understand how because we don't know enough about matter.  But this 'theological' solution is also worthless because no definite proposition is being advanced.

Strawson frankly confesses, "I am by faith a materialist." (p. 69)  Given this faith, experiential items, precisely as experiential, must be wholly material in nature.  This faith engenders the hope that future science will unlock the secret.  Strawson must pin his hope on future science because of his clear recognition that experiential items are incomprehensible in terms of current physics.

But what do the theological virtues of faith and hope have to do with sober inquiry?  It doesn't strike me as particularly  intellectually honest to insist that materialism just has to be true and to uphold it by widening the concept of the physical to embrace what is mental.  It would be more honest just to admit that the problem of consciousness is insoluble.

And that is my 'solution.' The problem is real, but insoluble by us.

Strawson's latest banging on his mysterian materialist drum is to be found in The Consciousness Deniers in The New York Review of Books.

Once More on Whether Consciousness Could be an Illusion

The following just in from a Scandinavian reader:

Thank you for your great blog, I’ve been a regular reader for some time!

You have often made the point, that it is incoherent to say that consciousness in an illusion, because it is a presupposition to the distinction between appearance and reality. In an interesting article defending the thesis that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion, Keith Frankish has a response to this. (“Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23, 11-12, 2016, pp. 11-39.) I’m not convinced, but I have the feeling that I don’t even understand what Frankish is saying here. (Well, if Frankish is right, this feeling is an illusion, so I should be alright.)

Here is a recent version of my argument in which I have that brilliant sophist, Daniel Dennett, in my sights:

Consciousness cannot be an illusion for the simple reason that we presuppose it when we distinguish between reality and illusion.  An illusion is an illusion to consciousness, so that if there were no consciousness there would be no illusions either.

This is because illusions have a sort of parasitic status. They are ontological parasites, if you will, whose being is fed by a host organism.   But let's not push the parasitological comparison too far. The point is that, while there are illusions, they do not exist on their own. The coyote I wrongly take  to be a domestic dog exists in reality, but the domestic dog does not. But while the latter does not exist in reality, it is not nothing either.   The dog is not something in reality, but it is something for consciousness. If in the twilight I jump back from a twisted root on the trail, mis-taking it for a rattlesnake, the visual datum cannot possibly be regarded as nothing since it is involved in the explanation of why I jumped.  I jumped because I saw (in the phenomenological sense of 'see') a rattlesnake. Outright hallucinations such as the proverbial pink rat of the drunkard are even clearer examples. In dreams I see and touch beautiful women. Do old men have nocturnal emissions over nothing? 

Not existing in reality, illusions of all sorts, not just perceptual illusions, exist for consciousness. But then consciousness cannot be an illusion. Consciousness is a presupposition of the distinction between reality and illusion. As such, it cannot be an illusion. It must be real. 

Back to my reader:

Frankish says that this ”no appearance-reality gap” objection to illusionism is ”far from compelling”. His reason seems to be something like this: According to illusionism, when we are having, say, a greenish experience, we introspectively represent ourselves as having a greenish experience, and this can be done without having a greenish experience. This is because “the content of introspective representations is determined by non-phenomenal, causal or functional factors”. So when one sees green, and there something it is like to see green for that person, he is in fact mistaken; there is nothing it is like to see green. The mistake is generated by a non-veridical introspective representation. The “feelyness” of this is an illusion. But the illusion itself is not a case of phenomenal consciousness, because it is possible to represent oneself as having a state of phenomenal consciousness, without actually having such a state. And thus the “no appearance-reality gap” objection to illusionism fails.

Is must confess that I don’t understand this point. Even if phenomenal consciousness is an illusion generated by non-veridical representations, there is still this illusion of seeming left, and thus the “no appearance-reality gap” objection is not refuted. Am I missing something?

I haven't read the article in question so I will have to go by the reader's report.  From what he says, the account sounds like question-begging gibberish: "when we are having, say, a greenish experience, we introspectively represent ourselves as having a greenish experience, and this can be done without having a greenish experience." Unsinn!

Here is a Killer Quote from Thomas Nagel  directed against Dennett that sums things up nicely:

I am reminded of the Marx Brothers line: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”

That's right. When a line of reasoning issues in an absurdity such as the absurdity that consciousness and its deliverances are illusions, then what you have is a reductio ad absurdum of one or more of the premises with which the reasoning began.  Dennett assumes physicalism and that everything can be explained in physical terms.  This leads to absurdity. But Dennett, blinded by his own brilliance — don't forget, he counts himself one of the 'brights' – bites the bullet. He'd rather break his teeth than examine his assumptions.

Another thing strikes me. Dennett makes much of Wilfrid Sellars' distinction between the manifest and scientific images. 'Image' is not quite the right word. An image is someone's image. But whose image is the scientific image? Who is its subject? It is arguably our image no less than the manifest image.  Nagel quotes Dennett as saying of the manifest image: "It’s the world according to us."  But the same, or something very similar, is true of the scientific image: it's the world in itself according to us.  Talk of molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks, and strings is our talk just as much as talk of colors and plants and animals and haircuts and home runs.  

The world of physics is the world as it is in itself according to us.  Arguably, the 'according to us' gets the upper hand over the 'in itself,' relativizing what comes within the former's  scope much like Kant's transcendental prefix, Ich denke relativizes what comes within its scope.  Das 'ich denke' muss alle meine Vorstellungen begleiten koennen . . . .  "The ''I think' must be able to accompany all my representations." (KdrV, B 131-2)

Arguably, the world of physics is a mind-involving construct arrived at by excluding the mental and abstracting away from the first-person point of view and the life world it reveals.  I am alluding to an phenomenological-idealist approach to the problem of integrating the first- and third-person points of view.  It has its own problems. But why is it inferior to a view like Dennett's which eliminates as illusory obvious data that are plainly not illusory?

No philosophy is worth anything that gets the phenomenology wrong, or simply ignores the phenomenology. For that is where we must start if we are responsible philosophers, as opposed to apologist for theories we accept without critical examination.

Time was when absolute idealism was the default position in philosophy. Think back to the days of Bradley and Bosanquet. But reaction set in, times have changed, and the Zeitgeist is now against the privileging of Mind and for the apotheosis of Matter.  (But again, matter as construed by us. Arguably, the scientific realist reifies theoretical constructs that we create and employ to make sense of experience.)  Because idealism is out of vogue, the best and brightest are not drawn to its defense, and the brilliant few it attracts are too few to make much headway against the prevailing winds.

Now I'll tell you what I really think. The problem of integrating the first- and third-person points of view is genuine and perhaps the deepest of all philosophical problems. But it is insoluble by us.  If it does have a solution, however, it certainly won't be anything like Dennett's.

Although Dennett's positive theory is worthless, his excesses are extremely useful in helping us see just how deep and many-sided and intractable the problem is.  

The Spook Stuff Chronicles: Danny Dennett Meets Caspar the Friendly Ghost

This old entry, which had been languishing in the old Powerblogs archive, still strikes me as making some important and plausible points. Here it is again, spruced up and supplemented.

…………………

There are philosophers who seem to think that doctrines held by great  philosophers and outstanding contemporaries don't need to be studied and refuted but can be shamed or ridiculed or caricatured out of existence. Daniet Dennett is an example:

     Dualism (the view that minds are composed of some nonphysical and
     utterly mysterious stuff) . . . [has]been relegated to the trash
     heap of history, along with alchemy and astrology. Unless you are
     also prepared to declare that the world is flat and the sun is a
     fiery chariot pulled by winged horses unless, in other words,
     your defiance of modern science is quite complete you won't find
     any place to stand and fight for these obsolete ideas. (Kinds of
     Mind, Basic Books, 1996, p. 24)

This is an amazing passage in that it compares the views of distinguished dualist philosophers such as Richard Swinburne to the  views of astrologers, alchemists, and flat-earthers. It would be very interesting to hear precisely how the views of Swinburne et al. are in "defiance of modern science" — assuming one doesn't confuse science with scientism. But let's look at what Dennett has to say in his more substantial (511 page!) Consciousness Explained (1991).

Dennett there (mis)characterizes dualism as the doctrine that minds are "composed not of ordinary matter but of some other, special kind of stuff. . . ," and materialism as the view that "there is only one sort of stuff, namely matter — the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology — and the mind is some nothing but a physical phenomenon." (33) "In short, the mind is the brain." (33)

Plausibly and charitably read, however, a substance dualist such as Descartes does not hold that minds are composed of some extraordinarily thin intangible stuff. The dualism is not a dualism of stuff-kinds, real stuff and spook stuff. 'Substance' in 'substance dualism' does not refer to a special sort of ethereal stuff but to substances in the sense of individuals capable of independent existence whose whole essence consists in acts of thought, perception, imagination, feeling, and the like.

Dennett, who often comes across as a sophist, is exploiting the equivocity of 'substance' as between stuff and entity metaphysically capable of independent existence.  For example, when we speak of Socrates as a substance, we are not referring to his proximate or ultimate matter, but to his capacity for existence on his own, in contrast to his pallor which, as an accident of Socrates as substance, cannot exist on its own but only in a substance, and indeed only in the very substance of which it is the accident, namely, Socrates.

The main point is made very well by the prominent idealist, T. L. S. Sprigge:

     It is often difficult to get people to realize that the
     non-physical mind of which Cartesians speak is not, as some have
     thought it, 'a ghost in the machine' of the human body, since
     ghosts and 'spirits' such as might appear in a seance are, in
     contrast to it, as physical, if made of a finer stuff, as our
     ordinary bodies. When we speak of the mental we do so mostly or
     entirely in metaphors (more or less sleeping) of a physical kind:
     we grasp ideas and have thoughts in our minds. Whatever the real
     source of this materialism which is endemic to most of our
     thinking, it is not surprising that there should be a theory of
     existence which follows its leadings. As thinkers we are subjects,
     but the natural object of thought is objects and it is only with
     effort that the subject turns its thoughts upon its own
     un-object-like nature. (Theories of Existence, pp. 46-47, bolding
     added.)

Dennett Plays the Interaction Card (Canard?)

Now Dennett trots out the "standard objection to dualism" which to Dennett is decisive. Ignoring non-interactionist types of substance dualism, Dennett tells us that mind and body, if distinct things or substances, must nonetheless interact. But how could the mind act upon the brain? How could a mental state make a difference to a brain state if mental states lack physical properties?

     A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the
     trajectory of any physical entity is an acceleration requiring the
     expenditure of energy, and where is this energy to come from? It is
     this principle of the conservation of energy that accounts for the
     physical impossibility of "perpetual motion machines," and the same
     principle is apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation
     between quite standard physics and dualism . . . is widely regarded
     as the inescapable and fatal flaw of dualism. (35)

Now any unprejudiced person should be able to see that this "fatal objection" is inconclusive. Notice first of all that Dennett is
presupposing that mental-physical causation must involve transfer of energy. For Dennett's objection is essentially this:

   a. Energy must be transferred to a physical entity to cause a change
   in it.
   b. No energy can be transferred from an immaterial to a material
   entity.
   Therefore
   c. No immaterial entity such as a mind can cause a change in a
   material entity such as a brain/body.

But why should we accept the first premise? Why should we endorse a transfer theory of causation? Note that to assume a transfer theory of causation is to beg the question against the dualist: it is to assume that the mind must be material. For only a material thing can be a term in an energy transfer. Dennett thinks that dualism must collide with standard physics because he foists upon the dualist a conception of causation that the dualist will surely reject, a conception of causation that implies that there cannot be any nonphysical causes.

The materialist says: mind and body cannot interact because interaction requires transfer of energy, and only bodies can be the
transferers and transferees of energy.

The interactionist dualist says: Since mind and body do interact, interaction does not require transfer of energy.

Let M be a type of mental event and B a type of brain event, and let m and b be tokens of these types. Perhaps there is nothing more to causation than this: m causes b =df (i) b follows m in time; (ii) Whenever an M even
t occurs, a B event occurs. On this regularity approach to causation, Dennett's objection dissolves.

Indeed, on any theory of causation in which causation does not consist in a transfer of a physical magnitude from cause to effect, Dennett's objection dissolves. Therefore, the objection can be made to stick only it is assumed that the transfer theory of causation is true of all types of causation. But then the question has been begged against dualist interaction.

There are two key points here that need to be developed in subsequent posts. One is that the nature of causation is not a physics problem. The natural scientist can tell us what causes what, but is singularly ill-equipped to tell us what causation is. The second point is that it is not at all clear that causation, even in the physical world, is a physical process. It is not all clear, in other words, that the causal structure of the physical world is itself something physical.

Dennett thinks that the incoherence of dualism is so obvious that it doesn't require "the citation of presumed laws of physics." (35). Casper the Friendly Ghost is all the help one needs. He can pass through a wall, yet grab a falling towel. But that's incoherent, since something that eludes physical measurement cannot have physical effects. The mind, as 'ghost in the machine,' is no better off. Only physical things can move physical things. But the mind of the substance dualist is not a physical thing, ergo, the mind cannot act upon the body.

But again, Dennett is just begging the question against the dualist as I have already explained.  

Nagel on Dennett: Is Consciousness an Illusion?

A NYRB review. (HT: the enormously helpful Dave Lull)

To put it bluntly and polemically: Thomas Nagel is the real thing as philosophers go; Daniel Dennett is a sophist.

My Nagel category; my Dennett category.

Killer Quote:

I am reminded of the Marx Brothers line: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”

That's right. When a line of reasoning issues in an absurdity such as the absurdity that consciousness and its deliverances are illusions, then what you have is a reductio ad absurdum of one or more of the premises with which the reasoning began.  Dennett assumes physicalism and that everything can be explained in physical terms.  This leads to absurdity. But Dennett, blinded by his own brilliance — don't forget, he counts himself one of the 'brights' — bites the bullet. He'd rather break his teeth than examine his assumptions.

Another thing struck me. Dennett makes much of Wilfrid Sellars' distinction between the manifest and scientific images. 'Image' is not quite the right word. An image is someone's image. But whose image is the scientific image? Who is its subject? It is arguably our image no less than the manifest image.  Nagel quotes Dennett as saying of the manifest image: "It’s the world according to us."  But the same, or something very similar, is true of the scientific image: it's the world in itself according to us.  Talk of molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks, and strings is our talk just as much as talk of colors and plants and animals and haircuts and home runs.  

The world of physics is the world as it is in itself according to us.  Arguably, the 'according to us' gets the upper hand over the 'in itself' relativizing what comes within the former's  scope much like Kant's transcendental prefix, Ich denke.  Das 'ich denke' muss alle meine Vorstellungen begleiten koennen . . . .  "The ''I think' must be able to accompany all my representations." (KdrV, B 131-2)

Arguably, the world of physics is a mind-involving construct arrived at by excluding the mental and abstracting away from the first-person point of view and the life world it reveals.  I am alluding to an idealist approach to the problem of integrating the first- and third-person points of view.  It has its own problems. But why is it inferior to a view like Dennett's which eliminates as illusory obvious data that are plainly not illusory?

Time was when absolute idealism was the default position in philosophy. Think back to the days of Bradley and Bosanquet. But reaction set in, times have changed, and the Zeitgeist is now against the privileging of Mind and for the apotheosis of Matter.  (But again, matter as construed by us. Arguably, the scientific realist reifies theoretical constructs that we create and employ to make sense of experience.)  Because idealism is out of vogue, the best and brightest are not drawn to its defense, and the brilliant few it attracts are too few to make much headway against the prevailing winds.

Now I'll tell you what I really think. The problem of integrating the first- and third-person points of view is genuine and perhaps the deepest of all philosophical problems. But it is insoluble by us.  If it does have a solution, however, it certainly won't be anything like Dennett's.

Although Dennett's positive theory is worthless, his excesses are extremely useful in helping us see just how deep and many-sided and intractable the problem is.  

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