"Out of Our Heads" by Alva Noë

[zygodactylexicon]

I wanted to go to your blog but the link you provide doesn't get there, you might want to check it. I do agree with you and I also admire Noe.

[lookatmepleasesir]

Maybe daniel dennet and alvin noe are both right. I tend to think all capable ideas have some truth to them. They all come from one creature after all.

[AmbiVex]

And we appreciate your work....great videos, thanks....especially when you can't find a conversationalist on topics like these around....

[treyboone]

Where does this come from? Dennett is not a reductivist! To call him a computationalist is also grossly oversimplified. He believes there are computational processes that go on in the brain, but the content of those processes does not map straightforwardly onto the content of conscious experience. Keep in mind that Dennett has always been a chief critic of Fodor (who is a computationalist through and through).

[matn79]

Dennett doesn't claim that consciousness is 'in the brain', 'there is no reason to assume that the functional boundary of consciousness should be the skin' and he acknowledges to be a ´mild fan´ of extended mind theory such as that of Andy Clark. Making straw men of your opponents doesn´t help anybody.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I've never had the pleasure of speaking with Dennett myself, though I've read much of his work (including a text book on Mental Representation where some discussions between he and Clark are recorded). If you watch the video that LennyBound posted which I am here responding to, you'll hear Dennett say where he thinks consciousness and cognition are at about 1:54. Don't mean to straw man, I just call 'em like I hears 'em.

[patternsinchaos]

In a very real physical sense, the inside and outside of the head are connected. And in that sense there are two views which present a more interesting philosophical issue. We cannot ignore that the apparent separation is real, nor can what the brain does be divorced from it's appearances. How to integrate the treatments of the discrete and unified views becomes the new problem.

Wonder if Dennett would reject the unified view...?

[Korovev1]

@0ThouArtThat0 I've just readed alva noe's book and i found it quite interesting. I Found many analogies with other another books. from an author who is ,unfortunatly , known only for his ethic :Hans jonas; his " organism and freedom" is a book that i would reccomend even to my worst enemy .

Sorry for my bad english

[ComplexEmergence]

Dennett is wish-washy on this point, it seems to me. Sometimes I think it depends on his audience; he seems to like saying things to shock and astound the crowd. That's why he's Dennett. At any rate, Dennett has said, as ThouArtThat noted, in the conference-turned-text-book ed. Hugh Clapin, that consciousness is the result of code "a bit like java applets" which are memetic infestations of brains. "I continue to believe with all my heart and sole that this is exactly what conciousness is!"

[gerontodon]

This sounds very interesting. I'll have to get it, and hope to understand it. Does he bring in Godel's work like Roger Penrose does? I like Penrose and Chalmer's approach much more than Dennetts' reductionist one, but would like it more if they didn't think that there had to be a scientific model of consciousness. I don't like the 'mysterian' approach either, which says that consciousness is a mysterious 'thing' that's beyond us. I personally don't think it's a 'thing' at all.

[CoffeesIsBack]

:D

Great video.

[patternsinchaos]

The intra-cranial neuro-chemical process supposition of the computational theory is flawed by assumption of locality in the nature of the underlying physics. The electron and it's entangled and super-symmetric underlying agencies demonstrate the absurdity of disregarding non-local resonance. The computational views are popular because, if the the brain's radio nature is admitted, then you might ask, where's the transmitter? The answer being everywhere and every-when. Good stuff Matt.

[g00ch]

Thank you for this, I am doing a paper soon on neurophysiology and am addressing the computational philosophy of the brain as well. Very helpful :)

[daleshankins]

Doesn't "consciousness" awareness of a world clearly improves survivability? Isn't consciousness simply a word for how the brain and body form patterns to promote their survivability? Perhaps consciousness and life itself are nothing more than a function of quanta mechanics, electron entanglement, and physics? How can the body and brain exist in a vacuum? Does Dennett truly say they do?

[jaikook]

You are as much part of us, as we are of you. I'm not worrying about you, I'm caring about us.

[cardellacole2]

for me the brain uses computation as a trace , like a phone trace into the sub atomic where the projection is stored as memory

[MaBu888]

WTF that makes sense carderllacole2.

[jaikook]

what is good and what is bad, according to you?

[grosenberg45]

Lots of food for thought--and if consciousness would be a combination of the brain in relationship to its inputs (or the world) then how much do they influence each other? Many of us have experiential evidence of what gets referred to as "The Law of Attraction" that our desires and expectations can control our environment Equally I doubt anyone can argue that our environment can alter our perceptions.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Noe is not suggesting consciousness is a combination of brain and "brain inputs." He is saying the world itself (not merely inputs) is involved in bringing forth conscious experience.

I think the "law of attraction" is mostly self-fulfilling prophecy. What truth there is in it is simply common sense: greet the world with a smile and you'll probably turn out happier.

[grosenberg45]

I see now, was referring to the quote by Noe about the conscious mind being an active tuning to the world, saying inputs was a poor choice of words at best.

[grosenberg45]

As far as the law of attraction being a self-fulfilling prophecy, I couldn't agree more tho I believe that term may have quite a different meaning depending on whose reality tunnel it gets filtered through. ;)

[davius4321]

I had to stop at 2:18, 'cause I don't understand what is meant by "if the brain is merely a computer processor,". I am not concerned about what follows these words. I just want to know what they mean.

[ozjthomas]

Thank you for reading that. This reminds me a bit of something isforbliss talking about abortion and the consiousness they possess.

[PenguinJin]

If Alva is right, the matrix is impossible. Let's hope so.

[yikeswood]

otherwise ... ie

[cloudmonkeys]

Talking about Loren Eiseley Michael Lind said: "Before the rise of a self-conscious intelligentsia, most educated people as well as the unlettered majority spent most of their time in the countryside or, if they lived in cities, were a few blocks away from farmland or wilderness... At the risk of sounding countercultural, I suspect that thinkers who live in sealed, air-conditioned boxes and work by artificial light (I am one) are as unnatural as apes in cages at zoos...

[cloudmonkeys]

...Naturalists like Eiseley in that sense are the most normal human beings to be found among intellectuals, because they spend a lot of time outdoors and know the names of the plants and animals they see...For all of his scientific erudition, Eiseley has a poetic, even cinematic, imagination.'

[cloudmonkeys]

That excerpt could of been written by you. Good stuff.

[LennyBound]

There are a few interviews with Alva Noe on the "Closer to Truth" website I linked to earlier that you might be interested in watching. If you go there and search for his name they should show up.