Noam Chomsky on Daniel Dennett

[joelaxell]

”Galan Strawson, fine young philosophers” he is over 70 years old…

[longcastle]

So glad Chomsky is hitting all the YouTube channels. His 4 part series with Robert Kuhn in Closer To Truth was also simply wonderful.

[sweigman]

“What people usually mean, when they say that consciousness is a mystery, is that it’s mysterious how consciousness can be simply a matter of physical goings-on in the brain. But here they make a Very Large Mistake, in Winnie-the-Pooh’s terminology—the mistake of thinking that we know enough about what physical stuff is to have good reason to think that physical goings-on in the brain can’t be conscious goings-on. We don’t.” (Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self, Etc. by Galen Strawson (2018), pgs 164-165.)

[SSdet]

Noam Chomsky's brilliance is matched only by his penchant for blinking

[Wolfgang.Berger.Curso.Aleman]

I am so glad to hear from Chomsky that we don´t know what a "particle" is. I always thought that I was the only one who did not understand it.

[Eric-lx]

‘It’s hot down here’ -Daniel Dennett 2024

[hansheymans]

In "Consciousness Explained", Dennett refers a few times to Goodman (e.g., p.114), mainly to condemn theories about consciousness that suggest a "Cartesian theater" (to be filled with qualia, including the filling of sensori "gaps").

Goodman's theory is indeed very systematic (it's like doing mathematics), but giving the primitive elements of the theory the name "qualia" in stead of for example "eternal objects" (like in Whitehead's "Process and Reality") leaves consciousness where it is.

Dennett's CE is not only clever, it is one of the best books about consciousness. However, it presupposes that the nature of matter is unproblematic enough to use it as some kind of foundation, which is one of the reasons why it is implicitly dismissive of "the hard problem of consciousness".

[maxheadrom]

Adding a text explaining the question would be very useful. Thanks!

[karlschmied]

"Can consciousness be explained?" That's a silly rabbit hole question. What might the answer be? Yes, it can be explained? What does "explain" mean? Such as making sounds (talking) or arranging signs on paper or a screen for others to look at? And then what? Everyone can hear it or read it and "understand" it?
What does "understand" mean. This is nonsense. This emperor has no clothes. Wittgenstein was right: "What one cannot speak of, one must be silent about."

[elizabethblakley]

Yea! More Noam! You ask good questions

[indefdef]

I think I agree with Michael Huemer and other advocates of "phenomenal conservatism" in epistemology. Pace Russell, we don't begin with propositions about subjective experience. We begin with undefeated propositions about the external world, and then build the more complex concepts of subjective experience upon those.

[johnhausmann]

Chomsky is amazing. His recall is impressive. I just don't see how he can say that we understand consciousness as much as we understand anything. There is so much that we are wrong about, at first glance, and that careful scientific inquiry corrects. How is it that he claims we just trust our impressions of what our consciousness is, without scientific inquiry. Also, there is much to learn about things in the world without having to know what elementary particles are. Biological systems are constituted by material undergoing processes, and we obviously have learned a great deal without knowing about elementary particles. It's just a strange idea. Can't see how he makes these general statements.

[firstal]

Descartes actually was first recorded individual to ask qualia in a sharp manner.

[samrowbotham]

Most people who are Materialist reductionists are afflicted by hubris they believe they already have all the answers and they just have to fill in the gaps. They don't have a clue regarding consciousness only Kastrup and Hoffman are close but they both claim that Consciousness is primary when in fact with consciousness comes being, ontology is primary as psychologist Robert Filocco pointed out recently to me.

[darrenwendroff]

The more i learn about philosophy and practices like vedanta and taoism and buddhism and society, the more I feel that Chomsky just doesn't get it. He's a very very smart person who understands a lot of things and can give you a wonderful bibliography, but he just doesn't understand is d practices innately. Consciousness has been studied for millennia, with both origins and pethaps reaching its peak in India with the Rishis and then commented on from there. But even beyond consciousness, I think of the debate between Chomsky and Foucault and how Chomsky just did not understand Society, he had an idealistic view of society but the cult understood Society and human Nature. Every now and then I listen to Chomsky, but I take what he says with a grain of salt.

[bnelso]

Bible has incredible scientific accuracy like round Earth and jet streams and way more.