Disagreement with Daniel Dennett about consciousness | Philip Goff and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Philip Goff is a philosopher of mind and consciousness at Durham University and author of Galileo's Error.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[alineharam]

“It depends what the meaning of the word “is” is.”

[Boogieplex]

If you’ve never heard Dan Dennett describe consciousness, do yourself a favor and search for it. It’s extremely convincing.

[brandocommando]

Panpsychism is not a good hypothesis. It makes no predictions, it’s not falsifiable and it kicks the hard problem of consciousness down the road rather than explaining it. Positing that electrons have experience to explain how a dog can have experience is just restating the problem. The hard problem is that if the world is material than why is there experience at all? So why do electrons have experience? It’s just not useful at all.

[stefanconradsson]

It would be wonderful to see Lex having Douglas Hofstadter/Daniel Dennett on. They are both such interesting thinkers. I think the multiple drafts model Dennett proposes is quite possible as well as being an attractive theory.

Cheers 🍺

[michaelkaminski]

I find Roger Penrose and Hammeroff's ideas the most intriguing, it incorporates a bit of a panpsychism ideas in a sense but it is also rooted in neuroscience. Which is basically that the microtubules in neurons act as an on/off switch for consciousness and that the cytoskeleton plays some role in each living cell having "awareness". It's basically a hypothesis, but it is one that can easily be explored scientifically through testing, I would really like to see where research into this goes.

[tianac.]

Thank you for this recording! My questions are, did homunculi exist at the time of panspermia? Does the Cartesian theatre exist in some functionality in every possible Being? Are homunculi and Cartesian theaters ontologically indiscernible and inseparable? If qualia doesn't exist, what explains the bedrock of the Twin Earth problem? Why does atheism protrude through Dennett's work, and what is his most panpsychic work of philosophy? Is the Tetragrammaton a panpsychic Being and/or entity? Are Cartesian theaters discovered or invented? What does it mean for the homunculi to possess multiple ontic levels? Why does the qualia of every possible Being possess an indiscernible haecceity and/or quiddity? Finally, why does epiphenomenalism seem to depend on a panpsychic existential quantifier according to thinkers like Whitehead and Chalmers?

[anthonycardona]

How can an "explanation" of consciousness just assume it at a lower level? There's 0 explanatory power in that.

[dumbknot]

8:00 is great stuff too. Wanted to take a second and say thank you for all of your videos I really enjoy listening your outlooks your guests your approach you have created an amazing channel good job and thank you for the multiple videos a day it gives a guy time to digest what's going on

[cristianorentroia]

This guy is not a great philosopher. Dennett is a living legend and can justify his positions way better. The multiple drafts model is way deeper than panpsychism in its description and explanatory power.

[danzigvssartre]

Cats are not soul-less robots. Cats are Gods.

[mariog]

Definitions typically dont help in these discussions. We are trying to find explanatory power. For example : q) how did this TV come into being? A) I define TV as the pressing of buttons. Did that fucking explain anything? Q) How is it that human conciseness came into being? A) I define consciousness as the firing of neurons. WHAT! That’s as arbitrary as saying I define conciseness as the wiggling of my left big toe. That has no explanatory power. Im not saying Searles arguments are right, but they certainly show we can define consciousness how we’d like, but I need a way to explain how I achieve understanding or intentionality. I also think Searle has a knockdown argument against formal systems being conscience.

[marcusdavey]

Panpsychism is intriguing if you take your impressions of your own consciousness at face value, like that there is a self that experiences. Then, you’re committed to putting experience into reality at the base level of matter. Dennett’s illusionism just says concs. isn’t what we think it is, so the experiencing self isn’t quite real, but imagined.

[Geopoliticstoday]

Ahhh. The quest to put names to things that cannot be named.

[jumpinjohnnyruss]

He's talking about pan-PROTO-psychism. That's different.

[matthewgillam]

0:50 isn’t there a famous talk between Dawkins and Depak Chopra where chopra says that electrons have consciousness???

[HyzersGR]

Is there any kind of philosophy that matters besides analytic philosophy?

[HurricaneOG]

Dennett has been dismissed a long time ago, he still salty Searle has laid out thoroughly how silly Dennett's views on consciousness are.

[ALavin-enkr]

Consciousness is, we have consciousness, we are not consciousness. Each mind has: participates in consciousness. Matter, elements, creating consciousness is a stretch.

[johnnylefthand]

Intelligence is the ability to learn without trial, and error. A ribosome is not intelligent. Nor are plants. And definitely not electrons/quarks/etc. To understand what consciousness is you have to go back to where it started. Like Theseus's ship paradox, you have to understand if the threshold from unconscious to conscious was a moment in time (thus having three parts; before, moment, after), or if there is an "essence" that proceeds an object/person, and comes after the object is gone, something unalienable. Or the third option, every thing is alienable, at any time.

[HyzersGR]

Lex should interview Paul or Patricia Churchland if he wants a closer idea of consciousness.