Daniel Dennett lecture on Consciousness

[soon2bepro]

Nice video, he says some interesting things, but I expect this subject is too much for today's minds. Maybe a couple generations from now.

In any case, I think he could've made it easier for the feeble-minded (ahem, theists and such) to understand his point. I don't think he did a good job at this.

[soon2bepro]

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What's with the picture anyway?

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I believe the guy is telling the woman that it's good to go,after fixing her car; or rather he's telling her to "try it now", as is the name of the pic.

[hexag1]

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...the massive picture which stretches out the whole thread and makes it look atrocious at any reasonable resolution.

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looks fine on my screen. 1280x1024 Firefox

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What's with the picture anyway?

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Kids in the Hizall

[DougShrapnel]

Great Video, Dennet is the leading authority on Consciousness, and i really enjoy hearing his musings on the subject. However, I don't really understand how Dennett goes from optical illusions and magic tricks, to the mind is nothing more then the brain. Could someone explain that for me, and why it's important or why there is enough data available for him to speculate at this time?

[im a model]

i didnt find the video very remarkable or enlightening. and he talks so damn slowly and gives so many needless examples i just want to punch him in the face. did you guys really learn anything by watching it? the whole first 40 minutes seemed completely unnecessary, and then the conclusion was just a couple of thoughts that anyone who has spent anytime thinking about conciousness or even ontology or existentialism has already realized.

but seriously is he trying to waste time with crap like, "the brain has a lot of different sections as you can see in this diagram--like section V1, or, here, section V2, and V3. the list goes on, like here, V5. or up here, see, V6, all the way to V7 and V8, for example. V9 you can see in the diagram. V10 and V11, the list goes on...." what the hell.

[hexag1]

Yeah, the video doesn't really go into as much detail as his books do. I recommend them to you, but be warned that they are difficult books.
Basically, Dennett has been locked in a philosophical debate with other theorists about consciousness for years. His opponents are all convinced that consciousness has irreducible properties that can't be explained by conventional science. Many of them subscribe to dualism, the idea that what makes you conscious is something that is beyond the physical world, like a soul. Unfortunately for them, this idea has been exploded by decades of neuroscience. This is not unlike the Michelson-Morley experiment, that debunked the idea of a lumineferous ether that was suppposedly the medium for light to travel in. The idea of dualism still persists in debates about how consciousness works. It also taints the discussion because much the terminology for discussing consciousness was developed when dualism was still a valid idea.
Now Dennet is arguing for a new mode of thinking, and has introduced some new terms into the discussion that will help [he says] philosophers and scientists get around this problematic thinking about mind.
One of the main points is about what Dennet calls 'the Cartesian theater'. The question is, at what point in your brain would a perception (sensory or otherwise) become conscious? Is there a physical point in the brain? the hippocampus? frontal lobe? where? No one seems to have found it. But if they did, the question would still remain. How is that organ conscious? Dennet argues that the idea that there is a center of consciousness in the brain, a single part of it that makes the conscious part happen, is merely an illusion. Thats where the magic tricks come in.

[DougShrapnel]

I'm not a dualist. Futhermore, any phenomenon of higher activity of consciousness(C) above the brain level must be part of physics. I don't think that a part of the brain must be responsible for C. As opposed to the whole of the brain. If you remove part of the brain any part really C is damaged. I agree with him that there isn't a part of the brain responsible for C, my disagreement, and I of course tread lightly here, is the C is more than just brain parts. That C is an emergent phenomenon that has different properties then its constituates.

[hexag1]

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I'm not a dualist. Futhermore, any phenomenon of higher activity of consciousness(C) above the brain level must be part of physics. I don't think that a part of the brain must be responsible for C. As opposed to the whole of the brain. If you remove part of the brain any part really C is damaged. I agree with him that there isn't a part of the brain responsible for C, my disagreement, and I of course tread lightly here, is the C is more than just brain parts. That C is an emergent phenomenon that has different properties then its constituates.

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this is semi-close to what dennett is arguing. the only part that jumps out at me is where you say that consciousness is damaged when part of the brain is removed. What part and how big? there are epilepsy patients that have had whole hemispheres of the brain removed, and they are still walking/talking people.

[DougShrapnel]

Yes, you can remove the frontal lobe and have a walking talking person. But that person generally loses the ability to think about the future. There is likely a reason why everyone with minor epileptic seizures don't have part of the brain removed. There is some function loss, or possibility of function loss. But these types of findings have little bearing on mind vs brain. In particular they can't falsify the C > just brain conjecture.

[hexag1]

can you clarify what you mean by the C> just brain ? do you mean that consciousness is more than the physical reality of brain tissues and their workings?