Talk:Consciousness Explained
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If I remember correctly, Dennett does not use the expression "eliminativist materialism" -- rather, the term was invented as a snarl word by his critics. If this is the case, a better expression could be found for use in this article. --FOo
- Hello. It was me who put in the term "eliminativist materialism", not realising that it was considered non-NPOV. This chap I know who has recently finished doing an M.A. in Philosophy of Mind uses the term quite a bit, and although he doesn't consider Dennett's treatment of consciousness to be very persuasive, he uses the term in what sounds to me quite a neutral way. I'll ask him about it again. (By the way, I'm trying to get him to write some articles on philosophy here, but so far without success!) -- Oliver P. 02:23 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)
He argues from the standpoint of eliminativist materialism, which has resulted in other philosophers accusing him of defining away the problem. I removed this -- eliminative materialism is a term which other philosophers invented to describe their own positions, and which does not apply to Dennett. There are numerous other factual inaccuracies in this article -- maybe I'll correct them soon enough. -- Adam Conover.
Brains in Jars
There is a very (imho) unpersuasive argument in the book that we can't possibly be "brains in jars" because its too complex to fool us with a computer program Dennet could imagine. Erm. Maybe this should be covered (as it is quite at odds with the rest of the book) , and I'd be very interested in any responses to it...
- To me it sounds as though you've only read the first chapter of the book. ;) In all seriousness, though, I think you're misunderstanding Dennett's argument. On the other hand, he probably didn't feel the need to refute solipsism, as that's been adequately done by other philosophers time and time again. — Adam Conover † 17:07, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)
Parallelism vs. Serialism
This reminds me very much of Julian Jaynes and The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I'm sure there's also similar support from people studying lingusitics and semiotics; especially with regard to Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. First comes the information -- the thinking; then comes your internal modelling of that information -- language / self-consciousness. -- zuzu