Can Daniel Dennett answer the hard problem of consciousness?

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High profile atheist philosopher Daniel C Dennett goes head to head with Christian theologian Keith Ward in this extract from their debate on mind, consciousness and freewill.

In this excerpt Keith Ward challenges Daniel Dennett on the problem of consciousness.

The Big Conversation is a unique video series from Unbelievable? featuring world-class thinkers across the Christian and atheist community. Exploring science, faith, philosophy and what it means to be human.


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Why does it seem to me that Denett massively misunderstands the hard problem? He just goes on about there not being a distinction between conscious and unconscious in a similar way to which there's an unclear line between living and non-living/zombie, but for me the CORE of the hard problem is the explanation of qualia, the qualitative undescribable aspects of an experience, which are *undeniably* there. Can someone please clarify, maybe I'm the confused one.

Vladix
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So Daniel Dennett answered by saying there is no hard problem of consciousness. Forgive me, but this seems rather evasive.

fujiapple
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It's insane how Daniel denett is dishonest. Or maybe he never understood the hard problem of consciousness.

rservajean
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Like most strict materialists, Dennett essentially ends up saying that the question of consciousness is entirely unimportant. But, to most conscious humans, it is the most important issue.

blindlemon
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*No, Dennett cannot answer the hard problem of consciousness.*
His best bet is to dissolve the problem by eliminating consciousness. Though this would dissolve the hard problem, this leads to a self-refuting worldview: we would have to believe that we have no beliefs, we would have to think that we have no thoughts.

MonisticIdealism
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We know consciousness exists and *assume* that inanimate objects are not, then ask well how can I be conscious?! I am made of matter just like a rock, so why do I have a subjective experience unlike a rock? The problem comes in differentiating between mind and matter - and we *know* mind exists, more than we 'know' that matter exists (matter appears only within minds). So isn't it rather the hard problem of matter?

SamuelJFord
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Well, as an atheist and a philosopher of science who lectures in multiple EU universities, I must say that Dennett's statement is sadly beyond laughable and cannot be taken seriously. I hope Dennett reads this to realize that in many academic communities, mostly in philosophy and even in empirical sciences, Dennetts' ideas are not being taken seriously anymore. I don't wanna get into details, but his ideas are very outdated and the fact that he is still enjoying his stubbornness immensely, does not help his reputation either. Yes he is famous, he is well known, but for hardcore serious philosophers his ideas are far from being profound enough to be taken seriously anymore. Maybe it was different 20 years ago, but not in our time.

There are many problems with the bold childish claim of 'consciousness being an illusion - or the non-existence of the Hard Problem". But very briefly and at the risk of oversimplification, I would only say that if consciousness is fundamentally speaking unreal and more of an illusion, then how can we accept and justify the reality of the person who is claiming that: "consciousness is an illusion"? In other words, how can an illusion self-consciously claim and say such thing? And moreover, if it does, how such a statement gets validated? Is not validation a quality of a self-conscious person to begin with? If Dennett's consciousness is an illusion, then it would be only logical to conclude that his ideas, opinions and analysis are also illusory without any value to begin with, period. Consciousness is a self-proven fact for those who are able to think critically and keep an unbiased, neutral and open mind when it comes to fundamental questions and dilemmas. Dennett I must say is more like a celebrity these last few years than a real working philosopher to be honest... which is very sad indeed.

konnektlive
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Instead solving the problem just ignore it . What a philosophical way !!

saberhanour
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he could have been a rock floating through space, but instead he's the most complex thing (human brain) in the known universe, at the most complex time in the complex thing's known history, talking about how the patently undeniable phenomenon of his subjective consciousnes awareness is somehow a moot point 🤦

optimusprimevil
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A question for materialists: What is the evolutionary purpose of subjective experience if p-zombies are just as good at survival as conscious humans?

dimaniak
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I remember a joke about a philosopher who developed a logical proof of his non-existence. I don't think Dennett would understand the joke.

danzigvssartre
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If we're essentailly machinery, like a computer or an automated manufacturing processing line, why aren't we simply that, moving parts. Why do we experience the activity of these moving parts.

C.D.J.Burton
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I love how people in the YouTube comment section think they can solve an age old scientific and philosophical issue with a couple of sentences😂 Classic.

amadubah
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Dennet is claiming that there is no such thing as Consciousness. So in response to that Anthony Peake wants to know who wrote Dennet's books?

whitenightf
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Our dearest zombie Dan Dennet at it again.

marianpalko
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If you strip his answer of all the subterfuge, you'll realise that he proposes "solving" the hard problem of consciousness by ignoring it.

lukeabbott
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Quite simply, the hard problem is this - can you explain subjectivity (qualia) in terms of objective processes? You can't. It's impossible. Just as a a married bachelor is impossible. It's a conflict of definitions.

assortedtea
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Ward says, "[my enjoyment of music is] an inner experience that nobody else can share". But if he went to a concert, he'd be surrounded by lots of people sharing their inner experience, and he'd share it with them. So is he saying that the experience you don't or can't share is consciousness? That doesn't sound right.

bolldamm
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You have to be a very bad reader of Bergson to say that his Elan Vital means there is an « extra » or there is a « soupçon » of something else. Using all kind of fancy words in French without knowing their exact meaning doesn’t help either. The theory of the Elan Vital is precisely a criticism of the sort of vitalism falsely mentioned by Dennet (classic vitalism of Aristotle, Helmont, Barthez…) as well as a rejection of metaphysics ( Descartes, Leibniz…) and idealism (Hegel, Kant…). Elan Vital is life itself as immanent creation of organism and consciousness. In this sense, Bergson is rather a pragmatist and William James saw it and understood it very well. What Dennet seems to be doing all these years (about consciousness) is AT BEST some sort of scientific popularization. Definitely not (good) philosophy.

smezzourh
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It's clear to me that when people discuss consciousness as if it's something fundamentally mysterious and nonphysical that's separate from the brain, they're talking about it like it's the soul, exactly how Descartes thought of it. Descartes was a Christian, so he believed consciousness was a literal supernatural soul created by God that defied all physical explanation. This was at a time where people knew very little about neuroscience, so magical explanations would have seemed more plausible, just as the diversity of life appeared to be a magical mystery before we learned about biology and evolution.

But now we understand the brain so well that you can actually scan someone's brain, decode the activity, and reconstruct someone's visual experience on a television screen (with a fair amount of noise, but that will go down as the technology improves). So science can actually disprove a lot of our most basic intuitions about consciousness, like the age old claim that consciousness is private and that our first person perspective is privileged. It's not, I can actually see things from your perspective if we hook you up to a machine. I can "see" your "qualia". This "qualia" is just sensory information. The brain activity is the same information, but represented in a different language, so the process of decoding it essentially amounts to using a dictionary for translation. But it's still the same data, just represented differently. The image that appears on the television screen IS the decoded brain activity. This information is the same whether it's in your brain or on a television screen, whether it's viewed from a first person perspective or a third person perspective, it's just physical information.

Now, is that television screen "conscious"? Well, there is "qualia" on the screen, but there aren't any of the other brain processes associated with consciousness, so no, it's not. If you remove everything the brain does, i.e. you remove memory, awareness, attention, emotion, sensation, perception, thought, etc., what are you left with? It would be like being under an aneasthetic. If we removed all of your cognitive processes, you wouldn't be "pure consciousness" separated from the brain, you would just be unconscious. What "consciousness" continues to exist after all the "little problems" have been solved? It's the same as vitalism, as Dennett points out. Once you explain all the mechanics of biology, there's no magical stuff left that distinguishes life from nonlife.

People need consciousness to be something magical and special, just like they need a God and a soul and a mystical plan for the universe. You can tell by how emotional people get when discussing consciousness, this is just the soul disguised. The so called "hard problem" is just an assertion: "consciousness cannot be explained by physics because... it just can't." The belief that consciousness is special from the rest of nature is essentially religious, yet another example of humans believing they must be at the center of the universe, and scientists and philosophers who ordinarily don't fall down rabbit holes of religious dogma should learn to recognize it as such.

carlsagan