Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

   Post 112.  December 1, 2020

  Is Consciousness An Illusion?

   Is Reality a Mental Model?  

 In his New York Review of Books article on Daniel Dennett’s 2017 opus, From Bacteria to Bach and Back : The Evolution of Minds, fellow philosopher Thomas Nagel sums up Dennett’s “grand project of disenchantment of the human world” as merely the latest in a series, over the last 50 years, of his attempts to free humanity from its “illusions”. But first he praises Caesar with “Dennett presents a valuable and typically lucid synthesis of his worldview. Though it is supported by reams of scientific data, he acknowledges that much of what he says is conjectural rather than proven, either empirically or philosophically”. Then he points out that some of what he “asks us to believe is strongly counterintuitive”.

Nagel then notes that, even though most humans view themselves from the metaphysical perspective of a Mind in a Body, “Dennett holds fast to the assumption that we are just physical objects”. However, he also “identifies two unsolved problems along this path: the origin of life at its beginning and the origin of human culture much more recently”. Apparently, Dennett, like many materialists, assumes that eventually, reductive Science will reveal the physical underpinnings of Life and Mind. In that assurance, Nagel notes that Dennett’s world-view has much in common with B. F. Skinner’s 20th century Behaviorism, which ignored any signs of subjectivity, in favor of objective observation of overt behavior. Which ironically, elim-inated the psyche from Psychology, in order to understand why people behave as they do.

For the purposes of his argument, Dennett adopts the philo-sophical distinction between Manifest Image1 and Scientific Image2. The common human view of the world is populated with concrete things and beings, as well as “imperceptible” entities, such as Ghosts and Minds. Ironically, the so-called Empirical3 view of modern Physics is also occupied by invisible entities, such as Atoms, Photons, and Dark Matter, that are known via logical inference and theoretical models. So, Nagel says that Dennett’s “task is to explain scientifically how the world of molecules has come to include creatures like us, complex physical objects to whom everything, including they themselves, appears so different.” What causes the distinction between superficial Appearances and the underlying Material realities?

One recent attempt to explain the veil between us and our world, is Donald Hoffman’s book, The Case Against Reality : Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes4. He uses the same analogy that Dennett proposed in his book : “the ingenious user-illusion of click-and-drag icons”. Hoffman says that what we perceive via our senses is not the underlying reality, but an imaginary “interface” created by evolution to indirectly repre- sent reality in the form of mental ideas & symbolic images. However, Hoffman doesn’t make the same assumption, that the foundation of our reality is material. Instead, he uses the metaphor of Maya5, to indicate that what we call “reality” is actually  Mental — or Informational6 , in my own jargon. That may also sound like a paradoxical or unrealistic notion, but his intention was to develop a scientific theory of Model Dependent Realism, even though it calls into question the traditional theory of Materialism.

                    Post 112 continued . . . click Next

Perhaps it’s all imaginary

4. Model Dependent    Reality
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page21.html

5. Maya :
    “Māyā connotes a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem". . . . and the "power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality"

6. Informational :
    Consisting of Information, which is the immaterial “stuff” of reality. Similar to Energy, it is the Cause of everything in the world, including Ideas and Feelings.

1. Manifest Image :
   Appearences – What is obvious, plain, and assumed to be true.
   “The manifest image includes intentions, thoughts, and appearances. . . but he rules out appeal to imperceptible entities. . . .”
   “The fundamental objects of the manifest image are persons and things, with emphasis on persons, which puts normativity and reason at center . . .”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Sellars

2. Scientific Image :
   An abstraction from naïve human experience in an effort to reach the ultimate truths, which typically are expressed in mathematical relationships.
  “So here are the first two important differences: the Scientific Image is being created, by scientific theorizing; the Manifest Image "took shape" in the mists of pre-history, but is systematically described by the 'systematizing' philosophers.”
https://www.princeton.edu/~fraassen/abstract/MANIFEST.pdf

3. Empirical :
   based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

Is Consciousness
an Illusion?
Dennett’s paradoxical
position on
Consciousness

Thomas Nagel
Philosopher of Law, Politics
and Ethics

“Materialism remains a

widespread view, but science does not progress by tailoring the data to fit a prevailing theory.”