Sep 14, 2026 · 52 min · 10 segments
We focus on the final chapters of Dan Dennett's *Consciousness Explained*, where he confronts various views, figures, and thought experiments that contend that he's failed to explain the essence of…
Christopher HeathGuestSome of us had read chapter 12 for last time and could not help but presaging some of the things that we'll t- now treat in some more detail here.
But when we're adding that, like, well, let's add 13, which is the reality of selves.
And then Chris was just asking, like, "Are we reading 12 through 14?" And I'm like, "Well, you know, 14 is actually pretty good, pretty [laughs] relevant too." And then I ended up finding some stuff in 10 and 11 that I, you know...
Basically, I just wanted to cover, you know, as much as we feel the need to, all the various group of thought experiments, famous articles, things, you know, saying that there's something wrong with scientism in the area of philosophy of mind, that there's something you can't quite capture, and it is consciousness, right? The thing, the very thing that Dennett thinks he's explaining, well, is he actually explaining it or is he somehow missing the point? He's explaining something else.
He says access consciousness, right, the organism knows things, can emit verbal behavior about it, can use it to drive other kinds of behaviors, can recall it later.
But is that the same as the lights being on? Is that, do you have that special phenomenal conscious and the actual experience of something? So you can imagine, you know, creating a machine that has visual sensors and is conscious of the stuff in its surrounding area, and you could even give it the ability to report on its own conscious states.
And this is how much I was seeing today, and this is, you know, maybe m- this, the sight was more acute today than yesterday because, you know, I'm running low on battery.
That characterization by Block, no one would ever, and Dennett wouldn't call that consciousness.
I've not read the Block, but I'm a computer, and I am going to report on my sensory states about whether or not my battery is low.
That is not what Dennett is talking about, and that's not what anybody would ever recognize as consciousness.
And so Ned Block, if he's, that's what he's characterizing it as, would say, "Well, this is manifestly not consciousness." And we say, "Yes, of course it's not, not consciousness." But that's not what someone like Dennett is talking about.
Some of us had read chapter 12 for last time and could not help but presaging some of the things that we'll t- now treat in some more detail here.
But when we're adding that, like, well, let's add 13, which is the reality of selves.
And then Chris was just asking, like, "Are we reading 12 through 14?" And I'm like, "Well, you know, 14 is actually pretty good, pretty [laughs] relevant too." And then I ended up finding some stuff in 10 and 11 that I, you know...
Basically, I just wanted to cover, you know, as much as we feel the need to, all the various group of thought experiments, famous articles, things, you know, saying that there's something wrong with scientism in the area of philosophy of mind, that there's something you can't quite capture, and it is consciousness, right? The thing, the very thing that Dennett thinks he's explaining, well, is he actually explaining it or is he somehow missing the point? He's explaining something else.
He says access consciousness, right, the organism knows things, can emit verbal behavior about it, can use it to drive other kinds of behaviors, can recall it later.
But is that the same as the lights being on? Is that, do you have that special phenomenal conscious and the actual experience of something? So you can imagine, you know, creating a machine that has visual sensors and is conscious of the stuff in its surrounding area, and you could even give it the ability to report on its own conscious states.
And this is how much I was seeing today, and this is, you know, maybe m- this, the sight was more acute today than yesterday because, you know, I'm running low on battery.
That characterization by Block, no one would ever, and Dennett wouldn't call that consciousness.
I've not read the Block, but I'm a computer, and I am going to report on my sensory states about whether or not my battery is low.
That is not what Dennett is talking about, and that's not what anybody would ever recognize as consciousness.
And so Ned Block, if he's, that's what he's characterizing it as, would say, "Well, this is manifestly not consciousness." And we say, "Yes, of course it's not, not consciousness." But that's not what someone like Dennett is talking about.
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