Consciousness Trilemma

[Edwardo Piet]

He takes exactly the same silly approach with consciousness as he does with free will dude.

To transcript him from here at 21:30 in:





Dennett: [...]In fact one of the abiding themes in my work is--there are these tactical or diplomatic choice points--... you can say... "Oh consciousness exists... it just isn't what you think it is." or you can say "No, consciousness doesn't exist." Well, if you've got one view of consciousness...if it's this mysterious, magical ultimately insoluble problem--then I agree consciousness in that sense [it] doesn't exist. But... there's another sense--much more presentable I think--in which of course consciousness exists it just isn't what you think it is. That was a central theme in Elbow Room with regard to free will and in Consciousness Explained with regard to consciousness. [...]

My bold.

Here is his mistake. Right here where he includes "insoluble" in that list. He thinks that if it's an insoluble it doesn't exist. As far as he is concerned only things that are knowable by science are real. he completely conflates epistemic subjectivity and ontological subjectivity just like Searle says he does. He thinks that because it's subjective then it's not real. But it has a very real reality ontologically, just because it can't be measured objectively epistemically doesn't make it any less real.

He fails to realize that the first person subjective reality is more well known than anything third person in science. Sure we can be complete amateurs with regards to it and completely be mistaken about it... but we can know with 100% absolute certainty that it exists and the fact we are subjectively experiencing something cannot be an illusion.

Something doesn't have to be knowable for it to be non-illusory or existent. An illusion is something that appears to be one way but is another way in objective reality. With consciousness the appearance is the objective reality. Ontological subjectivity

Allow me to quote this again:

Searle has argued that critics like Daniel Dennett, who[ (he claims) insist that discussing subjectivity is unscientific because science presupposes objectivity, are making a category error. Perhaps the goal of science is to establish and validate statements which are epistemically objective, (i.e., whose truth can be discovered and evaluated by any interested party), but are not necessarily ontologically objective.

Searle calls any value judgment epistemically subjective. Thus, "McKinley is prettier than Everest" is "epistemically subjective", whereas "McKinley is higher than Everest" is "epistemically objective." In other words, the latter statement is evaluable (in fact, falsifiable) by an understood ('background') criterion for mountain height, like 'the summit is so many meters above sea level'. No such criteria exist for prettiness.

Beyond this distinction, Searle thinks there are certain phenomena (including all conscious experiences) that are ontologically subjective, i.e. can only exist as subjective experience. For example, although it might be subjective or objective in the epistemic sense, a doctor's note that a patient suffers from back pain is an ontologically objective claim: it counts as a medical diagnosis only because the existence of back pain is "an objective fact of medical science".[49] But the pain itself is ontologically subjective: it is only experienced by the person having it.

Searle goes on to affirm that "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality". His view that the epistemic and ontological senses of objective/subjective are cleanly separable is crucial to his self-proclaimed biological naturalism.

You fail to address any of this because, like Dennett, you are equivocating between ontological and epistemic subjectivity. You conflate the two when they're two completely different senses of the subjective/objective distinction.

Daniel Dennett's mentioning of "insoluble" in that list of a kind of consciousness that according to him doesn't exist that most people believe in, betrays exactly what Searle claims Dennett's view is: that he thinks that because consciousness is subjective it's unscientific to address it so he has to change the definition altogether.

The thing is it doesn't matter how insoluable it is, it still exists. He fails to realize that by addressing something else altogether and calling it "consciousness" he's not addressing consciousness he's addressing "consciousness"... i.e. he's addressing his own silly label. He's addressing something else he chooses to call consciousness.

He may as well bring out another book called "God exists, He just isn't what you think He is."... in which he explains to everyone that what God really is is Dennett's own inability to address the subject. And if you've got one view of God and think it's this silly man in the sky then of course God doesn't exist, but if you recognize that Dennett really does fail to address the subject, since that's what he's calling "God" in his next book (because he, of course, isn't really talking about God because he fails to address the subject) then of course God exists if by "God" we mean his failure to address the subject.

Then his next book will be called "Alternative Mathematics Explained" in which he talks about "Of course 2+2 can equate to 5 if by "2+2" we mean "2.5+2.5" or if by "5" we mean "4".

He's a fucking idiot... well he would be if he didn't make so much cash out of this. When talking about free will in this podcast and he says that Sam Harris is clinging onto some "core part" of what free will is... (because Sam refuses to succumb to Dan's silly re-definition) he says "I've made a career out of saying "that's not the core"".

Yes, Dennett, you've made a career out of it. Pity you've just made a career out of playing silly word games.