A regular dialogue here on Psybertron is defending the reality of Dennett’s conceptions of mind in the face of those who see only the sound-bite quotes about the illusory aspects of our intuition about our minds. As I often say, our minds (and hence consciousness) are as real as anything else in our ontology of what exists in the world, so I was attracted by the title of this Aeon piece, which incidentally now exists only in the link not in the actual title and subtitle on the face of the article itself.
“As Real as it Ever Gets – Dennett’s Conception of Mind”
by Tim Bayne, Ed Nigel Warburton (@philosophybites)
Anyway, I Tweeted:
Dennett clearly defended the position that philosophy was “more than” science, and what he did was:
“Dennett helped shift Anglo-American philosophy towards a coalition with science.”
And
“in Dennett’s view, relatively little of folk psychology is beyond salvation. What needs to go is not so much folk psychology, but the gloss on folk psychology that philosophers [of the linguistic turn] have imposed on it. In that regard, Dennett doesn’t mark a radical rupture in the aims or methods of philosophy of mind, but instead belongs firmly in the tradition of his mid-century heroes, Ryle and Wittgenstein.”
Can’t argue with that conclusion, but yet again, no mention of his (2017) “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” his own summary of the actual content of his life’s work on the evolution of mind, before his final autobiographical work (2023) “I’ve Been Thinking”.
Great to see a serious critique that recognises Wittgenstein as a hero of my own hero. Hofstadter – erstwhile Dennett collaborator – also came to understand this despite steering clear of Wittgenstein in his earlier work. My own summary of what I got from Dennett I posted back in April.
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Quite possibly the Dennett of 2017 or 2023 had different opinions than the Dennett who wrote “Quaning Qualia” in 1988. That Dennett claimed to be taking “a more radical stand than Wittgenstein’s.” But as I pointed out, in a close study of the paper undertaken in comments at my own blog, “he is in fact taking a far less radical stand. It is the ordinary, received stand of hard-nosed materialism, conceived in early modernity. Wittgenstein’s suggestion that this stand is due for revision, that the old way of thinking won’t do for all purposes, goes right past him.”
Those comments went well beyond “sound-bite quotes” into a detailed analysis of what Dennett was trying to do in the paper, and whether he was successful. I won’t rehearse the entire conversation here; if you’re interested, you can find it under my post “Unconsciousness Unexplained” (https://staggeringimplications.wordpress.com/2023/06/05/unconsciousness-unexplained/). (By all means use your browser’s text-search function to uncover the relevant remarks on Wittgenstein.)
Hi AJ,
A more radical stand (on the same ground as Witt) but not any radical rupture with it. Building on the same tradition, even if he didn’t originally notice. I’m sure you’re right about his earlier work. I keep making the point thought, that he has mostly been writing for his target scientistic (materialist) audience. Language chosen accordingly – (interestingly the same comment I just made to Don under the McGilchrist “Matter With Things” post.)
Obviously I’m not talking about you in “sound-bite quotes” – I’m talking about the mass of popular media science participants and commentators – those popular people that most people hear and think they understand. #Dysmemics Thoughtful people like you and I have the #Memetic communication problem 🙂