From Anna Buckley at BBC:
Consciousness is real. Of course it is. We experience it every day. But for Daniel Dennett, consciousness is no more real than the screen on your laptop or your phone.
The geeks who make electronic devices call what we see on our screens the “user illusion”. It’s a bit patronising, perhaps, but they’ve got a point.
…
Our brains, like our bodies, have evolved over hundreds of millions of years. They are the result of millions and millions of years of haphazard trial and error evolutionary experiments.
From an evolutionary perspective, our ability to think is no different from our ability to digest, says Dennett.
Both these biological activities can be explained by Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, often described as the survival of the fittest. More.
Oh never mind. Dark energy is also supposed to be an illusion. But if consciousness is an illusion, how would we know that dark energy is?
Is it worth asking whose illusion consciousness is? Nah, we thought not. The world of tenure in these fields now consists largely in being unable to perceive such problems or address them intelligibly.
Note: Don’t think these points of view, aired with increasing frequency in government-funded media, have no impact. As in: Evolutionary biologist: Humans evolved to need coercion
See also: Thomas Nagel: Daniel Dennett “maintaining a thesis at all costs” in Bacteria to Bach and Back
Physicist: Regrettably, materialism can’t explain mind
Split brain does NOT lead to split consciousness? What? After all the naturalist pop psych lectures we paid good money for at the U? Well, suckers r’ us.
Does the ability to “split” our brains help us understand consciousness? (Apparently not.)
What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness
Or else: Consciousness as a state of matter
Researcher: Never mind the “hard problem of consciousness”: The real one is… “Our experiences of being and having a body are ‘controlled hallucinations’ of a very distinctive kind”
Searle on Consciousness “Emerging” from a Computer: “Miracles are always possible.”
Psychology Today: Latest new theory of consciousness A different one from the above.
Evolution bred a sense of reality out of us
Claim: Science is afraid of animal consciousness. Why? Won’t crackpot theories work as well as they do for human consciousness?
So then: Question: Would we give up naturalism to solve the hard problem of consciousness?
Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but then the brain got away
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