Lormand: Read the first half, skimmed the other. Lowered my opinion of Dennett, didn’t change my mind otherwise. The goal is pretty non-badass in the first place: to disprove Dennett’s argument about qualia, not to actually answer the question, let alone look into the black box labeled “quale”. It’s mostly right. It makes the common mistake of forgetting the author is a brain, though. This leads to generalizing from one example (the same old “Only analytic reflection in the form of a stream of words counts as thought” canard), and to forget about physical law (there is brain circuitry that gives rise to a quale, you can mess with it, that’s where inferences are hidden).
Lanier: Consciousness is is the computer, not in the meteor shower, you pickleplumbing niddlewick! And of course specifying a conscious mind doesn’t instantiate it, you have to run it… and did you just conflate “computers are not fundamental” and “computers don’t exist”? Yeah, every physical system is a computer (a basket of apples plus gravity that drops more in performs addition), you want a specific-algorithm-detector. We don’t know the consciousness algorithm, so obviously it’s hard to detect, but at least you could look for optimization processes, which are well-defined in terms of thermodynamics. And worse than all the particular mistakes - you’re falling for mysterious answers to mysterious questions again. Don’t those people ever learn from history?
Quine:I don’t get it. (This is a good sign—I’m an outsider, if there’s advanced work then I shouldn’t get it.) Why are you talking about language in the first place? Why not just define logic (as a set of axioms for manipulating strings), then say “‘Analytic truth’ is a fancy word for ‘tautology’”, and then worry about how natural language maps onto logic? And why are you looking for meanings and definitions in words rather than in cognitive processes? (The reason “bachelor” and “unmarried man” are synonymous, but not “creature with a kidney” and “creature with a heart” is because, upon hearing the word “bachelor”, we translate it to “unmarried man”, then reason about unmarried men, whereas upon hearing “creature with a kidney”, we reason about creatures with kidneys, then notice they’re the same as the creatures who have a heart.) And what does this have to do with reductionism? (Is this the same old confusion between probability estimates and statements in a language?)
Lormand: Read the first half, skimmed the other. Lowered my opinion of Dennett, didn’t change my mind otherwise. The goal is pretty non-badass in the first place: to disprove Dennett’s argument about qualia, not to actually answer the question, let alone look into the black box labeled “quale”. It’s mostly right. It makes the common mistake of forgetting the author is a brain, though. This leads to generalizing from one example (the same old “Only analytic reflection in the form of a stream of words counts as thought” canard), and to forget about physical law (there is brain circuitry that gives rise to a quale, you can mess with it, that’s where inferences are hidden).
Lanier: Consciousness is is the computer, not in the meteor shower, you pickleplumbing niddlewick! And of course specifying a conscious mind doesn’t instantiate it, you have to run it… and did you just conflate “computers are not fundamental” and “computers don’t exist”? Yeah, every physical system is a computer (a basket of apples plus gravity that drops more in performs addition), you want a specific-algorithm-detector. We don’t know the consciousness algorithm, so obviously it’s hard to detect, but at least you could look for optimization processes, which are well-defined in terms of thermodynamics. And worse than all the particular mistakes - you’re falling for mysterious answers to mysterious questions again. Don’t those people ever learn from history?
Quine:I don’t get it. (This is a good sign—I’m an outsider, if there’s advanced work then I shouldn’t get it.) Why are you talking about language in the first place? Why not just define logic (as a set of axioms for manipulating strings), then say “‘Analytic truth’ is a fancy word for ‘tautology’”, and then worry about how natural language maps onto logic? And why are you looking for meanings and definitions in words rather than in cognitive processes? (The reason “bachelor” and “unmarried man” are synonymous, but not “creature with a kidney” and “creature with a heart” is because, upon hearing the word “bachelor”, we translate it to “unmarried man”, then reason about unmarried men, whereas upon hearing “creature with a kidney”, we reason about creatures with kidneys, then notice they’re the same as the creatures who have a heart.) And what does this have to do with reductionism? (Is this the same old confusion between probability estimates and statements in a language?)