1. Comment #58129 by Thor on July 23, 2007 at 3:25 pm

Whoever at the Guardian was responsible for the sound and/or recording equipment for this interview is an incompoetent twit and should be banned from ever again getting his hands on any kind of electronic sound recording device for the rest of his miserable existence.

That is all.

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2. Comment #58130 by phil rimmer on July 23, 2007 at 3:25 pm

I dearly wish these two would debate the utility of consciousness. Blackmore proposes the conscious experience may well be a mere spurious artifact of a memeplex evolved for other ends. I suspect Dennet would view this as "zombic".

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3. Comment #58135 by dhweaver on July 23, 2007 at 3:57 pm

I'll have to listen to the interview again. I lost consciousness during the first try.

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4. Comment #58137 by maton100 on July 23, 2007 at 4:06 pm

The sound recording that you're hearing is actually an alien interceptor from the planet Zenobe.

http://thestubborncurmudgeon.blogspot.com

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5. Comment #58148 by JonMagnus on July 23, 2007 at 5:03 pm

Don't try to listen to it with the QuickTime player. I downloaded the file by clicking on the last link and its fine.

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6. Comment #58149 by philosowizer on July 23, 2007 at 5:08 pm

Agrees with Thor Wholeheartedly

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7. Comment #58154 by magetoo on July 23, 2007 at 5:53 pm

Thor

Whoever at the Guardian was responsible for the sound and/or recording equipment for this interview is an incompoetent twit [...]

Well...

The interview forms part of Susan's book, "Conversations on Consciousness"

Let me translate. Ahem.
"Susan recorded this herself on a portable voice recorder, while interviewing Dennett for her book."

Clear now?

I agree that the sound quality is horrible, though. The files at the two download links are byte-for-byte identical, by the way.

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8. Comment #58187 by alovrin on July 24, 2007 at 12:25 am

I love this..
"I can think of no one in the scientific world working on conciousness who would think of submitting a paper that said.
Well I introspected under the following circumstances and these are the things I found."
And...
"We have had so many cases where people are just WRONG about the results of their own introspection. Its been a hugely misleading beacon over the centuries. People cannot prevent themselves from theorising when they think they are observing and their autopsychology theories are just BAD.

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9. Comment #58209 by arthurmee on July 24, 2007 at 3:02 am

I love this..
"I can think of no one in the scientific world working on conciousness who would think of submitting a paper that said.
Well I introspected under the following circumstances and these are the things I found."
And...
"We have had so many cases where people are just WRONG about the results of their own introspection. Its been a hugely misleading beacon over the centuries. People cannot prevent themselves from theorising when they think they are observing and their autopsychology theories are just BAD.

This was indeed the statement that grabbed my attention too, once I'd filtered out the alien sound FX.

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10. Comment #58215 by Jiten on July 24, 2007 at 3:36 am

I liked the phrase at the end:"vacuum philosophy".Dennett has a gift for saying in a few words where others need whole sentences.Science is much more interesting.

Consciousness is just so hard a problem.It is not even easy to talk about.As far as natural selection is concerned we are here to survive and reproduce and having consciousness makes no difference to that.What good can come of "enjoying" strawberry ice-cream,or the smell of a rose?

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11. Comment #58236 by LeeC on July 24, 2007 at 4:47 am

Excellent... more Dennett, that's what we want.

Lee

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12. Comment #58242 by BMMcArdle on July 24, 2007 at 5:46 am

I realize that a lot of very intelligent people think that consciousness is a very difficult problem. Having said that, why do we feel the need to make the subject so complicated? It's not black or white, that is, either you have it or you don't. Like anything else, there should be an infinite number of levels of it, with us at the highest level. People are never shy of expressing their belief that animals have "personalities". In animals who live in groups, some, based on their perception of themselves, take dominant roles, others subordinate. What am I missing?

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13. Comment #58253 by Riley on July 24, 2007 at 6:43 am

Daniel Dennet is a phenomenal thinker and communicator.





Dennet gave a fantastic lecture on Religion at the 2006 TED Talks that is very much worth listening to:
Daniel Dennet: a direct rebuttal to Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life at TED Talks

The TED Talks are a treasure-trove of insightful lectures. If you are unaware of the resource, you should definitely visit and explore:
TED Talks

For a clearinghouse of Dennet's lectures and interviews go here:
Daniel Dennet Multimedia

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14. Comment #58259 by ignored_ethos2 on July 24, 2007 at 7:06 am

BMMcArdle - Your post amused me because I am currently reading "Consciousness Explained" and having a very tough time of it. I think I'm gonna start again but this time I'm taking notes. Take a look at this book and if you still think consciousness is a simple subject you are far smarter than I

ie

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15. Comment #58272 by Cregaune on July 24, 2007 at 8:04 am

There are only two possibilities:

1) I'm a fool, in that I'm not able to understand what the hell Dennett is on about or what the problem is. It seems like sheer nonsense to me. It reminds me of the kind of bull***t one reads in programmes before a 'contemporary' classical music concert....and I sure as hell don't understand a word of that stuff. I bet nobody does; including the author.

2)I'm a little boy who sees a naked-emperor issue if there ever was one. Should I cry out?

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16. Comment #58284 by Riley on July 24, 2007 at 8:45 am

Cregaune -- I think you should cry out, but make a point, not just a vague analogy.

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17. Comment #58300 by BMMcArdle on July 24, 2007 at 9:58 am

The same people who scoff at the idea of looking for a god to explain the universe have no problem raising the "difficult question" of conciousness to the same level.

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18. Comment #58304 by LDmiller on July 24, 2007 at 10:42 am

I found this interview to be practically content-free.

At the end of it I didn't know anything more than when I started, and this seems to be (for me) an ongoing problem with Dennett.

He is invariably windy as hell. Much noise, little said.

He seems to be unable to speak coherently. It is almost as though when he talks or writes he has so many parallel tasks and detours running in his head that he has a hard time choking out a cohesive narrative. It certainly seemed true in this interview. Maybe this is an occupational hazard: if you think about thinking for too long you end up in exitless loops. (After all, you are dealing with a "self-referential system", in computer parlance.)

At any rate , I found this and "Breaking the Spell" to be rather like a Mozart opera:

Full of words and music
And signifying nothing.

I agree that some of his TED lectures (on OTHER SUBJECTS, the ones he says he likes!) are very interesting and actually have some meat in them.

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19. Comment #58306 by Happy Hominid on July 24, 2007 at 11:04 am

"I agree that some of his TED lectures (on OTHER SUBJECTS, the ones he says he likes!) are very interesting and actually have some meat in them."

I still find Dennett quite interesting, despite some of your earlier valid complaints. Additionally, Darwin's Dangerous Idea was one of the greatest books I've read. I also think you come across more of these types of problems you mentioned whenever you have a expert interviewing an expert - ESPECIALLY in a field like this!

Incidently, when I gave this link to Josh I also gave him one with Blackmore interviewing VS (Rama) Ramachandran. He didn't seem to think it's worth posting and that may tell you something about it. But just in case you're interested, here's the link.
http://download.guardian.co.uk/sys-audio/Guardian/Science/2007/07/23/ScienceExtra_Rama.mp3

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20. Comment #58310 by the_assayer on July 24, 2007 at 11:23 am

How can I get an article posted?

(http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/badmoves.php)
Check this out. There are some articles here detailing the various ad hominum and logically false arguments that we see so frequently employed in debates and rebuttals these days.
Can anyone get these articles posted?... if found interesting.

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21. Comment #58313 by Rtambree on July 24, 2007 at 11:33 am

18. Comment #58304 by LDmiller on July 24, 2007 at 10:42 am

>I found this interview to be practically content-free.

Yes, I agree with your sentiments. That's the problem not just with Dennett but most philosophers. Knowledge doesn't come out of philosophy - only questions.

I once gave his "Consciousness Explained" a go. I struggled through it about 10 years ago at a time when I thought I was the one at fault for not grasping the deep intellectual points. Now I know better - there were few new points to be grasped. Now I generally stick with scientists who can write clearly and load their articles/books full of content: Diamond, Ridley, Dawkins, Sapolsky, Pinker, Koch, etc.

The only philosopher I really have time for is Peter Singer.

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22. Comment #58314 by the_assayer on July 24, 2007 at 11:41 am

As far as i could see, the interview was about defining what consciousness is or atleast what he thinks it is. It wasn't about explaining it. Dennett was trying to make the point that there are certain deep rooted intuitive convictions about consciouness that most of us cling on to, which may need revision.
To BMMcArdle- Dennett is not trying to give a magical account of consciousness. He is among the very few philosophers who try to find naturalistic explanations for the phenomenon.

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23. Comment #58315 by Rtambree on July 24, 2007 at 11:48 am

22. Comment #58314 by the_assayer

>He is among the very few philosophers who try to find naturalistic explanations for the phenomenon.

I don't think Dennett is in a position to find any explanations as he doesn't do any research. He's not even a good summariser and communicator of other people's research, let alone having any original contributions himself.

At best he can rephrase the questions, and as you say, help overcome our intuitive convictions. What else? Politically he's been a respectable ally in the New Atheism. But I don't think he's illuminating any mysteries.

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24. Comment #58316 by the_assayer on July 24, 2007 at 12:10 pm

well.... I agree with you, although not completely. I only meant to say, he was "trying" to find an explanation. I consider him a theoretician, a good one at that. But its too early for him to theorize using data from neuroscience, as this field is still in its adolescense and there is not much we know about how information is represented in the brain. So he is making an effort with what we know so far, albeit a miniscule effort.

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25. Comment #58317 by LDmiller on July 24, 2007 at 12:18 pm

the_assayer:

OK, so what is consciousness? Or, more particularly, what did Dennett say about it?

1. He dumped on any form of duality (Cartesian "theatre of the mind" was specifically mentioned), even as a useful concept for discussing the problem without any implication of a "soul". So He trashed the little daemon of voice in the head that talks to you and me 24 x 7 x 365. So there is no possibility of a 2nd person narrative, as I understand him.

2. He also dumped on any idea of first-person narrative (anecdotes) as being scientifically unsound, which it certainly is in any other endeavor.

3. He desires a 3rd-person account, which is indeed the standard scientific stance for evidence. Unfortunately, we do not yet have the necessary means to extract brain activity and deduce the thoughts going on. We either need something like a Vulcan mind-meld or some pretty serious advances in neorological monitoring machinery along the ideas of MRI. I don't see these coming soon (but eventually).

Meanwhile, we can all go home because for 3) right now there ain't no way to get there from here.

As to "zombics" or zombies, this sort of thing was hashed out many years ago in the Artificial Intelligence community (of which Dennett is a fan).

At that time the question was, "Is a machine that passes the Turing Test really thinking?"

There was a rather strong proof at the time (by Searle?) that it was possible to have a machine pass the Turing test without having a clue as to what it was doing. This is identical in concept (and, as near as I can see, in detail) to a "zombic" or zombie.

There is another lesson from Turing that is often missed: IT IS A NULL TEST.

That is, if a machine actually passes the Turing test, WE WILL NOT KNOW if it is "thinking". That's the definition of the test!

Perhaps biological consciousness is the same.

Meanwhile, new AI models are being developed that seem to show great promise and may crack the nut on consciousness.

I recommend "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee as a useful alternative to Dennett's approach. Hawkins (who invented the Palm Pilot) is trying to implement his ideas and is committing considerable cash and resources to it. Visit

http://www.numenta.com/

You computer geeks can download stuff to play with there. Your Very Own "Electronic Brain!"

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26. Comment #58318 by Rtambree on July 24, 2007 at 12:18 pm

Judging by the 400 year old history of science, what usually happens when a breakthrough discovery is made by researchers is that the philosophers had it totally wrong - not even in the same ballpark (anthropology, nature of energy, nature of matter, nature of the solar system, galaxies and the universe).

Sometimes there are enough guesses from enough philosophers that someone somewhere, if you interpret the words loosely, might claim to have got some aspect of the new paradigm right, but it's usually for the wrong reasons. It's just probability, not a genius insight. And they're the exceptions.

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27. Comment #58321 by Bonzai on July 24, 2007 at 12:50 pm

Comment #58317 by LDmiller

At that time the question was, "Is a machine that passes the Turing Test really thinking?"

There was a rather strong proof at the time (by Searle?) that it was possible to have a machine pass the Turing test without having a clue as to what it was doing. This is identical in concept (and, as near as I can see, in detail) to a "zombic" or zombie.

There is another lesson from Turing that is often missed: IT IS A NULL TEST.

That is, if a machine actually passes the Turing test, WE WILL NOT KNOW if it is "thinking". That's the definition of the test!

Without going into all these difficult talks about self awareness and "understanding" a la Searle, a more basic objection to using the Turing test as a bench mark for intelligence is that real people can be very stupid and be fooled easily by something that is "obviously" unintelligent.

In an AI lecture I was told that some guy wrote a very short chat program and put it in sex chat rooms. Horny guys were talking dirty to the dumb bot, moaning and groaning for hours on end without knowing that they had been had. The guys were probably doing other things too but you wouldn't want to know.

Instead of concluding that a several hundred line program has intelligence like the lecturer did I think it is a demonstration of the inadequacy of Turing's approach.

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28. Comment #58323 by Bonzai on July 24, 2007 at 12:58 pm

Rtambree,

Good points. It is good to know that I am not the only one here who thinks that philosophers of science in general and Denette in particular are overrated.

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29. Comment #58324 by the_assayer on July 24, 2007 at 1:09 pm

To LDmiller...


I concede, Dennett has not been very illuminating in the quest for consciousness. But his battle is mostly with his philosopher friends who mostly still do cling on to those unproductive ideas like the cartesian theatre.
Dennett may be a fan of AI in general, but he has written critically about the lacking in AI research and thinks that the "society of mind" theory just wont cut it.
As for your suggestion of numenta, I'm aware of this project by Jeff Hawkins and yes it does seem promising.


To RTambree- Yes, philosophers have in a lot cases been wide off the mark. Thats OK. I don't see them necesserily as an alternative to actual scientific enquiry. I think they serve the purpose of keeping the debate alive.

But yes, I have to admit. I really don't have much of a case when it comes to his contributions towards explaning the puzzle. Probably he was being too bold with his book's title "Consciousness explained".

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30. Comment #58326 by the_assayer on July 24, 2007 at 1:24 pm

Bonzai, you might be right. But then I don't get why Dennett being overrated should cause any distress.
As far as I know, he has been very clear to admit philosophers have very little to say about consciousness. Instead he's been cheerleading the latest advaces in neuroscience. In this interview he states how philosophers have to stop following a sort of "vacuumn philosophy". I'm actually quite confused now. I'm only defending the guy 'cause I like him. Maybe the Santa face?
I probably don't have much ammo by way of argument.

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31. Comment #58327 by dgr8test97 on July 24, 2007 at 1:27 pm

"Philosophy is what people do before they can ask the Right Question."

I love Dennett. I have been saying this here and got trashed for it, but if you want to learn something learn science and math. Philosophy and humanities (as academic disciplines), they are great to do in one's spare time, but I am not sure what great knowledge about the world one can get from them. Granted these discipline ask great preliminary questions about the world, but their answers are not very good.

I started my college life studying the humanities. Then I went on to focus on philosophy. By the end, I lost all hope for these fields as an academic disciplines. I agree with Dennett that I found myself learning more things from and enjoying the company of none philosophers...especially the ones in the sciences.

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32. Comment #58328 by Bonzai on July 24, 2007 at 1:29 pm

Yes, philosophers have in a lot cases been wide off the mark. Thats OK. I don't see them necesserily as an alternative to actual scientific enquiry. I think they serve the purpose of keeping the debate alive.

Well at the risk of sounding harsh I think great progress in science is often made by ignoring philosophers even when their questions are valid, though more often they are just expressing intellectual prejudice. Newton v.s Bishop Bekerley was a well known example. Berkerly's objection to Newton's idea of absolute space was actually sound (Newton himself had actually anticipated the objection). But physics would have gone nowhere had Newton been stopped by a philosophical question which was in a sense fundamental but couldn't have been answered then. Einstein provided the answer more than two hundred years with insights that have been accumulated in the intervening years.

A sad example of the peril of taking philosophers too seriously was Boltzmann's suicide. He killed himself apparently because of intellectual persecutions by the positivists, though he was probably suffering from what we call clinical depression to begin with.

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33. Comment #58342 by the_assayer on July 24, 2007 at 2:38 pm

Bonzai


Hmmmm... interesting point. But can we judge the merit of such an act of ignoring a priori?

And i don't think this problem applies to Dennett, since is he is pro science and thinks the falsifiable nature of scientic theories will shed more light on those areas where Philosophers have managed to crap on incessently time an again.

OK I give up..... Dennett may still be leg-tied by the limits of his profession. But atleast he realises these shortcomings.

I have come a long way, from Defending a Hero, to saying atleast he doesn't suck... :D

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34. Comment #58347 by phil rimmer on July 24, 2007 at 2:58 pm

Dennett works extremely slowly in laying out his ideas. I view him rather as an Ent. This interview was a rather too human-scaled in length to do him justice.

"Consciousness explained" didn't explain, but "Freedom evolves" did get closer.

Dennett at least has the common human decency to appreciate the company of scientists above that of philosophers, which makes him OK in my book.

However, a much better job of evoking the very texture and quality of conscious experience is performed by neurologist Antonio Domasio, who creates a model of the mind, from the neuronal level up which I find very persuasive. He argues strongly for a mind whose nature is rooted in the intense physicality of body-sourced signals. I found his descriptions very satisfying. Afterwards, I became terrified at the idea of ever becoming a disembodied spirit. A truly dismal prospect.

"Looking for Spinoza" was the most useful for me.

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35. Comment #58354 by phil rimmer on July 24, 2007 at 3:16 pm

I must recommend Happy Hominid's Ramachandran link

http://download.guardian.co.uk/sys-audio/Guardian/Science/2007/07/23/ScienceExtra_Rama.mp3

Ramachandran is much more rumbustious and in a hurry. Lots of value here. But his views on the zero conscious experience of animals might now be a little out of date, given the latest observations of corvids (crows) able to distinguish between the knowledge state of one bird and that of another. In short they seem to have a theory of mind, rather more sophisticated than Ramachandran's bird behaviour example.



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36. Comment #58456 by youmemeyou on July 24, 2007 at 11:25 pm

Daniel Dennet and his teacher Willard Van Oman Quine have had an enormous influence on me. What is consisted of was helping me overcome some very basic stumbling blocks in my philosophy.

In general I urge you to pay very close attention to his treatment of intentionality(And not just in the technical treatment in 'The Intentional Stance').

His is some of the best formulations of blind, bottom-up intentionality. The logic of this is very important to the idea of God.

The 'intentionality' of God is generally considered to be a matter of foresight. But when we realize that this variety is [i]derivative[/i] of non-conscious processes, we can better describe how God works blindly. (That is, how it is that nature anticipates, is intelligent and yet is blind.)

Some people get more out the articul-ent style than others. But I give him credit for helping me achieve the most profound psychological experiences of my life.

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37. Comment #58561 by Riley on July 25, 2007 at 7:33 am

In this interview, Dennet does a great job of summarizing the nature of the problem facing scientists trying to better understand consciousness and the nature of the "faith-head" (i.e. intuition-locked / auto-psychological theory-based) mind-set that is hindering progress in that regard.

Dennett is very precise and careful about his choice of words. It might be confusing to hear "discernment" instead of "consciousness", "intuition" and "auto-psychological theorizing" instead of words like "spiritual"/"faith"/"religion", but Dennett's choice of words actually reduce confusion if you take the time to think more carefully about what he's said.

Dennett is I think appropriately trying to raise our awareness to the problems associated with the use of the term: "consciousness". "Consciousness" is a term that artificially separates human discernment from other forms of natural discernment, and as Dennett pointed out: we have every reason to believe that there exists incremental steps between our level of discernment and the level of discernment of every other form of life on earth and that natural selection provides a mechanism through which these steps can be taken (simple things can create more complex things). It's an enormously important point to make and reiterate given the number of publicly vocal scientists in this field promoting the idea that consciousness may represent a disconnected jump from the rest of natural discernment. There are even scientists promoting the idea that consciousness was the cause of nature (see Paul Davies). It's not unlike the Intelligent Design crisis in science: people are desperately motivated to preserve their spiritual beliefs and Dennett is ahead of the game trying to clarify issues surrounding the problem before it gets out of hand in the public debate. His expertise is appropriate to this task I think.



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38. Comment #58606 by Randy on July 25, 2007 at 11:21 am

Check this out:

http://faculty.washington.edu/nelgee/hidden/solomonsound.htm

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39. Comment #58613 by the_assayer on July 25, 2007 at 11:34 am

I second that Riley. He is certainly a breath of fresh air in philosophical circles.

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40. Comment #58652 by robotaholic on July 25, 2007 at 3:49 pm

I adore Daniel Dennett, I'm so glad he didn't die from that heart attack and now he's "bio-mechanical" haha, his heart makes a pumping sound everytime it beats due to the fact that it's metal lol

cheers to absolute materialism

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41. Comment #115760 by popey_roach on January 24, 2008 at 4:13 pm

love the book, love both people involved, but for sum reason this int just doesnt cut it with me

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