S
Sciborg_S_Patel
This was my point - how do you explain what happens to consciousness during deep sleep from any position other than mind=brain? I am actually beginning to see how a "materialist" point of view might look on this subject. (Having said that, I hate polarizing. I prefer to think that we are all at different places along a sliding scale between the two extremes)
There's a thread with varied papers/videos related to dreaming that might be of interest.
Actually, I think Dennett is the one playing with words - I really believe that this is the level of this scientific debate. I think he wants to cleverly dither between saying we are conscious, but not explaining how this happens, and saying we are not conscious - it is all an illusion.
Agreed. A relevant paper from the Dennet Debunked discussion thread I posted above:
Heterophenomenology Debunked
What is analyzed in this paper is of fundamental importance to the viability of Dennett’s works on mind and consciousness. Dennett uses the heterophenomenology method as the basis to ground his thoughts on subjectivity and phenomenal experiences. It is argued here that Dennett’s formulation of heterophenomenology fails to provide the founding framework with which to ground studies on consciousness and qualia. Analysis in the paper has important import on the rest of his theory of consciousness and mind, for without credible philosophical underpinnings, his reasoning on consciousness and mind at large is not likely to amount to much.
I'd also recommend for anyone who hasn't read it Andrew Clifton's refutation of materialism:
An Empirical Case Against Materialism
Empirical arguments for materialism are highly circumstantial —based, as they are, upon inductions from our knowledge of the physical and upon the fact that mental phenomena have physical correlates, causes and effects.
However, the qualitative characteristics of first-person conscious experience are empirically distinct from uncontroversially physical phenomena in being—at least on our present knowledge—thoroughly resistant to the kind of abstract, formal description to which the latter are always, to some degree, readily amenable.
The prima facie inference that phenomenal qualities are, most probably, non-physical may be resisted either by denying their existence altogether or by proposing that they are properties of some peculiar sort of mysterious physical complexity, located, for example, within the functioning of the brain.
It is argued here, however, that the first, eliminative hypothesis is empirically absurd—while the second is extravagant, vague, ad hoc and (for various additional reasons) profoundly implausible.
Taken together, these considerations provide a compelling empirical case against materialism—yet its converse, mentalism, is usually regarded as subject to serious difficulties of its own.
I conclude by suggesting empirical and theoretical desiderata, respectively, for the vindication of materialism and alternatively, for the development and defense of a potentially robust and viable mentalist theory of consciousness.