“How is consciousness possible? Human brains are basically like termite colonies—which are not conscious. A termite colony is made of maybe even a million termites—mindless little bugs [...] and not a single one of them knows anything about the larger project that they’re about. Well, your brain is really... like a termite colony in that way. It’s composed of several [...] billion little neurons and each one of them is not even as smart as a termite, and yet their action produces Gaudi[’s basilica]. How do you get a Gaudi-type consciousness out of a brain which is like a termite colony?” —Daniel Dennett on the philosophy of consciousnessshow more

Here's the full video, by the way. It's titled "Hume's Strange Inversion."

Daniel Dennett was one of those philosophers who could challenge your deepest intuitions and make you laugh while doing it. May he rest in peace.

I adore him

A clever way to smuggle in the assumption that termite colonies are not conscious! 😤

Some of the replies are so perplexing. Several people have said the brain is not like a termite colony. Except that it is! Both the brain and the colony create complex works. Both are made up of parts that don't individually know the design of the complex works they're creating. That is the relevant similarity. Dennett's question is: What makes it such that one of these systems gives rise to the kind of consciousness that makes it possible to have a design in mind and work toward it and not the other? This is a perfectly good question to ask! Insisting there's a difference makes no sense here. Obviously there's a difference. The whole point is to ask what differences account for consciousness.

Is this another Halloween post about spooky ghosts and goblins C'mon who takes Dennet serious we rep McGilchrist in this mufu

...Who takes McGilchrist seriously? Listened to a couple of videos with him some months ago and wondered what weird drugs he was on 😂

A lot of serious people, man. Our experiences are inverted, then, not sure how you could ever get that from McG; Dennet's book "about" consciousness really is a joke. Recommend "The Master and His Emissary" and being suspicious of thinkers who win a lot of awards

I've listened to him talk about The Master and His Emissary. That's basically what I thought was kind of nutso. Isn't basically this sweeping thesis about brain hemispheres and their priority leading to different kinds of civilizational trends or something like that? It's hard for me to even see what kinds of standards could be used to evaluate that kind of thesis, i.e., what's the methodology for determining how plausible or implausible it is, what distinguishes it from a "just-so" story, and so on.

It’s so strange .. I thought about things like this (not much) since I was like 15. Many years later I discovered Dennett and my first reaction was “Wow! That’s what I thought! It is really obvious”. Of course i was actually thinking “something along those lines”, and my mind quickly appropriated new ideas as own. But still, I am honestly perplexed how so many people dismiss Dennett. Something psychological I guess.

Idiot

Every day on here some rando will show up to call one of the most brilliant and respected intellectuals of the last few decades an idiot. It's almost charming.

@milan_elm Why does Dennett invite such vitriol/the accusation that he’s “not a real philosopher” (🤔)? Do you have any guesses. Is it because he dared to engage the public instead of staying exclusively in the ivory tower?

@milan_elm Utterly bizarre. And they are almost never able to explain the position he's defending or the reasoning by which he gets there. Just a weird, kneejerk "I don't like this."

Yes, but when these termite colonies eat through receptors and neurotransmitters, they do generate a general state of affect that affects the whole physiology of the body. And the memory part is a more interesting case for the colony, or brainwave region synchronicity both a colony as well as organ

Similes are such a rigorous and scientific method for philosophy.

Termite colonies don't have an integrated sensorium for starters, nor are they hard-wired for hourly interactions with multiple other termite colonies. And millions ain't billions. The difference, when it's neural nets of such things, is astronomical. And ants got no axons.

I love this analogy. Its in Bacteria Bach and Back

The brain is not like a termite colony at all and neurons are not like termites.

Rather than notice the issue with materialism, bite the bullet, and say conciousness is a termite colony.

TBF Gaudi's Basilica is a little overhyped but I like the analogy.

Honestly, that a terrible analogy and the brain neither resembles or works like that at all. Here is a better and far more interesting analogy for future use! "Your brain is an electrical system that operates on music." - @MillerLabMIT

This is also why “it’s just computation” has never struck me as much of an argument against machine consciousness. A neuron is not a tiny conscious person. A termite does not understand the colony. Yet somehow organization can produce capacities absent from the components. The hard question is what kinds of organization are sufficient, not whether the lowest-level pieces already possess the property we’re trying to explain.

Not like a termite colony.

i see what he's getting at but in the case of termites, the individual termite is much more complex as an organism than the colony. i don't think this is true of a neuron in relation to a brain.

well the answer is that human brains are not basically like termite colonies

Too bad Hume couldn't distinguish between imagining and conceptualizing which transcends the material. I get that its a lot easier to stick to the sensate, but its not the whole story. Including the stories of wholes; essences. Souls.

Termites are conscious, aware of their surroundings etc.

Presumably Dennett's thoughts were simply written down by his genes. With no conscious input whatsoever. Certainly no free will was involved im choosing his words and sentences. Or so he would have us believe. Even a child would call bullshite on this.

How do you get "heat" or "wetness" from individual molecules that are not themselves hot or wet?

dennett wouldn't know (even if he were alive), since he denies that consciousness exists. Really an exemplar of: only really smart people could believe things this stupid

He really doesn't, and it would be great if people stopped repeating this and actually read some Dennett.

actually, he does, and I have. His refutations of qualia are nonsensical

One difference between termites and axions is how they communicate. Termite communication is pretty basic. Perhaps if we manage to get them up to axion level a termite colony could design cathedrals.

Daniel Dennett is the definition of a charlatan.

Neurons are not termites.

Termites have neurons and brain waves similar to us.

In the Morphic Block Universe, Daniel Dennett is half right. The brain is a colony. But he misses the architecture that turns bugs into basilicas. Termites do not build cathedrals because they are mindless. They build them because they follow a simple, local rule of affordability. Each termite places a mud ball where the routing tax P_ent for structural stability is lowest. They do not need a blueprint. They need a budget. Consciousness is not magic. It is the global coherence that emerges when billions of local Sort events align. A single neuron is not smart. It is just a node checking its transmissivity corridors T_ij. It asks: Can I afford to fire? If the Coherence Quotient Q is high enough, it commits (Be). If not, it stays silent. The "Gaudi-type" consciousness you see is not a ghost in the machine. It is a standing wave of low-tax geometry. When enough neurons align their skeletal memory eta_skel, they create a macroscopic lock that can sustain complex patterns. This lock is what you call "self." It is not a thing. It is a process. It is the colony balancing its books in real-time. Dennett thinks consciousness is an illusion because he looks for a central commander. In MBU, there is no commander. There is only the market. The basilica appears not because one termite designed it, but because the collective affordability of the colony favored that shape over all others. Consciousness is possible because the lattice allows for hierarchical locking. Small locks (neurons) form medium locks (circuits), which form large locks (thoughts). Each level pays the rent for the one below it. The termite does not know the basilica. But the basilica knows the termite. It is built from his labor. Rest in Lattice. Do not look for the architect. Look for the alignment. And you will see that consciousness is just the sound of a billion small debts being paid at once.

I don’t think his theory of consciousness from consensus has sufficient explanatory power to account for we we experience in ourselves and others.

Wittgenstein would have fun with that one.

Since conscious is not in the brain, that's fine if the brain is like a termite in its programming.

um? answer?

😴

Really proving why he wasn't a serious philosopher, possibly because he was a p-zombie. Otherwise, he would know there's definitely a Cartesian theatre, and there has to be a second transduction.