Iain McGilchrist: Why Daniel Dennett is wrong about consciousness

[paddydiddles]

McGilchrist is good at debunking a position that Dennett does not hold. To say that consciousness can emerge from complex brain stuff is not actually reductive. Suggesting that it would imply as such, is itself a reductive fallacy - McGilchrist attacks a strawman and commits the fallacy of division. What Dennett describes as ‘illusional’ is not consciousness itself (this would be absurd considering that Dennett has published the book “Consciousness explained” - no McGilchrist is arguing against another strawman. Dennett was instead describing the common intuitions of consciousness being typically illusional

[VoloBonja]

Lol, worst interpretation of Dennett's ideas and even worse criticism

[elmontro]

I wonder if Dennet was conscious when he said consciousness is an illusion?

[JamesKimSynergize]

Scientific reductionism lost traction a long time ago and there are very few proponents of exclusive materialism as an explanation for everything.

[Hmmmmmmm]

Baffles me how people can comment so confidently on Dennetts position being wrong without even knowing what Dennetts position is in the first place. Laughable.

[dj]

To say that consciousness is an illusion is not the same as saying that consciousness does not exist. If you are going to disagree with an argument raised by another person, it is an act of intellectual humility and integrity to put some effort in trying to find out what that person is really arguing for.

[Steven_Rowe]

Dennett is a philosopher full stop.
I don't know if he is right or wrong.
We will be arguing about this for ever.
We all need to be open minded.

[tgrogan]

1:38 strawman of Dennett. What Dennett debunks is the unified "self" that Buddhism debunked 2500 years ago.

[jacoschut]

Judging his counter argument one liner its obvious he hasn't really read dennet with an attempt to understand the proposition.... The "illusion" of consciousness in a one channel experience derived from multiple channels, all performing complex tasks that have to be measured and judged, looking for tradeoffs etc. you have predictive mechanisms as well as observational, language interference.
What we experience as intuitions and feelings are examples of how those multiple channels channel into the one user illusion for the whole, all this in order to function in Extremely complex manners.

[Dialogos]

I love McGilchrist’s point about faith and how God is not a proposition but rather a relationship. The strongest argument I have heard for God is by Kierkegaard “Fear and Trembling”. That is to say that faith rests on the strength of the absurd. It is not a matter of rationality. I think Aquinas and the scholastic movement to mix reason and revelation was a mistake. They are different processes to arrive at truth.

[tgrogan]

This guy is a smart guy, but he begs the question. "Love" is a neurophysiological phenomenon and when the brain is changed in certain ways love goes away. See Alzheimer's patients for example. These folks always appeal to love. Some JP fans pulled this on my and I told them that we look at "love" as the way people act in certain culturally specific situations. Is this guy really the best that the mysterians have to put up against modern science?

[tgrogan]

Music has meaning to certain people. Bach has no "meaning' outside of certain cultural conditions. This is all sentimental clap trap.

[tgrogan]

Well how can you build a wall out of bricks? A brick is not a wall! See the problem.

[MiguelHervas-ntit]

Yes, and for santa claus for be an illusion there must be a santa claus to be illuded.

[jerklecirque]

I don't know how many times I've heard Dennett say "Consciousness is real, it just isn't what you think it is", and I'm by no means well read on the matter. McGilchrist must be intentionally obtuse in his remarks.

[rikconant]

Love can literally be explained by chemicals and the receptors that react to them.

[sanjosemike]

For me, Daniel Dennett is an illusion.

I hope he remains so.

Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)

[lacanzizek]

The process in mind makes a self reflexive conciousness which is gradually built up from uncounscious to conciousness and through the process a conciousness is constructed which already appears to itself as illusion and reconstructs itself through this appearance.

[papercut]

If anyone wants to get an actually interesting discussion of mind and consciousness from the bleeding edge of cognitive science instead of a youtube comment section, I recommend John Vervaeke. All of his work is great, and his Awakening from the Meaning Crisis lecture series compiles most of it (up to the time it was created at least) in a very long but dense and fruitful lecture series also covering a broad swathe of philosophical, scientific, and religious history.

He's not a theist, but isn't at all hostile to religion. Though he isn't an atheist either. Nor an agnostic. If you want to understand how he wants to get beyond that duality, you'll have to listen to him

[KingJorman]

appearances are not illusions but the subject of appearances is a sort of illusion because it is conceptual and presumed to be the case. No one has ever found a delineated subject. And again, there are apparently delineated appearances.