[Wittrs] Re: Does Dennett throw out the baby with the bathwater?
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:09:55 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
Denies
> That there is a something of a mental type that exists in (or as part
of) the mind which we call "intentionality". He's denying an ascription
of thingness in the sense of there being an entity called
"intentionality" somewhere in the world.
Stuart, so do I. Doesn't everyone on this List?
> I would add this: Dennett doesn't deny that we have experiences or
think about things. He denies that we need to posit a special class of
mental properties like "qualia" or "intentionality" to explain that we
have experiences
"Qualia" doesn't explain. It merely points it out. What is there to
explain?
> He thinks the explanation can be given in physical and information
processing terms which eliminates a whole class of notions that imply a
parallel realm of mental phenomena.
That is the heart of our difference! I can't see why the finding of the
brain prt that is associated with the experience part ("I feel pain".
"It's just your C-fiber firing") explains anything at all beyond finding
the brain correlate. And then we have the task of making sense of the
correlation. See related Post.
>
> In this many (like Gordon) take him to be denying that we have
experience and intentionality when all he's really doing is proposing
that we talk about these phenomena in a different way.
Gordon's question and mine is whether this "different way" pays its way.
Once we abandon a mental realm and substance, we don't need this shift
and it leaves with the delimma of either attributing causality to
reasoning or reasoning to mechanical brain states.
bruce
>
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