Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free, plus tons of bonus content, including a supporter-exclusive part three. Continuing from part one (and before that, ep. 399) on Consciousness Explained (1991), ch. 12-14. We continue discussing Dennett's response in ch. 14 to Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" which gets us in a whole conversation about animal Continue Reading …
Ep. 400: Dennett Rejects Qualia (Part Three for Supporters)
Mark and Seth rejoin to complete our treatment of Consciousness Explained. We focus on Dennett's response to Frank Jackson's "Mary the Color Scientist" example: Is there really a difference between experiencing something and making a judgment about it? Dennett says that there's no information difference, just potentially a different mode of getting information, developed Continue Reading …
Closereads: Late Dennett on Consciousness (Part One)
Sign up for Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy to get previous and future installments of this podcast. On "Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?" (2001), which was published along with various papers by psychologists, neurologists, and other researchers to discuss the "growing consensus" about the architecture of the mind, which Dennett takes to be concordant Continue Reading …
Ep. 400: Dennett Rejects Qualia (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free, plus tons of bonus content. Continuing from ep. 399 on Dan Dennett's Consciousness Explained (1991), now focusing on ch. 12-14, and again featuring Mark, Seth, Dylan, and Chris Heath. Sponsor: Visit functionhealth.com/PEL to get the data you need to take action for your health. We've given the basic outline of Continue Reading …
Ep. 400: Dennett Rejects Qualia (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one (and before that, ep. 399) on Consciousness Explained (1991), ch. 12-14. We continue discussing Dennett's response in ch. 14 to Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" which gets us in a whole conversation about animal consciousness. What is it like to be any languageless creature? Dennett thinks we can say a lot of things about what it can't be like, Continue Reading …
Ep. 400: Dennett Rejects Qualia (Part One for Supporters)
Continuing from ep. 399 on Dan Dennett's Consciousness Explained (1991), now focusing on ch. 12-14, and again featuring Mark, Seth, Dylan, and Chris Heath. We've given the basic outline of Dennett's positive view of what consciousness is: By advocating the multiple drafts model, he's argued that consciousness is essentially a matter of information availability, and that it's Continue Reading …
Ep. 399: Dan Dennett’s Model of Mind (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free, plus tons of bonus content. On Daniel C. Dennett's Consciousness Explained (Ch. 1, 5, and a bit of 12; ep. 400 will complete ch. 12 along with 13). Featuring Mark, Seth, Dylan, and Chris Heath. Sponsor: Every self-made person started somewhere. Yours starts free at shopify.com/pel. What is the mind? Dennett claims Continue Reading …
Ep. 399: Dan Dennett’s Model of Mind (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Consciousness Explained, ch. 5, with some reference to ch. 12. Dennett seemed to be saying that the phi-phenomenon (where we see a dot as having moved and transformed into another dot, whereas it was really just two dots shown successively in different places) showed that there's no distinction between experiencing the dot as moving and judging Continue Reading …
Ep. 399: Dan Dennett’s Model of Mind (Part One for Supporters)
On Daniel C. Dennett's Consciousness Explained (Ch. 1, 5, and a bit of 12; ep. 400 will complete ch. 12 along with 13). Featuring Mark, Seth, Dylan, and Chris Heath. What is the mind? Dennett claims that we are intuitively Cartesians: It seems like sensory input gets fed into us, processed unconsciously, and then the conscious mind examines the result (this is our stream of Continue Reading …
REISSUE-Ep. 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al) w/ New Intro
Discussing articles by Alan Turing, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Dan Dennett. Plus a new intro by Mark, Wes, and Seth reflecting back on this 2010 discussion, which we're re-releasing to help you prepare for our upcoming episodes in this area. What is this mind stuff, and how can it "be" the brain? Can computers think? No? What if they're really sexified? Continue Reading …
Not School April: Dennett and Germans and Aristotle
Hey there, lovers of philosophy, here's with a breakdown of our current Not School offerings for April: Two common objections we get from folks considering the Not School program are “This level of instruction probably costs $6, maybe $7 dollars a month—and that rent is too damned high”...and second “If Not School doesn’t help me wrap my head around the idea that various Continue Reading …
Not School This March: Hobbes, Nietzsche, Dennett, Plato, Hegel
There's quite the smorgasbord for Uber-Mensches (and Uber-Mensch-ladies) this March for folks considering a Not School experience. Sign up and come on into the Citizens' Forum for proposals, and check out the already-established Not School groups. #leviathan #topical #besticandowithcreativecommonsphotos You want Thomas Hobbes? You get Thomas Hobbes. Keegan Venzomeran Continue Reading …
More Fun Debating Free Will (and Bashing Dan Dennett)
Pop science journalists / authors Bob Wright and John Horgan have an interesting debate on free will from a, well, pop science point of view. Nothing gets resolved, as always, but I like hearing well-informed middle-aged guys argue the same debate we've been hearing since the university dorm room. Highlights include Wright's assessment of Daniel Dennett's Freedom Continue Reading …
Notes on Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell,” Part 1
For our atheism episode (which has, incidentally been pushed back to be recorded in late May or possibly June... sorry, Russ!), I'm trying to read through the most popular of the "new atheist" books, and I'm sure we'll only end up discussing some select portions of the books in any detail, so as I'm going through these, I'm going to generate a few blog posts to fill readers in Continue Reading …
Episode 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al) (Citizens Only)
Discussing articles by Alan Turing, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Dan Dennett. What is this mind stuff, and how can it "be" the brain? Can computers think? No? What if they're really sexified? Then can they think? Can the mind be a computer? Can it be a room with a guy in it that doesn't speak Chinese? Can science completely understand it? ...The mind, that Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al)
This is a 31-minute preview of a 2 hr, 20-minute episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat Continue Reading …