Talk:Daniel Dennett

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Contents 1 A Computer of Sorts 2 Pulled Direct Realism Section 3 Email from Dennett 4 Content and consciousness 5 Quote sourcing 6 aldaily.com editor?

[edit] A Computer of Sorts

From Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained"; Little, Brown and Company 1991; ISBN: 0316180661; p. 433.

How could the brain be the seat of consciousness? This has usually been treated as a rhetorical question by philosophers, suggesting that an answer to it would be quite beyond human comprehension. A primary goal of this book has been to demolish that presumption. I have argued that you can imagine how all that complicated slew of activity in the brain amounts to conscious experience. My argument is straightforward: I have shown you how to do it. It turns out that the way to imagine this is to think of the brain as a computer of sorts. The concepts of computer science provide the crutches of imagination we need if we are to stumble across the terra incognita {unknown land} between our phenomenology as we know it by "introspection" {observation or examination of one's own mental and emotional state, mental processes, etc.} and our brains as science reveals them to us. By thinking of our brains as information-processing systems we can gradually dispel the fog and pick our way across the great divide, discovering how it might be that our brains produce all the phenomena. There are many treacherous pitfalls to avoid—such inviting dead ends as the Central Meaner, {subjective} "filling in," and "qualia {intrinsic qualities; a gun can be either 'good' or 'bad'}", for instance—and no doubt there are still some residual confusions and outright errors in the sketch I have provided, but at least we can now see what a path would be like.

Yesselman 22:28, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pulled Direct Realism Section

I just removed the following text:

Some have claimed that Dennett's philosophy possesses elements of Direct realism. One line of evidence is Dennett's well-known opposition to Cartesian materialism, which is a form of Indirect realism. In Consciousness Explained he considers a report of someone looking at the world and describes his idea of the relationship between conscious experience, mind and representation:

It seemed to him, according to the text, as if his mind - his visual field - were filled with intricate details of gold-green buds and wiggling branches, but although this is how it seemed this was an illusion. No such "plenum" ever came into his mind; the plenum remained out in the world where it it didn't have to be represented, but could just be. When we marvel, in those moments of heightened self-consciousness, at the glorious richness of our conscious experience, the richness we marvel at is actually the richness of the world outside, in all its ravishing detail. It does not "enter" our conscious minds, but is simply available (Dennett 1991).

The problem is that nobody's actually claimed this, except for a Wikipedia original researcher named Loxley. Loxley has shown himself to be hostile to Dennett and fairly clueless about Dennett's views, so his opinion is insufficient basis for the inclusion of this text, even if it weren't entirely OR.

Now, if we can find some citations of anyone the least bit relevant and important who thinks Dennett supports Direct Realism, then by all means restore the removed text. Alienus 15:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Email from Dennett

Not long ago, I emailed Dennett to ask him for guidance on this article. In particular I asked:

While it's easy to realize you find fault with Dualism and Cartesian Materialism, we have been struggling a bit to find a concise explaination of what view you ultimately subscribe to, regarding consciousness. One contributor suggested you might be an adherent of direct realism-- is that true?

His reply, in full, was:

Ah me, I find I just cannot, will not, rise to this bait! I have so many quarrels with the ways philosophers try to insist upon framing these issues that I cannot volunteer any categorization of my own view in the terms that are current. I encourage you to quote me to just this effect--to cast doubt (at least a little bit!) on the terms that are now deemed illuminating. I think they are almost all misleading.

So, I guess we can make of this what we will. I feel like Dennett can sometime be an "ink blot" which people can project their own views onto. grumble.. Dennett's such a character. He's so frustrating. LOL. --Alecmconroy 07:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

 :)... have you looked at Don Ross, Andrew Brook, and David Thompson, (eds) "Dennett's Philosophy: A Comprehensive Assessment" MIT Press (2000)? Don Ross describes the book as "A volume of essays that attempts to assess the extent to which Daniel Dennett's work on intentionality, consciousness and evolution "hangs together" as a coherent whole." Maybe it will help... Mikker ^... 07:22, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

<partisan>Yeah, his being right frustrates a lot of people who are wrong.</partisan> Alienus 17:38, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Content and consciousness

First, I want to thank Anthony Mohen for contributing substantively to the article. I just did a cleanup on these additions, and mostly corrected language, but I ran into a section that I'm not sure what to do with. I'm not sure what it's trying to say, so I'm not sure how to fix it so that it says what it's trying to say. For now, I've moved the section here so we can figure this out:

His approach to this project has also remained divided as it was in his thesis into a theory of content and a theory of consciousness. Content and Consciousness is the name of his dissertation, Brainstorms is similarly divided, and his later books The Intentional Stance and Consciousness Explained respectively form the two fullest developments of each half of his project.

Could you explain? Alienus 17:38, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I'm glad to see there's actually recent activity on this article, which has been long overdue for an overhaul. I have some general questions about how this article is structured, what the subject headings should be, etc., but for now it just seemed to me a glaring omission to mention the breakdown of Content/Consciousness which Dennett himself acknowledges as a defining element of his project (whatever you want to call his stance). We should also probably have a subsection on the Intentional Stance itself, and something on the Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness. I also added the evolutionary section, which is probably a little too vague as stated. We may want to cite Orr's review of DDI (and Dennett's response) to flesh out the critique from biologists of his sociobiological prospect. Oh, and memes are a glaring omission, but I don't have the time to draft that section right now. If anyone could look at the syntax for the footnote I included to the Gould article, I would appreciate it - this is the first time I've used that syntax. Thanks.

Regarding the part quoted by Alienus, this is a breakdown Dennett himself describes in several places in print. Content and Consciousness and Brainstorms are both broken into two sections, one accounting for how we produce content, the second developing a related theory of consciousness. This breakdown is then extended into the Intentional Stance, which collects essays about the issue of content, and Consciousness Explained, which is a synthesis of his earlier views into a unified theory of consciousness. I suppose it wasn't entirely clear from those two sentences that he continued to see these as distinct but related projects which he has treated in two parts throughout his career.

Anthony Mohen 12:44, 13 February 2006 (EST)

Okay, I rewrote that section, in a way which I hope is better expressed. If you want to just quote Dennett directly on this point, he lays this same idea out on p. 355 of Brainchildren, but it doesn't strike me as necessary for such a simple statement (although I certainly seem to have botched my attempts to describe it so far). If Alienus or anyone else wants to double check the new text for language/etc., that'd be great.

Anthony Mohen 13:00, 13 February 2006 (EST)

At the moment, the page isn't coming up. It's as if it were somehow deleted. Since I know Wikipedia's been having some problems, I'm hoping this is just a temporary failure.

Your ideas for new sections make sense. Many of the topics already have articles, which would then be converted into forks from this one. The articles also have plenty of material that can be mined for use in summary paragraphs on the main article. Alienus 18:07, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quote sourcing

When formatting the following quote from the article:

[Others] note that my "avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters" often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless--a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors

I noticed it is sourced to "Dennett, 1993", but there is no reference to a 1993 work by Dennett listed in the article. Does anyone know where this quote came from? -Seth Mahoney 22:18, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Google is omniscient. Here Alienus 22:35, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks. -Seth Mahoney 22:42, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, who dug up that awesome picture of him from the 80s? ~Anthony Mohen 18:56, 22 April 2006 (EST)

Check the history: it was Hayford Peirce. Alienus 01:09, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] aldaily.com editor?

I removed the following text from the article:

• Arts & Letters Daily - Art and culture blog run by The Council of Higher Education and edited by Dennett

I visited the site, and while it was interesting and did occasionally mention Dennett, I saw no hint that he edits it. Al 06:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

True. All the content actualy involving Dennett and not simply reviewing or mentioning his work are interviews on other site. --maru (talk) contribs 06:54, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The editor is named on the homepage as Denis Dutton. QED. --Dannyno 11:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)