Front Runner for Most Inane Statement of 2018

_{Barry Arrington

December 27, 2018

Intelligent Design}

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“I believe that the whole idea of conscious thought is an error. ” So says
Peter Carruthers, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park in this article in Scientific American. Proving once again, that some ideas are so gobsmackingly stupid, it takes a lot of education to believe them. He might as well have said, “I have a conscious thought that there is no conscious thought.” There is really no need to argue against self-refuting piffle like this. There is only one thing to say:

Comments

IMO, Comment numbering is important, especially when referring to comments beyond the 'Read More' tags; Otherwise it may be necessary to expand a lot of comments to find one that is referenced. Even more helpful would be comment numbers which remain unchanged in the unlikely event of an earlier comment being removed. Then it would be possible to find and expand exactly the right comment.steve_h_{December 27, 2018
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Hazel disagrees with what is self-evidently true about the article and wants to have a "reasonable" discussion about it? :) LOL Sorry, If someone will deny what is self-evidently true right off the bat, before any discussion has even begun, then reasonable discussion is exactly what one cannot have. i.e. Much like Carruthers claim that "conscious thought is an error ” , that self-evidently self-defeating claim in and of itself defeats any supposedly 'reasonable' discussion that may follow.bornagain77_{December 27, 2018
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Thank you for the feedback. I'm working on figuring out a way if we can get numbering back. How does everyone feel about having threaded comments like this? The upside is that your reply is neatly connected with the original message. The downside is that you can't necessarily scroll to the end to find the last comment.Jack Cole_{December 27, 2018
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I know that one of the issues in this subject as whether consciousness is part of a non-material aspect of human beings, such as the mind or a soul, or whether it is strictly a product of the body. I think that the things I've written, and virtually all of Carrothers points, don't depend on which of those are true. I think discussing the experience of consciousness, which is what I've been discussing, is something we can do in a meaningful way irrespective of which of the options mentioned above we believe is true, or whether one acknowledges that one doesn't know what the nature of consciousness is, as I do. So to me the article is about how immediate experience of consciousness at each moment relates to the larger mind. How the mind relates to the body is, in my opinion, a different issue, and not a central part of this article. But given that no one has responded to the specifics of my posts at x, y, and z (comment numbers are necessary!), probably no one here wants to talk about what I'd like to talk about.hazel_{December 27, 2018
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It appears to me that Carruthers is starting off with the metaphysical assumption that physicalism must be true. But how does he know that? Has he or anyone else been able to prove that physicalism is true? Shouldn’t he do that before he starts making an argument based on his metaphysical beliefs?john_a_designer_{December 27, 2018
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Barry, I would also like to commend you on the efforts you have placed in upgrading the web site. I think most complaints will just be because people are used to the old version. Resistance to change appears to be a human trait. Just a couple comments: 1) I agree that comment numbers would be extremely helpful, especially in the longer comment threads. 2) I really like the truncating of comments with the “more” options. This allows readers to scroll through the comments without having to scroll through all of the text of the very long comments that some people like to post.Ed George_{December 27, 2018
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H, "the proposer" in view is generic. Heads and subheads are obviously an editorial responsibility even if proposed by an author, interviewer or other party. So, first and foremost, Sci Am is again showing the world why it has lost all respectability. Next, the content from the interviewer and the interviewee is hardly better. Right from the start:
Ayan: What makes you think conscious thought is an illusion? Carruthers: I believe that the whole idea of conscious thought is an error. I came to this conclusion by following out the implications of the two of the main theories of consciousness . . . Now, whichever view you adopt, it turns out that thoughts such as decisions and judgments should not be considered to be conscious. They are not accessible in working memory, nor are we directly aware of them. We merely have what I call “the illusion of immediacy”—the false impression that we know our thoughts directly . . . .
We could go on, including the injection of a question-begging redefinition --"In neurophilosophy, however, we refer to “thought” in a much more specific sense. In this view, thoughts include only nonsensory mental attitudes, such as judgments, decisions, intentions and goals" -- and more. Sorry, that which is substructural or intuitive is part of "the thoughts and intents of the heart," And what is verbalised or imaged is likewise part of our thoughts and intents. Likewise our world picture as we look on, our hearing with understanding (I hear a vehicle going by, I hear the clicks of the keys, these are not uniterpreted), and so forth. KF PS: Display-sequences of comments and the comment edit features are confusing. I agree with H on this.kairosfocus_{December 27, 2018
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More website feedback: Having "Leave a Reply" at the top of the thread is not very useful. It would be better at the end of the thread, because that is where people would most likely have read the thing they want to reply to. Correction: I see that we can sort by newest first. That is very helpful, and makes the Reply at the top make sense. On the other hand, reading the thread from bottom to top (with newest on the bottom) makes it hard to review the thread. Maybe a Leave a Reply box could be at both the top and the bottom??? And the "Read more" link at the end of longer posts is quite welcome.hazel_{December 27, 2018
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What’s scary is that Carruthers’ logic is the same kind of logic that I have routinely encountered on-line over the past 12 years on the part of atheistic naturalists/materialists who posture as self-described defenders of science. I just thought they were pseudo-intellectual wannabes posturing as know-it-alls. However, if you do any reading in philosophy of the mind you will quickly discover that Carruthers is not alone. It’s also scary is that Scientific American apparently thinks that his viewpoint if scientific.john_a_designer_{December 27, 2018
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P.S. to kf. If you haven't already, I suggest you read the whole article and not just the subheading.hazel_{December 27, 2018
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to kf and ba77 at posts #? and #? + 1: I don't think either of your comments are accurately responsive to the article. I certainly don't see him saying that consciousness is a "neuronal illusion." Consciousness is real, and it includes a variety of types of content. My posts are about two aspects of the article. The first is that the internalized talking to ourselves that we engage in - our internal monologue, of which we are conscious - is a reflection of more comprehensive and non-verbal thoughts that in some way reside in the subconscious, whatever that may be. We have access to vastly more potential thoughts than we are thinking at any one time. Wherever they may be, thoughts at that level, of which we are not conscious, are then related to the stream of articulated and otherwise felt thoughts that are in our consciousness at any one time. The second aspect is the question of how does our conscious experience feed back into our larger subconscious self. For instance, in typing this post I am putting into words (which are flowing out from my conscious verbalization process) that are trying to express things that I feel I only imperfectly understand. The very act of consciously experiencing the results of this writing adds to the overall set of subconscious content that I have. In this way, listening to myself and listening to others can affect me, at least partially, in the same ways. None of these thoughts deny either consciousness or self.hazel_{December 27, 2018
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H'mm: Sci Am's subhead: "Philosopher Peter Carruthers insists that conscious thought, judgment and volition are illusions. They arise from processes of which we are forever unaware." Self-referential, fallacy of grand delusion. The best answer to such claims is to point out the problem and proceed to take the proposer at his word -- why should we get overly concerned about his delusions? KFkairosfocus_{December 27, 2018
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Yet more proof that if you start off believing that atheistic naturalism is unquestionably true then you are, sooner or later, forced into the self-refuting position of claiming your consciousness is 'merely' a neuronal illusion of your brain: A few notes:
The Illusionist - Daniel Dennett’s latest book marks five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness. - 2017 “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.” – David Bentley Hart https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-illusionist Consciousness is an Illusion but Truth is Not? - Maverick Philosopher - 2017 Excerpt: But here comes Danny (Dennett) the Sophist who asserts that consciousness is an illusion. Well, that is just nonsense,,, If consciousness is an illusion, then it is an illusion for consciousness.,,, Consciousness is not only presupposed by the distinction between reality and illusion, it is also presupposed by the quest for explanation. For where would explanations reside if not in the minds of conscious beings? So I say consciousness cannot be an illusion. One cannot explain it the way Dennett wants to explain it, which involves explaining it away. For details, see Can Consciousness be Explained? Dennett Debunked. But if consciousness, per impossibile, were an illusion, why wouldn't truth also be an illusion? Consciousness is an illusion because naturalism has no place for it. Whatever is real is reducible to the physical; consciousness is not reducible to the physical; ergo, consciousness does not exist in reality: it is an illusion. By the same reasoning, truth ought also to be an illusion since there is no place for it in the natural world. Note also that Dennett obviously thinks that truth is objectively valuable and pursuit-worthy. Where locate values in a naturalist scheme? Wouldn't it be more consistent for Dennett to go whole hog and explain away both consciousness and truth? Perhaps he ought to go POMO (post modern). There is no truth; there are only interpretations and perspectives of organisms grubbing for survival. What justifies him in privileging his naturalist narrative? It is one among many. I say consciousness and truth are on a par: neither can be explained away. Neither is eliminable. Neither is an illusion. Both are part of what we must presuppose to explain anything. Nietzsche had a great insight: No God, no truth. For the POMOs there is neither. For me there is both. For the inconsistent Dennett there is the second but not the first. Again, there is simply no place for truth in a wholly material world. For an argument from truth to God, see here. http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2017/02/consciousness-is-an-illusion-but-truth-is-not.html The Consciousness Deniers - Galen Strawson - March 13, 2018 Excerpt: What is the silliest claim ever made? The competition is fierce, but I think the answer is easy. Some people have denied the existence of consciousness: conscious experience, the subjective character of experience, the “what-it-is-like” of experience.,,, The Denial began in the twentieth century and continues today in a few pockets of philosophy and psychology and, now, information technology. It had two main causes: the rise of the behaviorist approach in psychology, and the naturalistic approach in philosophy. These were good things in their way, but they spiraled out of control and gave birth to the Great Silliness.,,, ,,, I need to comment on what is being denied—consciousness, conscious experience, experience for short. What is it? Anyone who has ever seen or heard or smelled anything knows what it is; anyone who has ever been in pain, or felt hungry or hot or cold or remorseful, dismayed, uncertain, or sleepy, or has suddenly remembered a missed appointment. All these things involve what are sometimes called “qualia”—that is to say, different types or qualities of conscious experience. What I am calling the Denial is the denial that anyone has ever really had any of these experiences. Perhaps it’s not surprising that most Deniers deny that they’re Deniers. “Of course, we agree that consciousness or experience exists,” they say—but when they say this they mean something that specifically excludes qualia. Who are the Deniers? I have in mind—at least—those who fully subscribe to something called “philosophical behaviorism” as well as those who fully subscribe to something called “functionalism” in the philosophy of mind. Few have been fully explicit in their denial, but among those who have been, we find Brian Farrell, Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, and the generally admirable Daniel Dennett. Ned Block once remarked that Dennett’s attempt to fit consciousness or “qualia” into his theory of reality “has the relation to qualia that the US Air Force had to so many Vietnamese villages: he destroys qualia in order to save them.” One of the strangest things the Deniers say is that although it seems that there is conscious experience, there isn’t really any conscious experience: the seeming is, in fact, an illusion. The trouble with this is that any such illusion is already and necessarily an actual instance of the thing said to be an illusion.,,,, This is how philosophers in the twentieth century came to endorse the Denial, the silliest view ever held in the history of human thought. “When I squint just right,” Dennett writes in 2013, “it does sort of seem that consciousness must be something in addition to all the things it does for us and to us, some special private glow or here-I-am-ness that would be absent in any robot… But I’ve learned not to credit the hunch. I think it is a flat-out mistake, a failure of imagination.” His position was summarized in an interview in The New York Times: “The elusive subjective conscious experience—the redness of red, the painfulness of pain—that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion.” If he’s right, no one has ever really suffered, in spite of agonizing diseases, mental illness, murder, rape, famine, slavery, bereavement, torture, and genocide. And no one has ever caused anyone else pain. This is the Great Silliness. We must hope that it doesn’t spread outside the academy, or convince some future information technologist or roboticist who has great power over our lives. http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-deniers/
And let's not forget that, via the instrumentalist approach, quantum mechanics has restored consciousness back to its rightful place in science:
The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017 Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,, Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/01/19/trouble-with-quantum-mechanics/
Of note, Weinberg, since he is committed to atheistic naturalism, rejects the instrumentalist approach. Which, since he rejects what is termed 'the realist approach' because of the insanity of many worlds interpretation, leaves his in quite a bind. So much so that he has given up any hope of ever truly understanding quantum mechanics.bornagain77_{December 27, 2018
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And, who is saying this Herr Prof?kairosfocus_{December 27, 2018
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Feedback: the very recent style change separates comments better, and improves setting off quotes. The Related articles section just gets in the way, I think, and I don't even see how they are very related. Comments still need numbering, and recent comments still doesn't update reliably. I appreciate the effort it takes to make changes like this, and hope feedback is welcome.hazel_{December 27, 2018
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No, Barry, that was not my point at all. Without saying at all that I agree with everything he says (I don't), or that I support the provocative title (I don't), I think you have to think about this paragraph to try to understand his perspective.
In ordinary life we are quite content to say things like “Oh, I just had a thought” or “I was thinking to myself.” By this we usually mean instances of inner speech or visual imagery, which are at the center of our stream of consciousness—the train of words and visual contents represented in our minds. I think that these trains are indeed conscious. In neurophilosophy, however, we refer to “thought” in a much more specific sense. In this view, thoughts include only nonsensory mental attitudes, such as judgments, decisions, intentions and goals. These are amodal, abstract events, meaning that they are not sensory experiences and are not tied to sensory experiences. Such thoughts never figure in working memory. They never become conscious. And we only ever know of them by interpreting what does become conscious, such as visual imagery and the words we hear ourselves say in our heads.
hazel_{December 27, 2018
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Hazel, if your point is that the article is chock-a-block full of assuming the very thing he denies, who could argue with that?Barry Arrington_{December 27, 2018
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That's actually a pretty interesting article. Thanks, Barry. It discusses a number of things that I've thought about my own conscious experience. Here's is an interesting exercise that illustrates one of the points he is trying to make, I think, although these kinds of things are very difficult to describe. Lie quietly and try to "watch your thoughts". What I have discovered is that I will start to internally articulate an idea in words, but that I actually have a more complete non-verbal understanding of the idea I am having. As soon as I stand back from the verbalization, so to speak, and "feel" the overall idea, I can quit the ongoing verbal stream of internal monologue. I don't need to say it to myself: I don't need to spin it all out as a linear stream of words. At that point the verbal monologue might quit for just a bit, and and then another internal verbalization starts, and I repeat the process. There are two thoughts I have about this. The first is that at least some, if not a great deal, of our daily, continual internal monologue is unnecessary. We don't gain anything new or useful by repeating articulations to ourselves when there isn't any need to do anything with them such as communicate them to someone else. More interesting is the sense that our thoughts are presented to our consciousness by our subconscious, and that they exist in a more holistic, non-verbal manner in the subconscious than they do when we transform them into linear internal verbalizations. The article makes the interesting point (this may not be exactly what he is meaning to say) that we learn about our own ideas by internally talking to ourself in a way similar to how we learn about others ideas: our own verbal articulations provide feedback to our own subconscious for further integration with the totality of understanding that is already there, in whatever way "there" is in respect to our subconscious.hazel_{December 27, 2018
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