Daniel Dennett - How are Brains Conscious?

Brains are conscious. The heart is not. What does the brain do that the heart does not do? How does it come to be that brains generate inner subjective experience, the movies of our minds? Why do brains seem to be the only place where such mental magic occurs? Could a complete understanding of physical laws account for consciousness?
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[@YogaBetter]

My favorite thing about Dennett is he never says what I think he will (what my argument would be), then defying the expectation of a bumbling professor, and phrasing it not quite in a way you've heard before. Love it.

[@mobiustrip1400]

One day when I'm a grandpa, I'm gonna have an epic beard like Dennet!

[@evanramirez2212]

I hope it turns a deep yellow and is dirty.

[@fraynelson]

I would summarize Dennett's position as follows: "Fame in the brain" is what we usually call consciousness. There's no real difference between pre-conscious and post-conscious thoughts for everything in the brain is like a stream of "drafts" constantly being re-written. Consciousness happens in memory, namely, the emergence of a momentarily winner among so many competing neural stimuli that strive to gain the whole brain. Now, this explanation says nothing about how it is the case that there is an "I" who is conscious about that "emergent winner." I mean, there are many other instances of competing signals in nature and we do not speak of consciousness regarding them. Think of the particular photons coming from a distant star.

[@muresandani]

There is no "I". "I" is just another celebrity in the brain. A superstar if you will. A feeling that makes itself known among the other feelings that make themselves known. If you feel like a subject the fact that you feel is proof that it is appearing among other feelings in consciousness.

[@fraynelson]

​@@muresandani There are several serious inconveniences with your approach, which, to my mind, expresses correctly Dennett's thought: 1. You say: "a feeling that makes itself known" -- which begs the question: "Known by whom?" Be it an inner or outer "system", the problem of consciousness has been only transferred to that or those who "know" that "feeling" (although I'm not just so sure that Dennett would deal with the "I" as a sort of "feeling"). 2. The attempt to build science --I mean: hardcore science-- with no "I" borders on the ridiculous. The simplest dialogue in any lab goes like this: "Hey, Mark, are you sure of that cable's length at 60 °C? --Yeah. I measured it myself." Certainty goes hand in hand with consciousness. It's not some part of Mark's brain that is assuring us about that cable's length: it is he himself, which is why two or three days after the events, Mark is still held responsible for the data he provided. 3. What is denying the very existence of the "I" besides renouncing to explain or at least face head-on the real problem, the hard problem of consciousness?

[@jimallen8084]

@@fraynelson If I understand Dennett correctly, he would say that "makes itself known" is nothing more than a metaphor for "becomes available as a motivator for subsequent action". I think he has covered the "I" you refer to pretty extensively in his work, and would agree with @Dani Muresan that it is just another celebrity in the brain

[@LukasOfTheLight]

@@muresandani And yet, there is consciousness. Why?

[@FR-yr2lo]

well there is still a HARD PROBLEM about this phenomenon of "pay attention to me!" How does it emerges from matter?...

[@dariomiric2958]

I think there is no easy way to answer this question because consciousness is too complex phenomenon. It's like asking someone to explain how life emerges from periodic table in few sentences. It's not possible to give easy and fast answers (which people like), there are whole books written about it. In addition, I think that antimaterialist arguments like qualia or knowledge argument fail to say there are non-physical aspects of experience. Dennett's Quining Qualia I think refutes these arguments nicely. Qualia emerges like "elan vital". Artefact of bad theory. We have strong intuition about non-physical aspects of consciousness, but these arguments I think fail when examined rationally and closely. Intuition, in general, proves nothing. A lot of scientific truths are not intuitive. For example, general relativity which shows gravity isn't really a force at all. Psychologists and mathematicians know how our intuitions are terrible in probability theory. They always lead us to wrong conclusions.

[@EgypTPHONIX]

He said interesting things but i don't think they match the title which is a much more interesting question .

[@ervinperetz5973]

bingo -- his book 'Consciousness Explained' doesn't either

[@xNickPwns]

I feel like hes describing how conciousness works not and not answering the original question, how are brains conscious? I feel like this is his more cognitive scientist side of things coming out and answering this.

[@nietztsuki]

I agree completely. He seems to be avoiding the real issue, i.e. "How can the brain (a totally physical object) create conscious experience?" What he is hypothesizing instead is how the brain organizes that conscious experience once it has been created, which is far less controversial. Said another way, what he is discussing is the "object" of consciousness (i.e. the perception of the phenomenal world as it is processed in the brain), and ignoring the "subject" of consciousness (the observer of that object), which is the real mystery.

[@gavinwilshaw2312]

I would love to see him opposite Bernardo Kastrup, to thrash things out.

[@kianimate7803]

The question was " How the brain explains the mind?" The question wasn't about how molecules are conscious, it was about human consciousness. he clearly explains how human consciousness is a emergent property of the complicated interactions between neurons and how memory is created and accessed based on every moment. That explains how Human brains are conscious in regards to our minds and perception of ourselves.

[@angusp5178]

​@@kianimate7803 In so far as I'm familiar with his work and public persona, I like Dennett a lot, but I have to agree with the preceding comments here. What he provides in this clip is merely a model of attention and memory - right? In other words, he sets out a system for how physical processes in the brain determine what is attended to. Somewhere else if I recall correctly I think he may argue that there is no 'hard problem of consciousness' and it's a non-issue that's only arisen due to asking questions based on mistaken preconceptions. I'm not persuaded he's right. A number of other publicly prominent experts in the field perform a similar sleight of hand by conflating the content of consciousness with consciousness per se. To be clear, I'm not arguing that consciousness is necessarily some kind of substance or thing or agent. In other words, what I'm looking for is how the faculty of experiencing - of being aware of objects of experience - emerges out of material processes. An experimental demonstration of the processing model Dennett describes could be made using technology such as computers or even water pipes and valves and so on, right? How is it that those physical machines aren't aware yet machines like cats and humans are?

[@jasonsebring3983]

Despite contrary comments, I find Daniel's explanation the clearest yet of what consciousness is even after reading "How to build a mind" by Kurzweil and watching many Marvin Minsky videos. A flock of birds appears as a moving pattern through time as observed from a distance, so too is our experience, even if we are thinking about our experience. There is no meta "us" that escapes this.

[@twirlipofthemists3201]

Each bird in the flock is an "illusion" of a bird, composed of countless millions of cells, each of which is illusory, composed of quadzillions of molecules and atoms, which in turn are illusions, composed of energized fields in empty space... It's sometimes most convenient and appropriate to describe it as a flock, or other times maybe as birds, or atoms, or sometimes as legs, wings, breasts and thighs.

[@pandawandas]

Dennett is confusing consciousness with meta-consciousness. He's providing an explanation for meta-consciousness, the ability to explicitly self-reflect upon one's internal states, but does not touch phenomenal consciousness, which is why is there something it is like to be anything?

[@willmosse3684]

@@pandawandasI agree with this. At least that seems to be what he is explaining part of the time - he jumps around rather. But quite a lot of what he seems to be saying is that the idea we are (or have) a unitary self observing a coherent flow of conscious experience is illusory. This is I think correct. It is very close to the Buddhist psychological concept of non-self. But yes, it completely ignores the question of why there is any awareness at all. Why are we not just inert “zombies” reacting to stimuli, with no awareness at all?

[@LordChizzington]

I'm not so averse to Dennett's description of what consciousness is as I am to the fact that he clearly has not answered the question

[@twirlipofthemists3201]

No one else can either. Partly because - what is the question exactly? Most of the relevant concepts remain undefined.

[@divish007]

If you listen carefully he is telling that the question itself is flawed. You'll not get satisfaction if you ask the question that way. Stop placing consciousness on a pedestal and the answer will be quite obvious

[@like-icecream]

I don't understand what this guy is saying. How does constant stream of information and things processing things allocating important things into certain areas in the brain translate into a personality or into what we feel? How do electrons and neurons translate into a feeling? What is a feeling, some group of neurons being affected by a release of a certain chemical and other neurons processing what happens in that section of the brain....wait, if little bits of brain were removed and replaced atom by atom until full brain was replaced, what would happen? Would we stay who we are, I think so, logically. That means we are constant pulsating energy of information regardless of what matter it pulsates in? That means we could replicate or transfer into a biological computer one day and live forever or until atoms decay? No this can't be, i think there is something in the brain that dictates everything which makes you you or me me but where, maybe DNA or the quantum field? What the hell am I smoking?

[@frilansspion]

the brain, like everything else living, IS replaced atom by atom and molecule by molecule all the time, as is trivially known. so thats one deep problem off your mind =) and no, he doesnt actually explain the process that give consciousness (if anyone actually had a comprehensive theory about it it would be big news). almost all his writing and talk on the subject is merely to "demystify" it and point out, like he does here, that its closely related to attention for instance. (I also think he could be clearer in pointing that out.)

[@38Fanda]

Id love to study particle physics with you and smoke blunts, its convenient here in amsterdam

[@curtisgrindahl446]

This is beautifully said AND can be enhanced by adding the dimension of psychology. Our life experience shapes how we select and respond to sensory input AND internal autonomic system activity. We each fabricate our own reality by the selections we make. It is little wonder that we have so much difficulty coming to agreement about anything since we are each driven by our own view of reality.

[@Rico-Suave_]

What I absolutely love about Dennett is that he is tackling one of the hardest questions “how we developed consciousness ?”, gods will have one of its final holes closed.

[@tylermacdonald8924]

But why Daniel? Why does matter experience? How do we approach that experience?

[@tylermacdonald8924]

@@Bringadingus Yeah, and the scientists would have discovered that if not already knew it. Why can dead matter arrange itself and suddenly experience sensations? That's at least part of the question.

[@tylermacdonald8924]

@@Bringadingus I am studying neuroscience, it literally does not. Perhaps biology would come closer, or the philosophy of biology but all we look at is mechanisms and correlations for biological processes. You would think this to be the case however it really does not. At least definitely not at the moment or in the foreseeable future. But, I am just a feeble human.

[@JB-kn2zh]

@@Bringadingus what distinguishes the way you feel and respond to temperature and the way a thermostat does? nothing? because you said we are just mechanism. the brain feels and responds to temperature using a more complicated version of the mechanism a thermostat uses. but you and i both know, no matter what linguistic gymnastics you use to try to avoid the question, that you and I actually feel heat, and the thermostat doesn't.

[@Eric123456355]

He is talking about self reflexive mind means awareness of self awareness not consciousness. It is a memory of the previous self aware state. He mix things. Self awareness is common among animals. Consciousnesses is a totally different concept equal to reality

[@ShakinJamacian]

I quite liked when he talked about 'fixed' things and how there's no finish line in consciousness. Don't we all feel ourselves as a unitary self that in our perceptions, that things really are fixed and there is a finish line? Of course, this was an illusion, but for many of us, we don't typically realize it. I've always been curious on how we can perhaps cultivate experience that correlates the data and neuroscience on the mind. Right now, the only answer is low-level nonduality experiences, to see that there's no fixed "you" in control, to see how things are largely differentiated in nature but separate and isolate. Unfortunately that discipline has been hijacked as New Age woolshit because the high level claims they make are not provable, like how consciousness is infinite and how it makes the universe what it is. How many people say the universe is one, which is true, but then make a claim that there's a hivemind behind it all, which is not true? These people are fucking everywhere. Consider for a moment that neurology can definitively say that consciousness is selfless, and the only disciplines that even focus on this as experience are Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, philosophical schools of experience largely discredited because they're offshoots from religions, but they are themselves not a religion. Many of us are missing the big picture to absorb the data here, and that's experience. Dan's friend Sam Harris is a wonderful advocate here, for he's a very skeptical person, and he's inquired into the mind both as data and experience.

[@willmosse3684]

It’s not only Zen Buddhism. All schools of Buddhism have the concept of non-self, meaning no substantial unchanging unitary self, which does totally match what Dennet is saying here. The later Mahayana schools, like Zen, do go futher into the emptiness of all phenomena, not just self, than the earlier texts do. But they all really lead to the that. The modern secular Western tradition known as the Insight Meditation Tradition takes those experiential elements of the Buddhist teachings, whilst not getting sucked into the metaphysical claims of more traditional Asian Buddhism. This is a pretty open tradition though, with some people still feeling aligned with the metaphysical claims. But there is a secular Buddhist strand within it. This is definitely where I am aligned. It’s about interpreting experiential phenomena in a way that works with, and does not contradict, the findings of material science.

[@willmosse3684]

The Secular Buddhist Association has quite a lot of stuff on that, or the KZbin channel Doug’s Dharma. Doug (I forget his surname) goes through all these concepts from a secular perspective.

[@gyorgyogray6934]

I just got a micro-judgement. There was a lot of low-level modulation involved, the mills were a-churning, the waves of activity were welling up while gathering allies to compete for my high-level attention, despite all the 'edited' history that was only retrospectively available. Confusing? Perhaps. But in the end, the archival copy of the paleo-version of what was going on in my brain triumphed over the many competing versions. It appeared to be unitary, and fixed. Fixed for sure. I can understand that many people don't understand Mr Dennett's thoughts, considering the Cartesian theater aspect and all. But ultimately, the final version in MY brain has been signed off on, even though -- damn it! -- there is actually NO final draft distributed in space and time. Did it happen in memory before consciousness, of after consciousness? Pre-conscious or post-conscious? I give up. Maybe I've crossed the equator line of my brain, without having reached the finish line that marks the real beginning of consciousness and the end of memory. I don't know. I'm just an unlettered dumbass anyway. Fuck it.

[@MrTonyInchpractice]

+gerry O 'tray u funny :) but gods forbid a macro-judgment...

[@Rico-Suave_]

I loved Dr. Daniel Dennett, very sad to hear about his passing, I've would have loved to meet him, he was my absolute favorite, an intellectual giant, a legend, true sage, heard he was also very kind gentle person, huge loss to civilization, I will watch tons of his lectures in the next few days in his memory

[@ImpulseGenerator]

Hmm, the question he tries to answer seems to be more akin to 'how and why do we experience reality like we do?'.

[@dewinthemorning]

Consciousness is the constant process of "drafting" in the mind, it is not a "thing".

[@hosseinkarimi2676]

***** If theres no god , theres no soul . and if theres no soul and were nothing but brain and body , as experts say we shouldnt have Consciousness and when we dont have Consciousness , so we dont have any thing because we dont actually exist !! But if you deeply and definitely know and feel that you have Consciousness and have will , so : youre not just matter ( brain and body ) and the other logical results ... . Definitely a worth thinking issue .

[@dewinthemorning]

Hossein Karimi You say: "... if theres no soul and were nothing but brain and body , as experts say we shouldnt have Consciousness ..."Then they are not really experts, are they? You do some more research, and you will find that there is a lot more science than what you say here, and you will see not only better and better explanations of many adaptations in the living world but explanations of where our consciousness comes from. They are not perfect explanations yet, but they are really good.

[@hosseinkarimi2676]

***** I didnt exactly get what u said ! i said that if were nothing but matter ( brain and body ) we shouldnt have Consciousness . almost 90% of scientists say that . So if youre naturalist - materialist you have no way to believe in Consciousness unless you believe in " something else " that isnt material in its origin but has connections with matter and nature in a very complex process . this is what some scientists and philosophers say especially in recent time. I dont know you exactly , but i guess your disinterest to believe in God and religion makes you not to believe in the " Soul " meanwhile you dont want to call yourself a materialist. this is what some other people do too! for example they speak about : spirituality with out god , meaning and purpose with out god , morality with out god , etc . but as far as i and many others understand you only have two choices ! : 1. believe in God 2. materialism . Theres no third option , sorry .

[@MeisterKleisterHeisstEr]

Hossein Karimi "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots."

[@hosseinkarimi2676]

CallMeMrNameless Invalid .

[@asimtahir7859]

wonderful

[@SI-qp7cm]

I really enjoyed this from Dennett. I have had issues with this series as being concerned with religion but of course Dennett is a horseman of the apocalypse. I will say that I found his claims very compelling. This is not a field I am particularly interested in however I would have characterised myself of closer to a dualist. I must say that the materialist functionalist account is compelling when we consider the chaotic competition for attention and survival of the fittest idea - the fame in the brain also makes a lot of sense when we consider trauma. Finally the idea that there is no executive function, no top of the pyramid (now that I accept the claim as plausible after it was so eloquently put out for us) is liberating, frightening and makes the current era make much more sense. We can make our own.

[@sahebjotsingh6306]

Then people who don't have sight and other senses don't have enough consciousness as a person who is getting more sensory data?

[@DrQuadrivium]

For centuries _'professional'_ philosophers have made their living hiding the fact that they have no more an explanation of consciousness than their listeners. This man is no exception... he just doesn't know, but can't just say, *_"I don't know"._*

[@hermes1805]

That has got to be some of the Most Insane Equivocation I have ever heard.

[@benhof2140]

The idea that there is no finish line where matter becomes conscious sounds to me like panpsychism, which asserts consciousness is a quality of all matter, even at a subatomic level.

[@rv706]

As usual, not even an attempt to a solution to the _hard_ problem

[@johnhausmann2391]

??? Aren't the problems he's dealing with hard enough?

[@Bryce360X1]

So many different ideas out there.

[@rosaliodelgado1211]

Good Job 👍🏻

[@chuckbeattyo]

11:11 skip to there. He sums up his view/answer. and 12:00

[@bryan7300]

So he explained how the brain makes judgement and processes information, great, but that doesn't explain how and why conscious experience arises in the brain. He *avoids* the question, rather than answer it. Just say "I don't know".

[@StuGames]

There are no such thing as conscious experiences (qualia) in Dennett's view. There are only representations of such experiences, such as "you are experiencing a red object", "you have experienced a pain a few moments ago", somewhat similar to representations of external objects such as "there is a chair in front of you" that are then used in thinking and to instruct external behaviour. Sounds unfathomable? Maybe so, but it's either that or adding consciousness as something primary to your onthology such as in panpsychism, so if you trust in Occam's razor you better be damn sure that Dennett is wrong first.

[@bryan7300]

Stu Saying there's no "conscious experience" is a huge step. Robots, clocks, cars, and machines do not have conscious experience. Decision making and processing information isn't unique, and doesn't result in consciuos experience. I can program a robot to react to heat, and say "ouch", but this doesn't mean the robot has conscious experience. To say we have no conscious experience, is saying we are equal to a rock sitting on a road, or a clock ticking, or a robot making a decision. .There are many parts of the mind which we are "conscious of" and many other parts which we are not. If we accept that there is a separation between the two, then this is a proof that to an extent, that conscious experience is real.

[@StuGames]

Bryan U you don't get consciousness for free just by doing any old computation in Dennett's view, that idea would belong more to panpsychism. We are conscious because we compute extremely complex models of a self that include representations of conscious experiences. We've evolved to be conscious mostly of thoughts that are connected to macro-level computation and decision making (emotions as well as concentrated thinking in the sense of Kahneman's "system 2"). It makes sense to connect these kinds of thoughts to our self models, but the precise details will have to be worked out in the future. Are we like stones? From an outside perspective, yes. When you take apart a brain, you won't find anything but particles observing the laws of physics. From the inside, it's not so easy. Consider a theoretical mental patient who believes he is Elvis. All of his sensory input is perfectly manipulated to invoke the perfect illusion of being Elvis. To himself, he really is Elvis, even though this interpretation doesn't align with any cohrerent interpretation of the real world.

[@bryan7300]

Stu It doesn't matter how complex our "processing" is in our brain, if it is mere computational activity, it simply can not be conscious, period. We can program the most complex AI that mimics a human mind, but it won't suddenly have "conscious experience". From the outside, it'll act just like a human and they would be indistinguishable, but it's still just electrons passing through logic gates one after another in succession, albeit a lot of ones. No conscious experience there. "From the inside, it's not so easy. Consider a theoretical mental patient who believes he is Elvis. " That's irrelevant. A person can perceive and experience whatever he wants, and the outside world can perceive him however he wants. However, the fact is, humans as we know it, seem to have conscious experience. However, I don't know if anyone else except me does have one for sure, since I can't prove it, but I know very well myself that right now I do possess a conscious experience. In fact, it's the only thing in reality that I can be truly certain of, that "I Am" that I exist, and I am aware of something.

[@StuGames]

Yes, no computational activity ever leads to conscious experience (qualia) in Dennett's view, as there are no such thing as qualia. We believe that we have such experiences because representations of them are created in our brains that then affect our further thinking and decisionmaking. You can deny that this is the case, but then you have to come up with an alternative explanation. This typically involves postulating consciousness as a fundamental entity in your onthology, which comes with a whole host of problems that makes such an explanation much more convoluted and therefore disfavoured by Occam's razor. You are overconfident if you believe that you can be certain of anything. Your brain is a computational machine that has no direct path to ultimate reality.

[@joeruf6526]

What a bunch of smoke. if I repeated Dan Dennet's view in class I would get a failing grade... in fact I'm going to do that and see what happens

[@trytwicelikemice7516]

+Joe Ruf If you failed, then you need to find yourself a new class. I won't pretend to know his if explanation is perfect or not, but it's as good an explanation as anything else out there. and infinitely better than the intuitive cartesian view that a lot of people seem to hold.

[@joeruf6526]

Try Twice Like mice Maybe 20 years ago but if anyone is being Cartesian it is certainly Dennett whether he wants to admit that or not is another story. In fact I believe he is the Cartesian of Cartesian with his book "Consciousness explained" (A book I brought to class to make a point about the misuse of language by non scientific people pretending to be scientists (got an A on that)). Anyone who has the arrogance to redefine words as if they are an authority and then use them without really telling the reader what you have done only to reply, when this fraud is revealed, that any other way is just nonsense, is quite the old useless intellectual thing to do. This is what happens when you grant self proclaimed auto didactic trust fund babies PhDs and there aren't any philosophers around. If Rorty were still alive I don't think he would be getting away with this. As someone pursuing Neuroscience (and by that I mean studying the brain not conducting polls or making massive behavioral inferrences based on fmri scans to promote my political agenda) I have found there is much work to be done in the language dept here to clean up a bit. A couple guys at Oxford seem to understand what I mean. Hopefully it catches on here. Dennett will be dead soon anyways and likewise his ideas will die with him. I don't even believe he understands the brain mechanisms of vision (not that it is easy but if one is going to make an epistemic claim, especially as a materialist, one would assume that would be pretty important... And to dismiss that, whether on purpose or not, you never know whats on an autodidacts syllabus, yet hold up the useless term, for science at least, 'meme" is worthy of ridicule

[@trytwicelikemice7516]

Right, well i'll be honest you clearly know a lot more about this than me so i wont bother to argue! I can't imagine that someone so well respected could be so wrong, but then again you lot are about to get massive letters spelling out TRUMP on the white house, so fuck knows. anything goes in the US ;)

[@joeruf6526]

Try Twice Like mice lol. true that. But the only reason Dennett is popular is because he hopped on the "Muslims proved to the world God is bad" post 9/11 academic gravy train and all the good post modern (this was their one use) philosophes were dead or more focused on politics than people attemptoing to solve consciousness. Marvin Minsky's respected and yet wrong about everything. Then again many greats were wrong about everything but one thing and the reverse. He's just "wrong" because he didn't want to the hard work

[@trytwicelikemice7516]

you seem fairly well versed on the subject (i would hope so as you appear to study it!). would you be able to point me in the direction of some decent work on philosophies of conciousness? I only ran into Dennet through the whole four horsemen thing... Dawkins and Hitch i respect, Harris less so but has his moments, so i figured Dennet was worth checking out - hence i was expecting more religion and less about neuroscience and conciousness. This has sparked my interest, but i need somebody to at least show me where the torch is before i can start searching the dark room, if you catch my meaning.

[@nikokartvel]

This is all true, but instead of explaining how the brain generates consciousness, it raises more questions than answers. For example, how do individual neurons (as well as the brain as a whole) know what they are registering in the external world (e.g. how does a neuron know it is detecting a vertical line, without having some sort of outside knowledge )? All neuronal firing is the same; it is what causes this firing that differs depending on the stimulus. The only measurable difference in neuronal firing is the rate of the firing, which represents the intensity of the stimulus but none of its features. Moreover, the very fact that neurons are tuned in to specific stimuli seems to suggest that some level of consciousness is already present on the neuronal level (even if it is outside our awareness, whatever "we" are), and the fact that the brain is constantly trying to predict what's "out there" is evidence of it being a conscious organ. So this leads to some circular logic: the brain generates consciousness because it performs functions (detection, judgement, prediction) that we normally associate with consciousness in the first place

[@blamtasticful]

I wonder if these ideas include essentially denying that there is any specific threshold where a traveling sensation suddenly magically changes into a perception, but instead affirming that they are both the same type of thing.

[@JLongTom]

I use criticism of Dennett as "not saying much" as a basic test of imagination in others. "Not saying much" = failed.

[@gooddaysahead1]

Could consciousness be an awareness that there is no specific or unique "I." In other words, could consciousness be the realization that that everyone is part of an impermanent, ever changing universe. There is nothing more and nothing less.

[@HighStakesDanny]

Watch at 1.50 speed. Your welcome

[@melissaflanary7]

Walk the path together not one after another

[@jordangarner3402]

Can someone answer this question for me? I want an example of the difference between the two theories Dennett described in this video. How would you describe consciousness during Libet's free will experiments; first according to the "Cartesian Theater" Model and second, according to the "Multiple Drafts / Fame in the Brain" theories? The illusion of conscious decision making makes sense to me, so we all probably understand the "Cartesian Theater" explanation, but what exactly would Dennett say happens in the brain/mind during these kind of experiments?

[@madgodloki]

Jordan Garner Actually that experiment helps provide evidence for the case that the neurons are responsible for the conscious thought, Which completely destroys any concept of "something else" controlling the neurons. I'm starting to get mad by reading people trying to work out how there's still a soul when its clear to pretty much every person who knows anything about this that brain function is what causes consciousness. Not dualism...

[@madgodloki]

***** You forget most people are stuck on the idea that god said "let there be light" and it was apparently good. Let along trying to explain to them that consciousness is not produced. I'm 100% aware that the brain isn't producing anything when it "produces" consciousness. I guess I could say consciousness is a process which arises due to brain activity. But it means virtually the same thing to the laymen.

[@madgodloki]

***** Consciousness is our senses and memories, I'm already aware of this. Like I said laymen just say "brain creates consciousness" Experiencing things is due to collecting information all being tied together by the claustrum.

[@madgodloki]

***** Yup.

[@madgodloki]

***** You're not telling me anything new. But it sounded about right.

[@fharooq1]

WOW, something amazing is going on in the brain.

[@eriksaari4430]

it's called thinking

[@fharooq1]

@@eriksaari4430 thought is just a material process. It’s not amazing.

[@bobs182]

The hard problem of consciousness is due to the fact that brains and minds are different aspects of what is inside our heads and are experienced through different means which makes is difficult to explain one in terms of the other.

[@MikeRoePhonicsMusic]

That's the longest "I don't know" I've ever heard.

[@dominant28]

+MikeRoePhonicsMusic haha

[@dominant28]

+MikeRoePhonicsMusic Lolzz..Man, I have been laughing by remembering your comment for about a month now everytime I recall it...Lolzzz

[@kevinfairweather3661]

+MikeRoePhonicsMusic Haha

[@IAMdavidlong]

That's because it wasn't an I don't know. He told you that he knows how a great deal of it works and that negates a lot of other ways it could be.

[@Brian.001]

It's all still a 3rd-person account of physiology in the brain. I don't think Dan's illusion of consciousness makes any sense. Everything he describes could happen in a zombie,or a computer, and we are not zombies or computers. Consciousness has to be something extra. .

[@jjreddick377]

It’s the change in criticality from one state to the next

[@prateekhegde8560]

He's trying to explain the workings of brain, and how it "decides" to focus on one set of info than another, but that's NOT the question here, this is pretty well understood biology, there's nothing new here, the contrast between his so called "cartesian theater " and his model is more of a discussion on freewill than conscious experience. I don’t know how people even considered this.

[@Drkon6]

Consciousness is a virtual space, just like the circuitry in your computer creates some very detailed video game world, your brains neurons create a virtual model of the self. That's how I interpret consciousness anyway.

[@gavinwilshaw2312]

Did he answer the question, or did he waffle on through multiple analogies ( the equator?) & ultimately fail to hit the spot?

[@ahuman5470]

Shave and see how many people still believe you.

[@tylermacdonald8924]

Vanity and American culture :)

[@caricue]

Dennett makes some good points, but how in the world could you talk about consciousness and brain functions without including the fact that the thing you are talking about is alive. That's the extra something that makes all the difference.

[@huseyinkerem6010]

Does anyone has any idea about *why is he speaking in a church* at all??

[@skipbosco7467]

I figured it was just irony

[@GypsySwingSchool]

Confucius say: What a load of rubbish. This professional poseur extracts moonbeams from cucumbers.

[@innermvp6057]

Denette tends to jump from one thought to the next

[@rickwyant]

Consciousness is material. If not how could it interact with matter? If something else, something non material where does it come from?

[@AbasaltRostami]

An example of “When you have no idea about what you are talking about”.

[@RoibenBlitzTheStoneMan]

What an odd place in the piers to have a conversation..

[@porcupineracer2]

They lead into the second part without an introduction for novices like myself. What are they talking about when they refer to drafts? Are they saying that the information that the brain finally works with is a constantly edited impression? What is this Cartesian theater?

[@somerandomvertebrate9262]

It's the movie of life played up to the immaterial consciousness as a spectator, according to the dualist philosophy of Descartes. It's the same thing as the homunculus, or the soul, really.

[@phild249]

It’s like he’s describing the workings of the insides of a computer, Audio components, visual parts, REM, processer etc, none of which explains the input of the internet.

[@theintermind264]

Sure, there is all that Neural Processing and Competition going on in the Brain. But the thing that Dennett always avoids is talking about a particular output of all that processing such as the beautiful High Def Color filled Conscious Visual Experience that is Embedded in the front of our faces when we look at a scene in the External World. He will harp on some of the imperfections of this Visual Experience to distract from the Existence of the Visual Experience. I have come to suspect that Dennett really does not have the same Color Qualia that I have or he could not so easily say it is an Illusion as he does whenever he speaks. I have always assumed that all normally functioning Human Minds would have at least similar kinds of Conscious Experiences. I have thought this for decades. But after many years of discussions about this with people it has finally become clear to me that some people actually must not have Conscious Experiences or Qualia. I limit this observation to things like the Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone, the Salty Taste and so on. The Experience of Colors and especially the Experience of Redness has been a major target for my discussions with people on the various Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness Forums. There are people that flat out deny the Existence of the Experience of Redness. I think they give it their best shot at understanding it but they always fall back to just dismissing the Experience of something like Redness as pure Fantasy, Superstition, Magic, and Illusion. I have become convinced that their denials of Conscious Experience, their very words, show that they truly and simply do not perceive Redness as a kind of Experience. There is no Redness Experience. They are not Color blind so they can Detect Red in their Visual Field in some way but it seems to be more at the level of the Neural Activity. They can somehow sense that their Neurons are Firing for Red and indicate that there is Red in their Field of View but there seems to be no Experience of Redness in their Field of View. They deny any such extra Consciousness Phenomenon is happening. I used to think they were just messing with me, and I was hoping that after all these years that they would get tired of continuing their Fraud. But they are not messing with me, they truly do not have Conscious Experiences or Qualia. In fact they say that Qualia was invented by Idiot Philosophers. They are usually nasty and arrogant like that and I wonder if that is a symptom of their lack of Qualia. It is interesting that their lack of Qualia would make them living examples of the P-Zombies from Philosophy. One thing I can say is that if they really never have had an Experience of something like Redness then I can completely understand how they would think it was something Magical, and Illusory. These people simply deny the Existence of Qualia and are completely stymied by talk of Qualia, which naturally results in their complete inability to understand the Hard Problem of Conscious Experience. I have been astounded by the possibility that some people (mostly the Physicalists) actually might not Experience the Color Qualia. It is a mystery to me what their Inner Experience of Color could be like. I have always tried to use the Experience of Redness as a discussion point for talking about Conscious Experiences. These people literally will say that there is no such thing as Redness and they always try to compare descriptions of Experiences of Redness to Religious Experiences. I have tried for a long time to get them to describe what the Experience of Redness means to them. After receiving mostly insults, one of them gave me a description of what the Experience of Redness was from their own point of view. He dismissively said that his Experience was the same as everybody else. He described the multitude of Emotions and Memories that were Experienced while Seeing Red. He went on to describe particular Emotions and Memories. I noticed that there was no recognition of the Experience of the Redness itself, but rather it seemed like his Experience of Redness wholly consisted of Associations to other things. This seemed a little odd, but telling. So I then asked him to strip away all the Emotions, Memories, and other Associations from his Experience of Redness and tell me if there was anything still remaining in the Experience. Here is his reply: "How the {!#%@} would I know? It isn't possible for me to 'strip out all the Emotions, Memories, and any other Associations'. Further, I don't believe for a moment that you can either, Steve. This is navel-gazing, pure and simple." This person obviously does not Experience the Redness, but rather Experiences all these other things in place of the Redness Experience. He literally can not figure out what I am talking about. Notice the reference to Navel-Gazing. He still thinks that the Redness is a Religious Experience. After some further conversations I now understand what an Experience of Redness is for these Physicalists. When they think about Experiencing Redness they always branch off into talking about Emotions and Memories. For them, it appears that the actual Experience of Redness is an Experience of Emotions and an Experience of Memories. That is the Experience for them and there is nothing else for them to report. This is of course why they hate the word Qualia, because it does indeed imply that there is something else happening with the Experience of Redness. I can fully see how they would think that the concept of Qualia is Redundant to their Experience. I can fully now understand why they would think that Qualia and the Experience of Redness are different things. For the Physicalists the Experience of Redness is not what I expected. It is something different than my Experience of Redness. I Experience Redness as a Quale and they Experience Redness as associated Emotions and Memories. In fact I can say I really don't even Experience Redness as Emotions and Memories at all. I just simply Experience Redness as a Thing In Itself. Another discussion thread I have participated in where the people denied the Existence of Qualia was one where the people were convinced that we cannot see a Color until we have a Word for the Color. This seems like a very strange thing to believe. I tried in vain to convince them that the Word for the Color does not make the Color real but that the direct Experience of the Color is real. They could not understand what I was talking about. This can only make sense if you consider that they might never have Experienced a Color Quale. They instead receive some kind of Signals from their Neurons that give them some type of Indications about the different Colors, but without any actual Conscious Experience of the Colors. I can see how the Words might be of prime importance to them. But yet another example of People that probably have no Conscious Experiences or Qualia are the people that don't understand the difference between a Computer detecting Red and a Human detecting Red. They probably also just Detect Red in some way but have never had an actual Experience of Redness. The evidence for this lack of Conscious Experience in some people is continuing to grow. It explains the endless arguments about Conscious Experience and Qualia. These people simply do not have Qualia. The Lights are out in their Minds.

[@bpansky]

He says "Let's try to get the bird's eye view here" then proceeds to crawl from one tiny detail to the next like a little inch worm.

[@absarius1216]

It's a bird's eye view for the interviewer who knows the whole process in more detail.

[@bitegoatie]

It is not hard to understand Dennett’s claims. They are difficult to accept, as soon as we go beyond description, with all the idealized metaphors for a very (or over-) simplified understanding of consciousness, and misunderstandings of Descartes, among other things that are hard to swallow.

[@mikel4879]

I agree in many aspects with what Daniel says. However, there is a pre-consciousness treshold from which the real structured matter can "sense" it's OWN introspective activity and its OWN existence. I agree that a level of post-consciousness doesn't exist, the real material consciousness being a continuously evolving real structuring material. You can observe this by simply looking at how some animals perceive their sorroundings, and by how the human race perceive its own environment. Nobody who's a bit smart can miss this interpretation and I don't know how people like Daniel miss the evidence that's all around humans. Again, Daniel has some good observations, but they are incomplete. Daniel, can you tell us if, with what you know, you can create now, today, full artificial consciousness? Not AI, but AC ( Artificial Consciousness )!

[@steveodavis9486]

Consciousness is memory moderated by awareness. Constant info processing with wilful discarding of info that doesn't match whatever worldview you are inhabiting. Origens of dogmas and doctrines that excise conflicting alternates.

[@Bobby-fj8mk]

Good but the sound was so low I had to put headphones on to hear it.

[@nicholasfontana4747]

What is the name of the interviewer.

[@geirerlinggulbrandsen851]

"Ghosts and demons and toothfairies" Ooh, scaary. : )

[@Isen502]

Energy and the cosmos existed long before brains. Yet it was intelligent enough to produce life form and the a human brain which has the ability to contemplate and wonder existentially. Don't assume it's just a dumb accident.

[@MrMojo0417]

So many people commenting he didn't answer the question... Were you listening at all? His point was that there is no such "thing" as consciousness (some use the term almost synonymously with "mind" or "spirit"). It is "edited history that is only retrospectively available." It is a "series of micro judgements"; natural selection of memes, neurons firing, synapses forming. Like CPU, RAM, and HDD sending electric signals to each other. No magic. Laws of physics can explain it all.

[@1booyakasha]

He didn't answer the question, and it's obvious why, there is all this waffling about the mechanisms of consciousness, and whether or not the "final copy" is really final at all. In the case of consciousness, just because you can claim that an illusion is what's causing the sensation of consciousness awareness, you are nonetheless faced with the fact that you have to use the immediate "final" sensation of conscious awareness to call conscious awareness an illusion. Unless you're not conscious, which is entirely possible.

[@jefferee2002]

It's really fascinating as I was watching this I lost interest and started thinking exclusively about something from work. Once I snapped out of that thought pattern I realized I had missed about a minute of this video. Couldn't tell you about a thing what was said in this video during that minute. I had heard it say this is a form of hypnosis

[@PicturesJester]

That isnt hypnosis that was you losing interest in the video and, without aware ess of it happening, being captured by a thought without a sense of self while you were thinking it, you were "lost in thought". You "snapped out of it" once you realized you were thinking about other than the video something, which was the exact moment you regained the sense of self that allows you to be a separate entity from the thought you were thinking.

[@josephm2725]

Its because he doesn't really say much that is interesting

[@redeyewarrior]

This happens to me so much. You just entertained a thought which made you go with it and not pay attention to the video. That moment of snapping out of it is exactly what it was like for example to lose my faith or belief in a god, what Dennet talks about in breaking the spell. Or for example finding myself in a world or system where I suddenly realize what's going on in the world around me, where I realize that we humans are not paying attention to our own actions that have real life consequences. I realized I was entertaining someone elses beliefs and ideas my whole life that were planted into my mind. This creates a paradigm shift and it destroyed my whole worldview because I had to delete parts of myself that were not really me. This present moment also does not last long as you keep entertaining thoughts which constantly pop up and then you keep on drifting in and snapping out of it over and over again throughout your whole life. Some people become aware of this, some don't. That's the scary part because no one is actually in control of it and I don't know where we are heading 😂

[@silvomuller595]

Fame in the brain does not solve the hard problem. It's a metaphor for how Denett imagines information theory processes.

[@hermes1805]

Retitle needed,: "How is Dan Dennet Intelligent?"

[@rosaliodelgado1211]

It’s like beliving through your child,

[@nyworker]

Like that Woody Allen Joke: I went into a synogogue and asked the rabbi the meaning of life. He explained to me the meaning of life in Hebrew. I don't understand Hebrew. He then wanted to charge me 600 dollars for Hebrew lessons.

[@joshuanicholls2692]

This is why the problem will never be solved. We need some fresh thinkers.

[@alenkratohvil7222]

@@Bringadingus no he isn't. There is Donald Hoffman and better yet Tom Campbell

[@JB-kn2zh]

@@Bringadingus "i'm an analytic philosopher. i don't actually 'feel' warmth. i'm just like a thermometer. there is no hard problem of consciousness. la la la la. all things can be explained by my big science brain, cuz i'm smart. any question i can't answer must not be a real question."

[@Serenity5460]

The brain and the eyes are designed?

[@StefanTravis]

Scroll down for christians who want a simple, one sentence answer.

[@pandawandas]

Not a christian. Still think Dennett is spouting off nonsense.

[@steveodavis9486]

Fame in the brain equals consciousness?

[@numericalcode]

His whole point is that the real answer is a big letdown. Like a magician explaining the trick.

[@judithnelson1665]

Dennett, not at his best here, perhaps because his interviewer was too gentle; he's better in debate. This might be called, recalling his book, "Consciousness NOT explained."

[@MrOreo76]

volume is so low!

[@jackeggen7779]

try turning your volume up

[@Dyslexic-Artist-Theory-on-Time]

Could electrical activity form the driving force for consciousness with each life form aware of its own electrical potential in the form of a potential future? Therefore each individual life form is at the forefront of creation within the center of its own reference frame. This makes sense when you think we are always looking into the past being able to look back in time in all directions at the beauty of the stars. In this theory time is an emergent property objects and individual life forms form their own time by slowing up the rate that time flows. Therefore they form a future relative to their energy and momentum or actions. This is the same process that we have in Einstein’s Theories of Relativity with time dilation and the curvature of spacetime relative to the energy and momentum of an object.

[@paulmitchum8658]

I get a crick in my neck watching this video.

[@daithiocinnsealach3173]

Dennett is Darwin and Buddha in one. 😉

[@jackpullen3820]

Research The Biophysics of Consciousness ORCH O.R. Theory by Rodger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff - Abstract 2016. This guy is," I don't know...?".

[@atharvnaik]

Who is the other guy?

[@lmntvst1059]

hahaha fucking dennett doing the backwards chair thing on a pew like "let's rap"

[@pepi357bbq]

Now Dan is one of my favorite. So much bullshit on such a small space. I love him as a human being no matter what its just his mind is so full of shit it spills all over the place.

[@mrbwatson8081]

Well said !! 👏;)

[@brianmason2368]

Materialism is dead. Science is beginning to “ see “ the elephant in the room, “the observer”. The observer is conscious and in essence, beyond time and space.

[@ericmichel3857]

They could have just said up front that they didn't have a clue, left it at that, and saved me 12 minutes of nonsense.

[@konnektlive]

+Eric Michel They can't. Simple as that. If they do admit that, it means no more school funding, no more dramatic science-knows-everything media coverage, no more IFL website shiny titles for teenage audience, and no more invitation for superficial debates here and there to make money. These people are at best celebrity scientists, while there are many many more actual scientists are doing their job seriously in the lab with almost no media coverage. Religion does not need to be ritualistic to have political meaning, these mediocre wannabe scientists are all religious in nature even if they are not aware of it...

[@salasvalor01]

Dan Dennett is like the only philosopher who can justify being one in the modern day, and it's because he thinks differently about old ideas- ways that no one really took seriously.

[@apocryphalmusings7535]

You clearly know nothing about philosophy.

[@salasvalor01]

Apocryphal Musings I'm a computer scientist, way beyond philosophy.

[@chaosmos24]

Sage Mantis It would appear the other person was correct if you can type that with a straight face.

[@salasvalor01]

chaosmos24 Type a true statement with a straight face?

[@chaosmos24]

The very concept of a "true statement" would not exist without the existence of a practice we call "philosophy" for the sake of convenience that we have inherited from history. What exactly does "I'm a computer scientist, way beyond philosophy" even mean? What do you think it denotes, and can you present it in the form of a sound argument? You can't denigrate the very foundation of the modern sciences (including and especially computer science) without actually "doing" a little philosophy. Not in a way that sensible people will take you seriously, anyway. I have a feeling you are more interested in departmental pissing contests than seeing the value in both the specialized bodies of knowledge acquired in particular branches of science, and the broader conceptual tools that make the acquisition/formation of those bodies of knowledge possible. As for my own work in computer science, I have found that my education in philosophy - primarily (but not only) logic - has proved quite valuable. And why wouldn't it? Programming is "applied logic," no matter the syntax of any given language.

[@PrestonGranger]

ITT: People who have never read Dennett's published work.

[@AnoNymous-dh2sv]

>I am smart

[@1booyakasha]

wouldn't waste my time with that garbage.

[@qqqmyes4509]

I have no idea what’s going on

[@NewSchoolPOKERstrat]

If it SEEMS like anything at all that IS conciousness. This guy just uses a different set of definitions for a lot of these terms like consciousness and “free will” then he argues w people w/out ever defining his terms. That’s the most charitable explanation I can think of. He could just literally believe the things he says like “free will is real” and “consciousness is not”. This guy is totally irresponsible and shouldn’t be given platforms to spread confusion. Stand aside Dennet, the adults are talking.

[@pepsico815]

The way the camera keeps zooming in on his face is really awkward.

[@MrBasisGuy]

They do that to add energy to a static shot: www.videomaker.com/video/watch/tips-and-techniques/17207-quick-tip-add-energy-to-a-static-shot Yeah, the videographer is not doing it properly that's why it looks awkward. Camera is pointed-down too much.

[@lonelywanderer2467]

Spoiler - He doesn't know.

[@jamesberkeley8123]

Here as not. No scholar am I Have not exit strategy iii Contents and books not read my life. I the words not yet born now Look forward to learn my love of life James

[@theophilus749]

None of this explains _how_ consciousness arises from the brain, nor how it even _can_ so arise. It seems instead to explain (offer a model of) how the brain comes to focus on some things more than others, and how that can change. This is interesting but it hardly even addresses the mind-brain problem. Dennett shows why thinking of consciousness as a finishing line or final state may be a mistake. But even if it is, this leaves the mind/brain problem quite unaddressed. Why? because the ideas that Dennett puts forward seem consistent with various theses with respect to the mind/brain problem - even substance dualism (to which the notion of a 'Cartesian Theatre' is a rather suspect, and certainly non-essential, added extra).

[@thalisagathon3096]

no he is saying that what we call consciousness is like shadow - it doesn't exist but seems to exist. there is constant information without anyone looking at it. the experience of 'looking at' is part of the information stream

[@theophilus749]

Bringadingus An article of materialist faith.

[@theophilus749]

Bringadingus Not at all. All that has been shown is that conscious events are correlated with neural events. The issues of causation and identity remain open.

[@theophilus749]

Bringadingus Of course science is in the business of making causal claims but two pints need to be observed here. (1) Correlation doesn’t necessitate causation. (2) Even of (certain kinds of) brain states do cause conscious states, this still doesn’t imply identity - that is, that conscious states just are brain states.

[@theophilus749]

Bringadingus But if brain states ‘give rise to’ (cause) conscious states but are not identical to conscious states (as you now seem to be saying) then conscious states clearly are not brain states.

[@erickmurphy8047]

Dans theory of consciousness is incredibly counter intuitive and really difficult to understanding which is why so many people write ridiculous criticisms under a video like this... I think time will show that his ideas are more right than wrong...

[@pandawandas]

no time will label him as an insane lunatic

[@eelick1978]

@@pandawandas in your opinion :)

[@1booyakasha]

@@eelick1978 I'm sure Dennett isn't conscious which is why he thinks it's an illusion.

[@eelick1978]

@1booyakasha that is another possible explanation that I have no problem accepting... if its true its true what I can do but accept it? But the same goes for Dan's theory or any other on the matter, but most people will only accept theories that align with their prior beliefs and will automatically reject anything that doesn't! which has nothing to do with figuring out what's actually real or true ;)

[@1booyakasha]

@@eelick1978 what should be noted about philosophy is that it's mostly garbage. The only good things that ever come out of it usually end up in STEM departments. I think it's better to admit our ignorance than to spew word salad like Dan is doing here. I too can point to anything I want, and call it illusory, I'm sure you'll admit that it doesn't make it so. To call the very thing we use to make empirical observations illusory, is by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I have less evidence for Dan existing, much less the truth of his whacky theories, than I do for my own conscious experience.

[@bumpyjohnson7204]

Anyone else didnt get it....am I just too fucking stupid? how are brains conscious????

[@kurthernandez5140]

This guy have a good imagination..

[@rosaliodelgado1211]

I take mine ⚓️ it and claim itself victory ✌️ Jesus Christ theology.

[@new-knowledge8040]

Funny, I don't feel like a conscious "Brain". Any of you out there feel like a conscious brain being transported via an organic transport system ?

[@bradmodd7856]

the universe isn't just conscious in biological systems, it is conscious right down to quantum level and beyond....this is the new thinking, everything points in this direction....the universe is all thought in a cosmic mind...even spacetime is an illusion, there is nothing behind it, just the dream

[@jackshadow325]

Punch yourself in the brain every time Dennett says "designed".

[@hardcorgamer007]

he calls the thing that can differentiate between reality and illusion an illusion....lost atheist