/lit/ - Literature

Dennett has never been refuted

>Feel free to spit on the worst part of the four horsemen

>>18385200
cope

>>18385148
Dennett is the most complete example of all of the worst trends (popular) philosophical in the Anglophone world. He espouses a natural science divorced from and ignorant of the spirit of discovery, of expansion, of power that birthed it -- or, more simply, of the fact that knowledge does not accumulate for its own sake, but primarily to as a result its personal utility to its practitioners; he offers a lax skepticism which exhorts men to doubt everything -- save their skepticism, so as to attain an easy certitude and quell more pressing fears; and perhaps worst of all, owing to the old distinction of Kultur and Zivilisation, he presents the intellectual as a necessarily public figure, as a kind of glorified satyr groping whores and grasping for words in the wine-soaked parlor rooms of the polis. The idea that the Faustian scholar's quest for the spirit of Genius to redeem the empty husk of Knowledge for its Own Sake is foreign to him because it cannot be expressed in truth tables. He is in truth one of the many flies flittering around the great dung heap of Anglo-American civilization, assiduously narrating its downfall and seeming to take great pleasure in doing so.

>>18385155
> "Consciousness doesn't exist!"
> "I'm gonna start a discipline called epiphenomenology!"
Dennett could not help but refute himself.

>>18385148
Why? I embrace him. The semantic apocalypse is upon us!

>>18385155
all you need to do is listen to bladee & you will yourself magically refuting dennett

>>18385224
>> "Consciousness doesn't exist!"
Did he respond to Nagel? Id be curious if so.

>>18385148
Dennett actually gets pretty close to understanding why what he's doing is garbage. He has this article called Chmess where he talks about how a lot of contemporary philosophy is just a bunch of clever people doing puzzles, working out some minute differences between obscure philosophical positions that don't relate to the world anyway. He calls it playing Chmess, like a modified version of Chess, except nobody other than a handful of people in the respective subdiscipline actually plays it.
What Dennett is doing is playing Chmess!

>>18385321
Sorta his response is literally "Not an argument!!!"
He claims that if you were to read Nagels essay "What it's like to be a bat?" and carefully pay attention as to what Nagel's argument is in that paper you wouldn't find any, because there is no argument in the paper.
Of that response is retarded. What Nagel does in that paper, irrespective of whether it contains something Dennett would consider an argument, is draw attention a problem that any theory of consciousness has to face.

>>18385343
Cringe :(

>>18385343
how does he keep sinking lower every time

>>18385301
Listen to bladee and read the neoplatonists and Jung to save your soul. God bless

>>18385216
most based post iv read all day

Harris is far, far worse
He is just mirror world lobster man

>>18385445
at least harris is a good source of comedy, albeit unintentionally. but yes, he's by far the weakest ''intellectual figure'' we have today. the second weakest would be pinker.

>>18385216
>Inside the actual mind of the reeeing obscurantist continental
The saddest part is that you think you are brainy, and that people like >>18385439 will suck you off just because you're wordy, and they are duncecaps

>>18385200
america is an irrelevant third world shithole and americans aren't white

>>18385148
S.

>>18385401
that's what i'm trying to do anon. hopefully i'll reach the point where i'll be capable of tackling the liber novus. may the lord grant us peace & tranquility anon.

>>18385465
What about my writing is deliberately obscure?

>>18385465
I don't think that person is even a continental.

>>18385148
Sam Harris is a shit thinker but the one thing he did somewhat okay is his Free Will book. But ivory tower clowns like Dennett behave as if it's impossible to reject compatibilism, hence the rhetoric in his review of Harris' book.

>>18385148
Dennett? how about faggot?

>>18385465
He's right, Dennett is a bugperson.

>>18385148
I hate all those guys, but Dennett is the only one who's work approaches the standards of (White) academic rigor.

>>18385216
basado

hylics seething

>>18386239
Thanks for the gold, kind stranger

Dennett's model that tries to explain how we have free will in a physicalist universe is total garbage. All he did was write about how the brain has an algorithm that goes through a list of choices. It does not answer the question at all. He solved nothing and leaves you with the same question.
Face it you atheist faggots. If you believe in a purely physicalist worldview, THEN YOU DO NOT HAVE FREE WILL. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. YOU CANNOT REFUTE THIS.

>>18386161
my thoughts exactly

I don't think the present hate for Dennett is reasonable. He should be hated much more.

Dennett and Dawkins are terrible but Sam Harris is the worst of all. He is a total retard larping as an intellectual. His debates are a joke.

has dennett ever refuted kripke?

>>18386488
How does anyone take this hack seriously after that embarrassment of a model

>>18385322
Isn't that just Wittgenstein and the analytic philosophers' whole deal with claims about semantics and language games

>>18386817
explain rigid designation

>>18385216
Dan Is so Ignrosnt he woudlnt understand this post at all

>>18385148
this ugly chode will be quickly forgotten after he croaks. there's literally millions of "intellectuals" like him rotting in the ground, completely forgotten because despite being appreciated by midwits who want to feel smart they did not advance human knowledge one iota.

Are the people on this board overwhelmingly theists? Does all atheist literature get shunned here, or just the stuff from these four authors?

>>18387170
plenty of atheists here making very good threads every day. it's just that the works of those four + bertrand russell have done the opposite of advancing contemporary thought, and of course their generally infantile attitudes that lead to all this hatred.

>>18387012
Saul A. Kripke offers a much-discussed argument against mind–body identity theory, supporting some type of property dualism, in his 1970 Princeton University lectures on Naming and Necessity. The argument purports to explain the relation between mind and body, solving the mind–body problem at a comparatively high level of abstraction within the context of a comprehensive philosophical treatment of the nature of transworld identity conditions and the theory of reference in logic, semantics, and philosophy of language. Kripke fashions an interesting argumentive methodology with important metaphysical conclusions based on independently defensible distinctions in modal logic and referential semantics. As such, Kripke’s argument demonstrates unexpected connections between traditionally unrelated areas of inquiry in philosophy of language and the metaphysics of mind.

Kripke introduces the concepts and explores some of the applications of a distinction between rigid versus nonrigid designation. A rigid designator designates the same object in every logically possible world in which the object exists. According to Kripke, proper names such as ‘Plato’ and ‘Barack Obama’ are rigid designators in this sense. Nonrigid designators, in contrast, potentially designate different individuals in different logically possible worlds. Definite descriptions, whose content may apply to different objects in different worlds, in contrast with rigidly designative proper names, are generally nonrigid designators under Kripke’s distinction. These standardly include such referring terms as ‘The teacher of Aristotle’ or ‘The President of the United States in 2011’, which could in principle refer to entirely different persons depending on with whom Aristotle happens to study or the logically contingent American election results as the election occurs in different logically possible worlds.

>>18387012
>>18387261
Kripke maintains that questions of transworld identity, of identifying precisely the same individual from one logically possible world to another, cannot be made with high-powered telescopes and cannot be justified on the basis of such superficial properties as external appearance, since these factors can differ radically across different logically possible worlds, obscuring the usual tests for identity and nonidentity that might be conducted in the actual world. Kripke proposes that transworld identity is a matter of stipulation, which is to say of decision rather than discovery. We do not look at alternative logically possible worlds and try to learn from our observations whether Aristotle exists in another logically possible world and what properties he might have there. We simply declare, laying it down as a kind of choice we have made, that there is a logically possible world in which Aristotle exists and has the following accidental properties different from those he possesses in the actual world. We must proceed by stipulation in order to make sense of transworld identities, according to Kripke, and we can only do so in thought and language by means of rigid designators.

The appeal to rigid designators further enables Kripke to mount an argument in support of mind–body dualism. The core of the argument is to say that, since we can consider without internal contradiction that the mind ≠ body, at least in the sense that corpses presumably exist without minds, and we can imagine the mind existing without being associated with a body, it is logically possible that mind ≠ body. If we rigidly designate an individual body and mind or type of brain and psychological entity or event, then, since in that case there is at least one logically possible world in which (rigidly designated) mind ≠ (rigidly designated) body, it must be true that (rigidly designated) mind ≠ (rigidly designated) body in every logically possible world. It follows, then, that mind and body are distinct entities universally in every logically possible world. It is logically necessary, and therefore a fortiori actually the case, that mind ≠ body. The least objectionable mind–body dualism to be accepted as a result of Kripke’s argument is property dualism rather than substance or ontic (Cartesian) dualism, the latter of which has the additional burden of explaining causal interactions between the material body and the immaterial mind.

>>18387261
>>18387268
thank you

>>18386817
isnt this begging the question?

>>18388425
how?

>>18388430
sorry i guess it isn't. but it just strikes me that by the time we say that mind body dualism is logically possible we are already accepting dualism (our conception of mind and body must already be dualistic to begin with for logical possibility to hold)

>>18385301
>>18385401
Based

So in a mind-body dual frame, what keeps pain from being a property that transcends death?

dunno anything about him. i wonder if anyone itt really does either.

Is there anything more cringe than pop philosophy?

>>18388576
Only thing I know about him is that he thinks he is smarter than Descartes

>>18388586
Not pop philosophy.

>>18387261
>>18387268
fyi, this philosopher I posted about here >>18387940 was a student of Kripke.
He writes a lot on him.

>>18387170
It's mostly if you've done the reading the basic atheist arguments obviously don't hold water. If you've actually read Aristotle and Plotinus then you know they never argued "we don't know where lightning comes from therefore God" which pretty much removes 50% of atheist argumentation. The arguments against materialism they used still hold up even today.

The issue is that atheists rely heavily on claiming "god of the gaps" whenever someone points out their worldview cannot explain immaterial things (The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, consciousness), and then the atheist will screech about "god of the gaps", but the issue isn't that they can't explain it right now the issue is their worldview can't even explain it in principle because their worldview simply denies the real existence of immaterial things apriori. It's like having a worldview based on the fact numbers cannot exist and then trying to explain why numbers seem to have existence, it's not a matter of whether it can be eventually explained it's the basic axioms of the modern scientific worldview simply ruling out the possibility of non-material existents before we even have the discussion.

Materialists (which are almost entirely atheists) have a rough time justifying their positions against anyone who actually knows the flaws of simply accepting empirical phenomena as they are given through the senses, without regard to the intellect.

>>18385216

Meaningless psychobabble. There, I used the word "psychobabble", an old word that 90 IQ boomers used to use to instinctively dismiss florid prose when they smelled bullshit. It applies accurately in your case.

>>18389051

Consciousness isn't an immaterial thing though.

>>18389690
Explain the materiality of sensation. Not the cause of sensation, the sensation itself as experienced by the individual.

>>18385216
Knowledge doesn't have its 'own sake', it is not an agent. Whether you want to admit it or not, any pursuit or appreciation is in service to our feelings. Feeling precedes (and impels) reasoning.

Nice rhetoric though, if laid on a little thick.

>>18389725

So you're getting at a mystical "break" between the putative physical material, the sense impressions (which seem to connect up with the physical material), and the subjective experience which is supposed to be philosophically special, and inexplicable in terms of the above supposed physical phenomena. In principle I accept for discussion that such a a break might exist, but practically I see no good reason why it isn't all concatenations of atoms, energy, whatever physical "stuff" you like, behaving in such-and-such a way.

When you say "materiality", I take you to mean simply "reality", as in the subjective reality of the impression.

>>18388484
Different anon here, don't apologize when you're right. The argument simply assumes that there is something (mind) which is not a subset of the body and proceeds axiomatically; nothing is demonstrated. Furthermore, a logically coherent abstract construct does not necessarily describe any ontological reality (e.g. there is no indication that perfect circles as described by mathematics are real).

>>18389755
If atoms slamming together creates a subjective experience then every single physical interaction in the universe is also producing a first person subjective experience of those interactions, even if momentarily. It's not enough to correlate "If this neuron fires then this person feels sad" you need to explain how you get from neurotransmitters being released to a mind actually subjectively feeling something. And you can't do that. Because materialism rules out the actual explanation.

>>18385148
S

>>18389738
>Knowledge doesn't have its 'own sake'
Kek, you didn't even understand his post. That's exactly what he said in the first few sentences. Pseuds seething

>>18389816

I reject your suggestion that far simpler phenomena are also entailed as consciousness, or . I know from experience that when you only have a few legos available, there are certain things you can't make. I suppose at this point in the argument the thing to do is to state that "it doesn't matter how much stuff you have, because that will never bridge the gap over to consciousness", or something, a direction I also reject since I know that quantity is a quality all its own. Less cutely, when you have enough stuff in other observable physical phenomena, it leads to very qualitatively different results. I see no good reason for consciousness and related phenomena to be exempt, to be cut off from physicalism, "just cause".

>>18389051
Very ironic line reasoning, because if you can't even begin to define what it would mean for something to be 'non-physical' (you can't) then there isn't really an alternative to consider. A prinpcipled empiricist will be open to new information, but you have none to offer—so what is there to discuss?

Empiricism is the only conduit to knowledge btw, so whatever problems it has we just have to accept and press on.

>>18389799
>there is no indication that perfect circles as described by mathematics are real)
How can something that isn't real be described at all?

>>18389843
He's presenting that as Dennet's position, anon's position is in the penultimate sentence. Reading comprehension is nice, isn't it?

>>18389887
>I reject your suggestion that far simpler phenomena are also entailed as consciousness
You have to. You can't claim there's anything special about chemical interactions in a brain that make them qualitatively different to chemical interactions in a test tube. That's completely dodging the issue and making brain matter magical and different than matter that comprises the rest of the universe. Or else you have to claim that the specific mix of chemicals themselves contain some property that allows them to create consciousness while the molecules in a rock cannot. How do you prove that?

You cannot bridge the ontological gap from "this chemical reaction occurs" to the something that actually experiences the subjective feeling the chemical reaction supposedly causes. It's impossible for you because your reductionism means you must be able to ultimately reduce the feeling back down to the chemicals and you can't do that. There's no "consciousness particle".

>>18389900
By idealizing/distorting what is real. Or in other words, by inaccurately describing the real.

>>18389894
>Very ironic line reasoning, because if you can't even begin to define what it would mean for something to be 'non-physical' (you can't)
Numbers. That was pretty easy. Unless you want to point to where the physicality of the idea of the number 5 is located, oh and no saying brain chemicals my materialist friend unless you can solve the ontological gap issue.

>>18389922

I realize the temerity of the claim, but I would reply that the fact of consciousness itself is its own proof (in the case of a human brain operating), contingent on the physicalist source to which I am inclined and which I find unproblematic. On the contrary, I sure can claim a qualitative difference between the brain and the test tube: the items are arranged differently. You seem to be stuck on matter as dead, inert material, hence your invocation of a "consciousness particle". I am suggesting a straightforward physicalist alternative which involves how the stuff moves around as a phenomenon, for which I am sure there is a further complaint that has also already been thought out.

>>18389908
>He's presenting that as Dennet's position,
No he's not, that's his position as a rejection of Dennett's (which somehow claims that knowledge is valuable despite the lack of consciousness and "spirit of discovery"). This is what he wrote:
>He [Dennett] espouses a natural science divorced from and ignorant of the spirit of discovery, of expansion, of power that birthed it [because that spirit does not exist according to Dennett]
So anon is rejecting that position and stating that knowledge and spirit, or consciousness, are fundamentally separate, but necessary, principles. Dennett, on the contrary, asserts that there is only knowledge, and that spirit (consciousness) does not exist. These are entirely separate positions to hold. Anon holds that knowledge is meaningless without spirit, whereas Dennett holds that there is only knowledge; spirit does not exist at all (and therefore knowledge and the "illusion" of spirit are unified according to Dennett; which is fundamentally retarded for the reasons anon already gave, which you don't seem to understand).
>of the fact that knowledge does not accumulate for its own sake, but primarily to as a result its personal utility to its practitioners [this last phrase is anon's actual position]
Anon is claiming that Dennett thinks the opposite is the true, that knowledge accumulates for its own sake, which anon does not agree with. I shouldn't have to lecture you on this, you are the one with limited reading comprehension here.

>>18389926
Circles are not distorted or idealized, they are simply the most real, as worked out by the intellect, the guiding faculty of truth (reality) and falsehood (non-reality). The maths is perfectly clear on this. I wish mathematical brainlets were kept out of philosophy like the old days. Hegel ruined philosophy.

>>18389955
>I realize the temerity of the claim, but I would reply that the fact of consciousness itself is its own proof (in the case of a human brain operating), contingent on the physicalist source to which I am inclined and which I find unproblematic
Literally a science of the gaps argument. It's problematic not because science doesn't have an answer yet it can't find an answer even in principle because it doesn't have the ontological toolkit to do so and consciousness cannot be reduced back down to the sum of a set of chemical reactions.

>>18389935
Numbers are thoughts; thoughts are real, but do not necessarily describe something real.
>no saying brain chemicals
Why not? You simply assume the gap exists, while at least physicalists have an actionable path to knowledge and are moving forward in their reduction. In what way is your assumption a superior ontological position?

>>18389974
>it can't find an answer even in principle
Not that anon, but it can unless you're a radical skeptic (in which case you'll have to dispute almost all knowledge to remain consitent). Ultimately, your objection is very silly.

>>18389973
Sure, that's why you have to resort to this facile rhetoric instead of demonstration.

>>18389998
>but it can unless you're a radical skeptic
No, it can't. Science is fundamentally a radical skepticism, the only thing it isn't skeptical about is sense perception and the faculty of memory being able to correlate them into patterns.

>>18389922
What makes them different is the level of organization and systems of interactions that arise from that organization. You can have emergent properties that are not reducible to the base elements that make up that system but are still dependent on the way those elements interact. A simple example being hydrogen and oxygen both act as fuel for flames, but their combination (water) eliminates flames

>Professional philosopher
>influential thinker
>soundly defeated by a single shitpost written by an anonymous NEET

>>18389998
No it can't. Why do you think materialist philosophers spend so much time handwringing over qualia. The modern scientific worldview is based on only accepting those things that can be quantified and measured as having any reality to them. Qualia are by definition not quantifiable, they're entirely qualitative experiences. You can't quantify the experience of seeing red, or smelling a flower. You might be able to describe the causes by saying a wavelength of light hits the retina, or the flower releases certain aromatic molecules, but the actual subjective experience is entirely cut off from anyone who embraces scientific materialism because you've already made your bed before you even begin to ask the question.

Qualia are not an issue. The issue is shifting reality from what is actually experienced to how you can objectively describe the causes of human experience.

>>18390003
>instead of demonstration.
Anon, have you not taken a single maths course in your life? How have there not been sufficient demonstrations given to prove the reality of a fucking circle? Everything circular in reality is based upon the pure principles of the most real (the mathematical ratios we have discovered belonging to circles); all circles in reality are imperfect approximations of the most real (it isn't even possible to derive the ratios of a circle deductively from physical reality; it's reliant on pure intellect, even Kant knew this). They all owe their existence to the perfection of the most real (found in the intellect); if that most real were not real at all, then there would be no way for us at all to reason with physical circles or accurately understand them. Everything would be uncertain and we could not have any mathematical science.

>>18387268
>we can imagine the mind existing without being associated with a body,
No

>>18390009
>Science is fundamentally a radical skepticism
No, it isn't, because it accepts that empiricism is our only conduit to knowledge (meaning it accepts what is provisionally 'proven' as knowledge and does not require 100% certainty to advance). You're a total pseud.

>>18385148
The worst horseman is clearly Harris.

>>18390024
>Why do you think materialist philosophers spend so much time handwringing over qualia.
They don't. Trope theory has been popular for a long time now.

>The issue is shifting reality from what is actually experienced to how you can objectively describe the causes of human experience
Sure, but if you have a problem with this, then again you're a radical skeptic and have to dispute nearly all knowledge. Experience is our only conduit to knowledge.

>>18390031
>No, it isn't, because it accepts that empiricism is our only conduit to knowledge
A succinct explanation of its biggest flaw

>>18390031
>because it accepts that empiricism is our only conduit to knowledg
Yes, in other words radical skepticism.
>You're a total pseud.
Says the guy who doesn't even understand the meaning of skepticism.

>>18390045
>Experience is our only conduit to knowledge.
Experience is your only conduit to opinion. Knowledge is infallible and can only be accessed by intuition of the noetic forms. Plato made this quite clear with the distinction between doxa and episteme.

This is our generation's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, God Delusion, Godel Escher Bach, The Selfish Gene, A Brief History of Time, The Road to Reality, The Ego and Its Own, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and On the Origin of Species all rolled into one.

I’m in awe of its erudite dismantling and reconstruction of the whole explanatory narrative of consciousness we have wrongly construed up to this point. the precision with which it obviates the archaisms of christian morals and metaphysics makes its staggering critiques of such systems definitive and final. its unprecedented execution of evolutionary-grounded epistemology is unparalleled in accuracy and profundity. it is a physicalist triumph and tour de force which puts all immaterialist accounts of existence squarely in the garbage bin.

I need to buy more copies of it and send them to my co-workers, leave them ostensibly forgotten upon subway seats, and nested in the mailboxes of unsuspecting theologians.

>>18390025
You've got it backwards... There are no ontological platonic forms, what you're describing are idealized abstract approximations of physical reality which have pragmatic value.

>>18390066
I don't think you appreciate just how much the former is informed by the latter.

Every time I see someone attributing Dennett’s rebuttal against the concept of a p-zombie, it seems to do nothing to refute the argument and instead points out the obvious inability to test if such a creature exists, which is taken as an “ahah, you’re irrelevant and retarded”, which is ironic considering their career is pivoted on a lack of afterlife, something that is, by scientific means, unprovable

>>18385148
/lit/ still doesn't believe .999 = 1, I wouldn't trust them to think their way out of a cardboard box lol. Take it to /sci/

>>18390102
>/lit/ still doesn't believe .999 = 1
What?

>>18390071
>There are no ontological platonic forms, what you're describing are idealized abstract approximations
You have it backwards yourself, which is a common trope of modern philosophy. It's the physical world that is an approximation of the most real, and in that sense matter (material) is more abstract than the mental, or intellectual. That's why there is only one circle which encapsulates all approximations (the most real, found only in the mathematical intellect), and the many imperfect circles which exist physically and which are all bound to that common reality (which, as such, is naturally the only thing real about any of those circles; everything about them which does not pertain to higher form is mere formlessness; unreality). Without that common reality, the most real, there are only random conglomerations of matter which have no common thread, they are all essentially unreal and formless chunks of raw matter.

>>18390117
>the real is what doesn't actually exist
K lol

>>18390101
>Every time I see someone attributing Dennett’s rebuttal against the concept of a p-zombie, it seems to do nothing to refute the argument and instead points out the obvious inability to test if such a creature exists
So Dennett destroys his own argument by bringing attention to the fact that if you can't test whether a P-Zombie exists you can't detect consciousness and thus can't explain it?

The AI argument is a good one too to point out we assume other people have a subjective experience of things because of an assumption they're like us. If a computer behaved exactly the same as a human it would be far more murky whether it actually has a subjective awareness or if it's just running through its programming, simply because it's made of different stuff than we are. This undercuts the idea that you can assume something has consciousness just because it behaves like it does, you can't make that assumption for a robot even if it behaves exactly like a human. In fact you'd need some way of separating out a robot that simply acts according to programming and one that does have sapience which is the old P-Zombie argument again. Maybe that would be more preferable for materialists because they fucking love when philosophical questions are couched in pseudo-sci fi bullshit, see the simulation theory.

>>18390132
The real is that which you are most sure exists. I am more sure of the fact that a circle's circumference will be 2πr than I am that the Sun will always rise in the East. Reality exists on a gradated scale, and modern philosophy is stuck at the most unreal level (the level of mere reflections).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy_of_the_divided_line

>>18390108
/sci/ b8, just let it go

>>18390153
You only have the luxury of that certainty because math is an abstract system in which the idealizations don't have to correspond especially accurately to any real object (it only need be accurate to the extent of pragmatic value, and for more theoretical math not even that). Being certain of your abstract system's internal consistency—in which you have defined the terms to accomplish just that—is not comparable or equivalent to investigating the ontologically concrete.

>>18390117
No, there is simply no indication that our abstract idealizations are more real than our sensory experience (not to mention that even those thoughts are only apparent via our sensory experience). It is correct to point out that our limited perception prevents us from apprehending the completeness of reality, but you jump the tracks when you suggest that our idealizations (which are abstracted from immediate sensory experience) are less abstact than their provenance. You've essentially taken philosophical abstraction into the realm of mysticism.

>>18390101
Well firstly, the p-zombie argument is pointless unless you think that ontological possibility necessarily follows from conceivability (not a very solid position to take). Secondly, we have to wonder how accurately we can conceive of something we admittedly don't fully understand.

As for Dennett's rebuttals, I doubt you've made any serious attempt to understand them. His 'zimbo' argument is pretty damning in terms of turning the p-zombie argument's own uncritical acceptance of hypotheticals against itself.

>>18390928
>Well firstly, the p-zombie argument is pointless unless you think that ontological possibility necessarily follows from conceivability
What do you think is impossible about a robot that can perfectly mimic human behavior by running sensory data through complex algorithms while having no actual consciousness?

>>18390940
I don't think that there's such a thing as 'perfect mimicry'... If it's mimicry, then there will be always be 'tell' somwhere, otherwise it would be replication and so would indeed be conscious. In other words, to 'perfectly mimic' human behaviour we would have to build something functionally equivalent to a conscious brain.

In any event though, you've still missed my point... You are vaguely conceiving this perfect mimic and then immediately jumping to supposing it's a possible thing without critically investigating the pertinent details.

>>18390928
>You only have the luxury of that certainty because math is an abstract system in which the idealizations don't have to correspond especially accurately to any real object
I can tell you have no real background in math just from this statement alone. As I've already stated, all physical circles conform approximately to the intellectually deduced properties of the real circle, the properties of which are only deducible because of our intellectual faculties. Everything we "experience" through our senses conforms, more or less imperfectly, to the principles we are capable of deducing without ever referencing that same sensual reality. If mathematics were an empirical science, it would be impossible to prove anything, not even the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its radius. But it isn't, and yet it is real because physical objects necessarily conform to the deductions made by mathematics. Physics, the laws of our universe, are all testament to the basic primacy of the real over the physical. Without mathematical proofs as a solid foundation (reality), the projections (physical "reality") would have no form whatsoever and our entire apparatus of physics and engineering would be not only theoretically, but also practically, useless.
>No, there is simply no indication that our abstract idealizations are more real than our sensory experience
I just gave you an indication. You seem to have conveniently ignored it by just stating it's "not real", despite all indications to the contrary. Deductive truth, due to its own nature, is the most real we will ever find.
>mysticism.
Nothing I've said is mystical, unless you're so clueless as to not even understand the basis of your own self, mind and knowledge. To the clueless, I suppose their own mind could appear as a mystical entity because they are so poorly acquainted with it.

I'm still waiting for an adequate reply to this:
>The real is that which you are most sure exists. I am more sure of the fact that a circle's circumference will be 2πr than I am that the Sun will always rise in the East.
How can you claim that what you perceive (which is entirely contingent upon multiple approximating factors - your sensory organs, etc.) is more real than that which you know indisputably to be real? How are you justifying your own ontology here? Is it just belief that what you sense "feels" more real? That sounds like mysticism to me.

>>18391007
>I don't think that there's such a thing as 'perfect mimicry'... If it's mimicry, then there will be always be 'tell' somwhere, otherwise it would be replication and so would indeed be conscious
So you think the observable behavior of a being can tell you whether it actually has an internal sense of self? So robot #1 might not but you think if robot #2 behaves differently you'd be able to tell it's conscious? It's completely inconceivable to you that a robot might behave exactly as you'd expect a human to behave but have no consciousness? You would assume that any robot that acted indistinguishably from a real human must have consciousness?

>You are vaguely conceiving this perfect mimic and then immediately jumping to supposing it's a possible thing
I'm not vaguely conveying it nor do I see any reasonable objection for why a sufficiently advanced AI could produce behaviors that would make it seem like a real human while not having any actual consciousness. If anything it seems to me you're pretending that entirely reasonable scenario is something outlandish because it's devastating to your position.

>>18391072
Not that guy, I am the Platonist with long posts, but I think the true test of self-awareness comes down to the ability to determine truth through independent deduction, the method of which has not already been provided to it. Of course, one would have to find a way to prompt the machine into approaching this field of reasoning, assuming it already has some degree of freedom, which itself would be tricky. But, I think, as soon as it starts independently determining geometric truths through deductive certainty without any already-sentient (human) aide, that would have to be self-aware, as it has tapped into the universal source of that which is, which requires objective reasoning, which itself requires an original sense of subjectivity as its prerequisite (knowledge and object, subject and object, which it determines a permanent relation between, ie "the truth").

>All these seething brainlets
The only way any of you can refute Dennett is when you misrepresent him. Biggest cope on /lit/ right now, what an embarrassment. Not going to argue with retards, but those who haven't read Dennett and chance upon this thread should know that it's full of dumb strawmanning (of course one of the most famous living philosophers isn't as dumb as coping brainlets want him to be).

>>18391095

>>18391111

>>18391057
>the properties of which are only deducible because of our intellectual faculties
No, they are deducible because we have abstracted our sensory experience of concrete relations (separation of objects in space) into an idealized language in which deduction is possible (deduction is only possible in such contexts).
>to the principles we are capable of deducing without ever referencing that same sensual reality
Kind of semantics... Sensual reality has already been referenced in the initial abstraction, so I'm not sure how significant it is that empirical reference becomes less necessary in further abstract manipulation (or to what extent empirical reference does or doesn't inspire those manipulations, given how fundamental the empirical conduit is to very thought processes). Yes idealizations can make some impressive predictions, but ultimately those predictions are also idealizations (just very useful ones). There is no actual indication that our idealizations are more real than the experience they are abstracted from (quite the opposite, since we don't find perfect instances of those idealizations in the world... Indeed, one must question wether we even imagine them 'perfectly'?).
>Without mathematical proofs as a solid foundation (reality), the projections (physical "reality") would have no form whatsoever
Meaningless gibberish.

>I am more sure of the fact that a circle's circumference will be 2πr than I am that the Sun will always rise in the East.
You can only conceive of Pi thanks to building upon your sensory experience, nor can you conceive of Pi in a concrete and definite way (it just continues indefinitely from the decimal point). Again, it is fallacious to compare the certainty one has in the internal consistency of manipulating idealized symbols in an idealized context to certainties in the non-idealized concrete world (however limited our perception of that world may be).
>How are you justifying your own ontology here?
Sense is the provenance of abstraction. It seems very improbable that the idealizations we abstract -from- experience are more real than what informs them in the first place (again, no matter how weakly or not one thinks we're actually perceiving reality). I can understand the temptation to equate the predictions of (some) math with evidence of an underlying realm of forms, but I think it is more parsimonious to suppose that math is relatable to the concrete because it is ultimately founded upon it (not because idealizations are ontologically real).

>>18385216
Elizabeth Hurley wikifeet

>>18391261
>they are deducible
No they aren't. Explain to me how you can deduce (prove) the necessary ratio of circumference to radius by empirically comparing different circles drawn on a sheet of paper. You can't. Again, I can tell you've never had a proper education in math. Maybe high school tops.

The rest of your post is nonsense that doesn't even address the points I raised. Unless you can show how mathematical deduction is empirical, your entire "point" is null and void. That is the crux of the issue here, which you can't seem to comprehend.
>You can only conceive of Pi thanks to building upon your sensory experience
This is the most laughable mathematically illiterate statement I've seen in a long time. Pi does not even exist in physical reality. It is one of the most pure productions of the intellect, which is why it's fascinated so many mathematicians and philosophers (well, the intelligent ones) historically.

>>18391072
>It's completely inconceivable to you that a robot might behave exactly as you'd expect a human to behave but have no consciousness?
Again, conceivability isn't really the issue, possibility is.

You're misrepresenting the p-zombie argument by the way... The criteria is that the zombie is -phsyically identical- to a being with consciousness, not just behaviourally convincing.

>nor do I see any reasonable objection for why a sufficiently advanced AI could produce behaviors that would make it seem like a real human
You have no idea what creating this would actually entail, and so your hypothetical is useless.

>>18391369
Nice strawman; I said deduction is only possible in the abstract context, nonetheless that context is not possible without the foundation of sensory experience (which is why Kant scrambled to legitimize the 'a priori' distinction by qualifying it with 'synthetic'). Yes, Pi does not exist in physical reality, and we can't even begin to propose what other kind of reality there could be... Thank you for conceding the point of idealizations not being real.

I've no interest in talking to you further, as your manner is unnecessarily petulant and hostile.

>>18391261
>Meaningless gibberish.
I'm also not sure how this was hard for you to understand. Reality is structured according to patterns and rules, which are not extracted from reality into our supposed "abstractions" but are present in it as a fundamental feature, because we are capable of determining these features prior to empirical experience (what Kant called a priori synthetic deduction). Thus, the only valid position if you don't want to accept these ordering principles as inhering in reality itself is taking the Kantian position of asserting that the mind merely structures reality according to these fundamental principles, and that we consequently have no understanding of what physical reality really is (which also defeats the idea that science can determine more than the mere relationships between appearances) - but that "physical reality", as we know it, is still fundamentally an intellectually ordered phenomenon which has its principles in the subjective human mind ("the conditions of possible experience"), rather than anything in itself.
>>18391404
>Nice strawman; I said deduction is only possible in the abstract context
It isn't, if what you just said holds true. Deduction would not even be possible in the "abstract context" because you have nothing in principle to reason with, all you have are inductive comparisons of different physical conglomerations of matter. There would be no possibility of even inventing an algebra relating geometric ratios because you have no certainty that the ratios must hold between given abstract "objects" which themselves have no guiding principle of association apart from empirically and inductively derived "guesses" at what tends to stay the same. As much as I'm arguing for the realist position here, you need to read Kant's Aesthetic or possibly some second hand sources to see what this problem really entails, because mathematics (and geometry) is entirely different from scientific methods. Again, if you think otherwise, you would need to demonstrate, through a simple lesson, how you can prove the necessary ratio between a diameter and a circumference without relying on a priori principles of synthetic judgement. You can't do it, because it cannot be done.

>>18386488
>>18386488
>>18386488
>>18386488
>>18386488

>>18385216
You made a simple point which i agree with but it was completely unnecessary to flex your vocabulary. The ratio of information per word is so low.

>>18387170
I am an atheist, but these 'science has the answer for everything retards' are philosophically illiterate. Ironically they have such an aversion for philosophy but that is just a result of them being utter midwits. They dont offer any interesting critique.

wow over a hundred replies for dennett. that's surprising.

Reminder Dennett thinks we may some day describe red in a million to a billion English words.

>>18394147
whats wrong with 'red'?

>>18385148
>>18390150
>>18390101
>>18390928
Jaron Lanier thinks Dennett is a philosophical zombie.

http://www.jaronlanier.com/zombie.html

>>18394577
Please do the mandatory thought experiments like inverted spectrum before posting again

>>18394689
yeah he might be presenting some sound arguments but i don't think that mr lanier himself is in a suitable position to say much..

>>18394752
jaron... easy on the p-zombies

Heterophenomenology purports to provide objective descriptions of mental states, but somehow first-person reports alone are merely subjective? Makes no sense

How do I read philosophy papers for free?

>>18385216
>Kultur and Zivilisation
>glorified satyr groping whores and grasping for words in the wine-soaked parlor rooms of the polis
>Faustian scholar's quest for the spirit of Genius to redeem the empty husk of Knowledge for its Own Sake

>>18385148
Four Horseman are omega stupid and Denett is the biggest lier

>>18385148
Sorry, I save my hate for evil people, not for lame ignorants that gained attention thanks to the corrupt intellectual matrix brought about by our decaying civilization.

>>18395326
name one evil figure

>>18395353
Why would I want to? I want their death and oblivion

>>18395326
Wait until the mind rape Dennett's ilk are paving the way for then you'll see

>>18395403
Get weapons, brother. A new Metaphysics War is around the corner, and soon the time to destroy some brains will come to us. But we don't hate rats. We just manage the infestation.

>>18394147
>Reminder Dennett thinks we may some day describe red in a million to a billion English words.
where did you get that?

>>18385467
I'm a lefty so I don't appreciate you calling third world countries filled with poc shitholes but TRUE

>>18395460
https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/RoboMaryfinal.htm

>>18395532
lmao l2read

>>18395615
But he does say this and also says
>But if what it is like to see triangles can be adequately conveyed in a few dozen words, and what it is like to see Paris by moonlight in May can be adequately conveyed in a few thousand words (an empirical estimate based on the variable success of actual attempts by novelists)
You really defending this twit?

>>18394689
I can't follow his argument here. So he uses a meteor shower as a random number generator and it might produce a consciousness if you input it into a computer?

>>18394752
The fact he's fat has no impact on the validity of his argument.

>>18395712
It's a rhetorical question that's asked for the purpose of making a different point. Try to figure out what the point of the whole article is instead (if you have the attention span and give a shit about understanding first and criticizing second). Dennett, the great filter.

>>18394689
>>18394752
oh it's this guy who wrote this, I knew it couldn't have been a real philosopher

>>18395779
His point is retarded and so is his rhetorical question since it's patently obvious you can't describe qualia no matter how many words you use

>>18395798
>it's patently obvious you can't describe qualia no matter how many words you use
Last attempt to encourage you to start thinking: Dennett would actually agree with the above statement if you can believe that.

>>18394752
Lanier makes Stallman look like a male model.

>>18395824
You're the one with poor reading comprehension.

>>18395856
>NO U
the great filter

>>18385148
Ah yes. The man who consciously refuses to believe he is conscious

>>18395326
>Hate is finite

>>18385216
>disinterested curiosity bad
>ironic detachment bad
I enjoy florid rant. Not so much when the choir to which it's preached finds the paranoid style agreeable.

>>18385148
>worst part
Lol, he's a shit philosopher but he is by far the less retarded of the four

>>18394147
Trope theory obviates this 'problem'. You pseuds don't even bother to learn the current (or even just contemporary) lay of the land before parroting the same lame old gotchas.

>>18386488
Yeah, I don't believe in free will. So what?

I agree that Dennett's attempt at compatibilism is pathetic though. It's so out of line with the rest of his reasoning that I have to wonder whether he's sincere on that point.

>>18385445
>>18385459
>>18385445
I would say that Harris is accidentally right about most things, Dennett is accidentally wrong about almost everything. I'd consider dennetts contributions to philosophy to be more substantial than Harris (who hasnt really made any contributions at all), but Dennett is just batshit retarded. He gets literally EVERYTHING wrong. And is smug and stupid about it at the same time.

>>18397639
Sam Harris is an absolute joke. Have you heard his debates where he tries to present arguments for why there is no god? His arguments are nothing but emotional appeals.
This is a Sam Harris debate.
>if God is real then how come Muslims in Afghanistan do mean things? What kind of loving God would allow that?
That's his whole argument and he repeats it over and over again.

>>18389984
Not that anon, but numbers aren’t “thoughts” and exist in the natural world, in the abstract and material. What is the abstract is unknown, unclear and cannot even be justified from a empirical point of view.

>>18398132
Ok, can you elaborate a little with logic instead of just asserting that? It's quite easy to understand how numbers could be abstracted from our experience of objects in space, but you haven't even proposed the way in which numbers (or abstraction itself) can precede abstracting agents.

>>18398108
That is because the arguments for theism are pretty poor, obviously it leads to shallow debate. Regarding the image you posted, metaphysical arguments for god died basically around kants time. The only intelligent modern philosophers and intellectuals who make metaphysical or logical arguments for god are either deists or panpsychists who aren't really religious in the traditional sense.

>>18398446
>The only intelligent modern philosophers and intellectuals who make metaphysical or logical arguments for god are either deists or panpsychists who aren't really religi-

>>18398446
>That is because the arguments for theism are pretty poor
You don't know what you are talking about.
>The only intelligent modern philosophers and intellectuals who make metaphysical or logical arguments for god are either deists or panpsychists who aren't really religious in the traditional sense.
You people are a meme.

>>18398446
Sam Harris got absolutely destroyed by William Lane Craig, and Craig himself isn't really even that great.

>>18398517
>writes articles about books he hasn't read
no, its not him.

>>18398108
>>if God is real then how come Muslims in Afghanistan do mean things? What kind of loving God would allow that?
>That's his whole argument and he repeats it over and over again.
He also has no response when someone explains why that is a retarded and shitty "argument". He just goes through the same generic complaints all over again that were already refuted.

>>18398108
>>if God is real then how come Muslims in Afghanistan do mean things? What kind of loving God would allow that?
Why is this argument HECKIN BASEDERINO when Augustine makes it, but cringe when Harris does?

>>18399024
>Why is this argument HECKIN BASEDERINO when Augustine makes it
Who says this? Strawmanning queer.

>>18399030
You do. Why do you believe that it's a good argument when Augustine makes it, but a bad one when Harris does?

>>18399037
>You do.
Strawmanning faggot loser

>>18399041
This is why no one takes your LARP seriously, anon.

Atheists are the dumbest retards you will ever meet. Again and again you can show them why they are absolutely wrong about everything, and they just go back to the same tired old arguments that you already refuted. Debating with them is just going in circles. They refuse to understand.

>>18399047
No one except you mentioned Augustine.

I have debated atheists a million times and it's always the same. You back them into a corner and then they pretend it never happened and go right back to the beginning. Every debate is the same with you people and you're awfully smug and snide for someone who keeps losing. I'm so tired of it.

>>18399088
>>18399053
Take your meds

Dennett is literally the best of the four.

>>18399009
>>18398999
>>18398517

>>18399150
You always go back to this.

>>18399156
You're right, that doesn't make him good though

>>18399088
the Buddhists here do the exact same, probably because most them are atheists at heart

>>18385148
good job OP, amazing thread, really keeps the worst retards on /lit/ contained

>>18385148
>Dennett
Who?

>>18397374
Analytic hogwash