Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

[vulcanlogician]

I really like Dennett.  He doesn't like the standard categories like functionalism and physicalism, and neither do I.

Nagel's idea is not profound.  To say that being conscious means "there is something that it is like to be that organism" is pretty much just a description of consciousness.  It provides no extra insights to me, though I agree with it.

The only way to understand consciousness is to look at its functionality.  It is a process that produces a filtered narration and a sense of self.  How does it do that?  Looking at the physical nature of the brain, as well as the informational functionalism will get us closer to understanding that.

I really like Dennett too. His ideas about consciousness are cogent and coherent. His idea for how to sort out qualia (investigations in neuroscience) is a good one. (That's Searle's approach too.) However, I think it's a mischaracterization for Dennett to say "everyone has their own definition of qualia" as he does in the above video. I'm sure his critique is more accurate in his published scholarly work. It's understandable to cut corners in pop philosophy... just as Neil deGrasse Tyson describes black holes without resorting to equations... it makes for a better interview.

Nagel and Searle (and I'm sure others) have highly developed definitions of qualia. You aren't doing anything by pointing out that each definition is different. What I'd find more compelling is to chose the strongest (or best developed) idea of qualia and critique that. Furthermore, (again it's a pop phil interview) Dennett doesn't due credence to non-functionalists in that, nearly all metaphysicians acknowledge that mental events are 100% causally explicable by brain events. He acts as if working out where qualia "light up in the brain" will explain qualia. Not necessarily.

I also wholeheartedly endorse Dennett's method of working out precisely what qualia is on the neurophysical side of things. This will inform philosophers' thinking about the matter. I have some trouble seeing how it solves the reducibility problem, but who knows? Maybe it will. Whatever the case, I like Dennett's approach. I like Nagel's approach too. I think both philosophers are working on demystifying the issue, but from different angles.

You appreciate the methodological approach of science right? I know you do. Philosophy has dead ends, back to the drawing board moments, and the occasional erroneous idea... just like science. Gottlob Frege is considered a great philosopher of mathematics even though his ideas hit a dead end. He "took one for the team" so to speak, and we all ended up learning something when he turned out to be wrong.

I brought up ether before as an example of an idea that seemed more plausible to 19th century physicists given what they knew about waves. I think it's a good idea to keep that in mind when speaking of consciousness. Given what we know about the brain and consciousness, functionalism may seem the most plausible. But there ARE unresolved issues, and we should be careful not to conclude anything too hastily. We should constantly test our assumptions. And (like Frege) we shouldn't be afraid to be wrong. Because if someone proves me wrong, I learned something.