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Questions tagged [dennett]

Daniel Dennett is an American Philosophy professor teaching at Tufts University in Medford Massachusetts. Dennett is a progressive within philosophy of mind, science, and biology with strength in Athiestic approaches to a materialistic metaphysical stance.

Daniel Dennett is an American Philosophy professor teaching at Tufts University in Medford Massachusetts. Dennett is a progressive within philosophy of mind, science, and biology with strength in Athiestic approaches to a materialistic metaphysical stance.

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From a functionalist point of view: when is an algorithm an A.I., and when is it just software?

Recently, The Atlantic published an article claiming that "Google Taught an AI That Sorts Cat Photos to Analyze DNA". When you look at the original paper published by the Google team, what they really did was take a neural network model normally…
Alexander S King
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Who, if anyone did say it, was the first to say that because no qualia exist it is meaningless to say what I call "red" could be what you call "blue"?

There's a famous question that asks whether two people who agree that they are seeing a red object might be seeing (in their respective subjective experiences) different colors. For example, one is seeing the object as red in his private experience…
Matthew Christopher Bartsh
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Why are Dan Dennett and his heterophenomenonology largely ignored by the Wikipedia and Stanford articles on phenomenology?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/ says: "According to classical Husserlian phenomenology, our experience is directed toward—represents or “intends”—things only through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, etc. These make up…
Matthew Christopher Bartsh
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Why do compatibilists believe that whether we act freely is independent of whether or not determinism is true?

I am mainly looking for information based on Dennett's work, I Could Not Have Done Otherwise- So What? because that is the only thing I am familiar with other than D'Holbach, but other works will do fine as well as long as your provide adequate…
Felix
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Is Dennett what Williamson calls a Judgement Skeptic?

Timothy Williamson in Evidence in Philosophy, chapter 7 section 3 of his book "Philosophy of Philosophy" (2007), conveys the notion of the Judgement Skeptic - e.g. (bold emphasis is mine) page 220 [Judgment] skepticism does not target the…
GavinBrelstaff
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Critique of those missing the Hard Problem?

From everything I've ever seen about the “Hard Problem of Consciousness”, the issue is that materialists and physicalists presume a different question and answer that one instead. I feel like the two parties are talking across each other. What I…
Al Brown
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What does Daniel Dennett mean by "intentionality"?

In the examples of "The Wandering Two-Bitser, Twin Earth, and the Giant Robot" from the Intuition Pumps book, also found here, what is the discussion actually about? It seems always like a mixture of: Meaning of…
viuser
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Does Dennett's definition of Free Will imply that game-playing programs have free will?

In The Self as a Responding—and Responsible Artifact. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1001: 39-50. doi: 10.1196/annals.1279.003 Dennett writes as follows. Non-human animals can engage in voluntary actions of sorts. The bird that flies wherever it wants is…
RussAbbott
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How does Materialism provide response to the kantian split between noumena and phenomena?

How do current (and traditional) materialists address the problems Kant provided with the separation of noumena and phenomena? It would seem a materialist wishes the phenomena to disappear and leave us with a solid, apodictic understanding of the…
NationWidePants
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Dennett's claims on Qualia (based upon Sweet Dreams)

Dennett claims qualia is a faux pas, a logical fallacy, held by the philosophical community, but this is based upon specific sources that remove some "qualities" of qualia. For instance, not all thoughts apply as qualia. If we think of qualia in…
NationWidePants
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How, in layman's terms, should this Conifold argument against illusionism be interpreted?

There's a discussion about philosophical zombies and illusionism going on in The Symposium, which is the main chat room for Philosophy on Stack Exchange and Conifold posted this a day or two ago (the Chat timestamp is Wed 14:02): I am skeptical of…
Matthew Christopher Bartsh
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Assuming philosophical zombies are possible, could one zombie have an inverted spectrum while the rest do not?

Philosophical zombies by definition (See Chalmers: https://consc.net/zombies-on-the-web/) lack qualia, while being normal human beings in every other way. Like normal humans, zombies make utterances that appear to claim that they (zombies) have…
Matthew Christopher Bartsh
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Would the alleged nonexistence of qualia imply that it is meaningless to say that what I call "red" could be what you call "blue"?

This question is similar to (and following on from) but significantly different from this question: Who, if anyone did say it, was the first to say that because no qualia exist it is meaningless to say what I call "red" could be what you call…
Matthew Christopher Bartsh
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Why do people hide the assumption contained in the philosophical zombies question/idea?

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article called "Zombies" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/ makes no mention of an assumption that seems to be hidden in the famous philosophical zombie question. Using the search text function of my…
Matthew Christopher Bartsh
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Has anyone ever claimed that if Daniel Dennett, or a like-minded person, did actually manage to explain consciousness, humans would be diminished?

Here's a link to a free, seemingly legal, PDF of an awesome book, Sweet Dreams by Dan Dennett. I finished reading it a day or two…
Matthew Christopher Bartsh
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