[Wittrs] Re: Does Dennett throw out the baby with the bathwater?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:05:12 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
> --- On Tue, 4/13/10, BruceD <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> > That no one can deny. But what does he deny?
> Dennett denies the reality of mental states as normal people think of them.
> He denies that you have direct knowledge of your own experience (qualia) and
> denies that you have such things in your head as thoughts, beliefs and
> desires.
>
NO. He denies that you have privileged access to what is going on in your own
mind because there are things that happen below the surface to make your
experiences what they are that you just don't experience. That is, what counts
as the features of the mind consist of many things happening that are not,
themselves, features of the mind but, rather, features of brains.
He does not deny that you have "direct knowledge" of what you know including
your experiences qua qualia. He denies that to explain those experiences we
need to posit entities of a mental sort called "qualia".
He does not deny "that you have such things in your head as thoughts, beliefs
and desires". THAT is an absurd claim and a woeful misunderstanding of
Dennett's position.
> He denies these common sense ideas because, according to the behaviorist
> tradition from which he hails, mental states do not lend themselves to
> scientific (third-person) observation and so ought to be disregarded as
> something less than real.
>
He does not argue for disregarding mental states, only for investigating them
in terms of the physical processes that underlie them. I will not speak for
behaviorists here since I am not one but Dennett is manifestly not one either
since he acknowledges and theorizes about experience, the elements of our
mental lives.
> But pinch yourself, Bruce. Do you feel that? That's the *real data of
> consciousness*. Any rational theory of consciousness needs to explain that
> data.
>
You, Gordon, simply don't have any grasp of Dennett's position at all as you
repeatedly say things that are way off base. But if you have evidence that
these claims ARE Dennett's position, then feel free to cut and paste them (with
appropriate links or citations for context) onto this list in support of what
you say and we can all consider if you have it right or not.
> Instead of explaining the data, Dennett's theory denies the existence of the
> data. Yes he most definitely throws the baby out with the bathwater!
>
> -gts
A complete and utter misreading of Dennett. Anyone taking your claims here at
face value will not get any information about Dennett's real positions at all.
When criticizing others' views you should at least take the trouble to get
those views right. Otherwise you are only purveying misinformation.
SWM
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