/lit/ - Literature

>>20881220
Okay, nice Santa Claus pic, but what is your favorite work by Nick Land?

>>20881294
lmao

Dennett: So you see, consciousness is of course merely an illusion.

Socrates: I see. But, simplify this for me, I do not understand. What do you mean by “illusion”?

Dennett: Of course, good Socrates, an illusion is an appearance that is contrary to reality.

Socrates: That is well, but I still desire clarification about “appearance.”

Dennett: Appearance is how an object is perceived by an observer.

Socrates: I understand. So, consciousness is an appearance perceived by an observer contrary to reality.

Dennett: No, Socrates, that is not right. There is no observer to consciousness, as this would be another consciousness.

Socrates: Then you contradict yourself, Dennett. For if consciousness be an illusion, there would yet be another consciousness observing this illusion, and how could this second awareness be unreal?

>>20881220

>>20881220
>philosopher
>important
???????????

>>20881220
You mean picrel?

>>20881220
embarassing redditman

>>20881892
based Italian man making everyone seethe

Dennett: it seems you have misunderstood me, Socrates.

Socrates: How so?

Dennett: Let me ask some questions and perhaps my meaning will become clear.

Socrates: Go ahead.

Dennett: When you see a mirage in the desert, what causes you to say that it is an illusion and not, in fact, water?

Socrates: Because it looks like water and yet there is no water there.

Dennett: I think we can both agree that this describes the illusory quality of water. Now, what is the difference between the appearance of water, and water itself?

Socrates: if I were to try to drink a mirage, I would only taste sand; if I were to try to drink water, I would recognize it’s tasteless taste and it would quench my thirst.

Dennett: indeed. Now, would you say that, when you look out into the world, everything you see is contained in one cohesive field? Such that, vision is not some chaos of dots and pigments, but a unified whole?

Socrates: in most cases, it would seem so.

Dennett: And you would think that, from this appearance, consciousness would be happening all in one place and at one time, much in the same way that the sight of water is an indication of its texture and taste and all the other properties it holds?

Socrates: it would seem so.

Dennett: So, following this inference, one would think consciousness happens all in one place and at one time, and that if one were to study the origins of consciousness, the theater in which it happens, the brain, then one would find a unified field?

Socrates: Admittedly.

Dennett: And yet, like a mirage, whose appearance betrays a belief in water’s other properties, such as its taste and texture and causal powers, the components of vision and perception can be found to not reside in the same area, nor process sensations at the same time.

>>20883743
vision and perception aren’t consciousness you NPC brainlet, they are what consciousness is aware or

>>20883906
*is aware of

Santa-san!?

>>20883906
They are an aspect of consciousness, retard, in the same way that cognition, awareness, attention, nociception are.

>>20881220
That's not John Deely

>>20881220
What’s one contribution from him that’s going to last?

Read some Robert Brandom and see some actually important work

>>20883743
So "consciousness" as a whole is not localized in some specific organ in the brain or whatever. This isn't talking about qualia. What is experiencing this illusion of multiple parts coming together into a whole?

>>20883743
So how does this prove consciousness is an illusion?

>>20881892
His ideas are sheer nonsense.

>>20884799
It shows that consciousness, while a real conceptual entity, a classification for naive experience on the macroscopic, cannot be conceived of as a divisible whole, nor can generalizations be made about it based on a perceived unity of experience. Dennett uses a lot of simple examples of hallucinations to demonstrate this. Neuroscientists understand that visual data is processed in stages, with increasingly complex structures being processed in the later visual areas, and yet we experienxe perception as immediate and whole most times. Dennett argues for the existence of incredibly short term memory editing and patching together. Look up the multiple drafts model. Another example is the illusion of the self, not to mention the belief in the origin of one’s ideas, even though their call signs can be observed in the brain before becoming conscious.

>>20885116
The parts you're talking about are obvious. There's nothing new he's telling me. He's not explaining the unexplained elements in materialistic terms or even trying to yet retards pretend he does as a way to promote materialist dogma.

>>20885134
You should read him a little more. It’s not necessarily about just breaking down consciousness into materialist terms, but still making a constructive method/case for the study of consciousness as consciousness, not as a byproduct of the brain.

>>20881220
That's not Elrond Hubbard

>>20881220
Conan was funnier

>>20884075
Awareness is consciousness, consciousness is awareness, and nothing else. The fact that we are aware of our own awareness only allows us to comment on that awareness, it does not change its quality.

>>20881220
Consciousness isn’t an illusion. He’s got it backwards. Everything else is an illusion. Only experiences exist. There are no subjects or objects, for they do not exist without experience. In fact we cannot know anything other than experience. How does experience exist? This question assumes that something exists outside of experience.

>>20885539
God i hate empiricism

>>20881220
David letterman???

>>20881220
Patrick Bateman

>>20884825
How?

>>20883743
Lmao what a fucking retard

>>20881220
>DUDE nothing is real, you don't even exist, you're a mindless automaton, there's no free will, chemicals and evolution man, brains in a vat man!
Ok I guess you had no choice in saying all that crap and I have no choice in not believing you.

>>20881220
http://www.jaronlanier.com/zombie.html

>>20886438
Chalmbers and a bunch of whos?

>>20883743
>Dennett: And yet, like a mirage, whose appearance betrays a belief in water’s other properties, such as its taste and texture and causal powers, the components of vision and perception can be found to not reside in the same area, nor process sensations at the same time.

Socrates: I am afraid I do not follow here, Dennett. For you seem to be confusing two things as though they are one, mixing up what is naturally separate. First you would mix the idea of water up with its appearance, as you say that a man would try to drink a mirage. But do we not obviously distinguish between appearance and the thing? Let us consider this point a little closer. When you see water in the distance, what would you say?

Dennett: Why, Socrates, I would exclaim, "I can see water."

Socrates: And, to speak perfectly correctly, you would not say, "that is most certainly water."

Dennett: Why, Socrates, only if my reason had fled me.

Socrates: And so we maintain that there is a difference between what is seen, and what, we might say, is?

Dennett: It cannot be denied.

Socrates: And insofar as something is seen, we have established that we can only rightly comment on our relationship with the thing, in this case that it is merely seen? And to know what an object is requires some other kind of knowledge. This much we acknowledge?

Dennett: I'm not sure I follow you, Socrates, but I will consent.

Socrates: Let me put it this way: do we not distinguish between the sight of water and water itself only in point of its being? When we drink water, even if it tastes as we expect, we would be more confident in asserting that this substance is, in fact, water. And would we not rightly assent that such a substance is in fact what we believe it be?

Dennett: Necessarily.

Socrates: And do we admit the perception of falsities? I mean errors of sight, for example the little transparent letters we occasionally see floating before our eyes? We admit that these are false sights?

Dennett: Why, Socrates, one might affirm they are false in reality, but how could they be false as far as sight is concerned?

Socrates: You have led me along the path my own mind was just taking me, Dennett. But ought we to call the mere sight true or false? Surely it is a sight, but whether it is true or false we cannot say. We must admit truth and falsity pertain to the reality of a thing.

Dennett: You have said what I had in thought but could not put into words, Socrates!

Socrates: And so, in point of fact, the perception itself, for example the sight of water, is neither true nor false. It is only when we connect this with an idea that it gains truth or falsity. And in so far as a perception conforms with an idea, we say it is true, and in so far as a perception does not conform, we say that it is false, this is given?

Dennett: Certainly.

>>20886551
Socrates: And so we must admit then that we have no more right to assert that consciousness is a unified field than we do that it is a multiplicity, or nothing at all, if we are to gauge its reality or non-reality on our sight, or any other sense we may have. Neither would it be correct to say that the water we see with our eyes or taste with our mouths is the water we assert it to be, but rather that it is something which, perhaps, cannot be seen nor felt nor tasted, if we want to speak of it unequivocally. And it is precisely what is good which allows water to be what it ought to be, as we say of something which meets its idea.

Dennett: I am reluctant, but I cannot deny what has been said.

Socrates: And so, Dennett, we admit that, in order to have these beliefs at all and to be able to see the like from the unlike and the equal from the unequal, we say that these things which are equal, beautiful and good really do exist. And what of our soul? It is not the proper place to venture to deep on this question, but we must admit that we do see things, and we know the equal, the unequal, the like and the unlike, as things which are already in us, which enable us to know the being of water. And so, while we do not, as the Delphic Apollo says, "know ourselves", we at least know its likeness. And is it not the goal of the philosopher to really know its being, as it might be the goal of the natural philosopher to really know the being of water, among other things?

>>20886551
holy pseud

>>20886438
Who are all of the people in this image? I know of a few.