[Wittrs] Re: Does Dennett throw out the baby with the bathwater?

  • From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:51:23 -0000

--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:


> --- 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 don't know about everyone but I would say that Searle's thesis runs afoul of 
that denial even if Searle would explicitly agree that he denies it, too (which 
I think he would).

> > 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?
>

On the Analytic list we saw that there are at least two notions of "qualia" one 
of which equates with what Dennett denies but the other is just particular 
instances of subjective experience which Dennett certainly doesn't deny. The 
issue is what is needed to reference experiences? Can we just call them our 
experiences or must we say our experiences consist of something else, some 
mental property called "qualia"?


> >  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.
> >

I don't think Dennett is arguing that we do away with mental talk, only that we 
not rely on it exclusively in accounting for the occurrence of mental phenomena 
qua experiences.

> > 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
> >
>

Well that's what makes horse races, isn't it? I don't see the dilemma(s) you 
see at all. When talkinging about brains and minds we speak one way, when 
talking about our feelings, motives, thoughts, experiences, desires, etc., we 
talk another.

What's the problem?

SWM

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