PEL Presents Closereads: Late Dennett on Consciousness (Part One)
episode
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
55 min
2 speakers
3 chapters
transcribed 11 hours ago
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What is the purpose of this Close Reads episode and how do the hosts introduce Dennett’s new paper?
This is Close Reads, a philosophy podcast with Mark and Wes. I'm Wes Allwan, and I'm Mark Linzemeyer. It is a new dawn, a new day, and we have a new reading. It is Daniel Dennett's Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet? Something from two thousand. Which uh you know, the Consciousness Explained book that we have been covering on partial examined life. It was nineteen ninety one, so there was a bunch of back and forth but with his critics since then. And this is, as far as I know, the latest comprehensive, I don't know, the late the latest word on you know, his improvements on his theory, his coming up with this idea of fame in the brain that was not in the nineteen ninety one. paper and the main purpose, because Wes, you exempted yourself from that four hours of partial exam and live conversation, is we're gonna have you know, a very encapsulated little treatment here.
Are you excited?
Well, you know how I feel about Dennett? I felt like Consciousness Explained is not an intellectually honest book. That's my big problem with it. And I found out with the last episode that constitutionally I am capable of enduring eliminist, you know, sorts of claims with smart and place. So it's not like I can't I'm just too prejudiced to Consider those views. But we'll see, you know, Dennon, I when he was arguing with Sam Harris about the odd is distinction, he gave such a scintillating, clear explanation of that, which Harris was completely obtuse to, and I gained, you know, newfound respect for him. So I'm ready to change my opinion, you know, maybe late-stage-what it what is he did? What's he doing here?
Is he saying, Well maybe there's a little bit of consciousness?
I just think that your grants you a little bit of your charge that it is in intellectual bad faith is just a misunderstanding. And I thought actually that we we in our people listeners will not have heard this yet probably, but our our UT Place and JJC Smart Conversation. Though those guys were writing in the nineteen fifties, but they were making some of the same arguments about qualia and it was clear that the qualia is not the seeming. So in other words, when we the we have consciousness There is a way that things seem to us. That is the stream of consciousness It is actually the content of the seeming that those folks before Dennett, and Dennett picks up on this, were denying to exist. So if uh it seems that I'm seeing an orange after image, right?
That's a that's a optical illusion. So I'm looking at an orange light and then I guess you turn the lights off really fast, but I see I continue to see the orange light. It's an orange after image. Uh we know that there's nothing in the actual world that is that after image. This is just A byproduct of how my brain and my eyes work, and it would be absurd as Galen Strawsson pointed out. in our recent episode here, to say Well, uh certainly uh you know, if you deny that this that that the person is seeming to see is having the experience of an orange after image, well that would be denying the thing to be explained, right? Consciousness explained. He's trying to explain why we have that perception, despite the fact that there is no orange after image in the world.
So the question is just The qualia, the qualai in this that's always the the singular, the qualai in this sense is not the having of the experience. No one is denying that he's having the experience. It is the orange after image itself. Does that exist in an ontology in a phenomenal space. So we have to say our ontology has physical space, but then it also has phenomenal space. What all the things that people perceive that may or may not correspond to anything in the world. And that is the that these folks starting with with uh UT place in the 50s and probably people before that thought was just not called for. You could somehow get rid of that.
Yeah. It's not that I misunderstand the argument, and I found it interesting in those other guys. No, I legitimately think he argues in bad faith in various places and is evasive and And so more about whi the way he's arguing than what he's arguing.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What is the purpose of this Close Reads episode and how do the hosts introduce Dennett’s new paper?
0:01–28:13
2
How do the hosts explain Dennett’s “fame in the brain” metaphor for consciousness?
28:13–34:11
3
What is the Global Neuronal Workspace model and why do the authors resist treating global accessibility as a cause of consciousness?
34:11–55:26
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
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