Kuznetzova wrote:
There is a particular philosophical position on consciousness that can roughly be summarized as the following:
"Consciousness is a turing-computable function being performed by the biomechanics of the brain."
Since the early 1970s, philosophers, scientists, and intellectuals of all stripes have come to slowly learn to never take the above position. The above stance is what I am going to call the "Third Rail of Consciousness". Writers and debators have learned through trials and tribulations to never take the position, because they know that the philosophers will seize on it, and paint the claimant into a corner.
Hi Kuznetzova,
I am interested in this topic and I really enjoyed your post but there are 7 areas I would like to discuss with you.
1. Philosophers are scientists and vice versa, anybody capable of engaging in this discussion is to some extent a philosopher and a scientist. I think it is a mistake to oppose "philosophers" to "scientists".
2. Philosopher-scientists frequently adopt the Third Rail stance. Professor David Deutsch explicitly adopted it in an article published this week in Aeon Magazine and in the Guardian. Many participants at last year's online Conference on Consciousness adopted it.
To see how a philosopher paints the reductionist into a corner, we can imagine a fictitious conversation between a vanilla materialist, and a philosopher.
vanilla materialist: "I hereby claim consciousness is a function of the brain."
Philosopher: "If consciousness is a function, what does that function do?" etc.
3. Are either of these positions similar to your own views? It wouldn't be very interesting if you were presenting us with a dialogue between two speakers, neither of whom you agree with. That would leave your readers wondering who to respond to.
4. Certainly not every philosopher would agree with your fictitious philosopher about the best way to argue against the vanilla materialist.
Dennett's book appears superficially to be written to a general audience. Personally, I disagree. In my opinion, 'Consciousness Explained' constitutes a direct frontal attack on Nagel and Levine. Dennett drives his attack directly to the premises that started this whole modern discourse on consciousness.
5. I have a strong dislike of this book. I read it when it first came out, when I was just getting interested in philosophy. It didn't help me understand consciousness at all.
Dennett's arguments always lose something crucial in a summary,
6. I agree with what John Searle said about Dennett: "The crushing argument is always just offstage, in some review he or somebody else wrote or some book he published years ago, but he can’t quite be bothered to state the argument now. When I go back and look at the arguments he refers to, I don’t find them very impressive." The same is true of the arguments you summarised. They seem pretty worthless to me, and I am genuinely puzzled that anybody takes Dennett seriously.
7. I think this:
"Consciousness is a turing-computable function being performed by the biomechanics of the brain."
is the biggest mistake in contemporary philosophy of mind. Not only that, I think it's a really obvious mistake, so that I find it hard to understand how people keep making it, once the mistake has been explained. It commits the Fallacy of Reification or Hypostatization, which is possibly the most common fallacy. The error is to treat an abstract concept (the concept of a Turing-computable function) as if it were a concrete event or entity.
Looking forward to your responses to these points!