Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 18:43 (1856 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You keep forgetting that the point of this discussion is Egnor’s claim that “only something physical can evolve”. Thank you for agreeing that he is wrong. Nobody could possibly question that there is a link between the evolution of consciousness and the evolution of the brain, but nobody knows what that link is! ... Either way, Egnor’s statement is manifestly untrue, as is his claim that “Darwinian natural selection can only act on a physical attribute” (which you have already rejected).

DAVID: There is a difference. What I am saying and you are ignoring is the difference in the 'evolution' we are discussing. Evolution of consciousness and language is within a material brain that must evolve to a point of complexity that allows the immaterial evolution of those two immaterial abilities.

dhw: I have not ignored it at all! I have now bolded that very point. But what you are ignoring is the rest of my post. We do not know the CAUSE of the material brain’s complexification! Darwinians claim it was random mutations, you claim it was a divine dabble, and I suggest that the cells themselves caused it by responding to new demands. Regardless of which of these is the truth, you have now accepted that Egnor was wrong: evolution is not confined to the physical.

We still are far apart. You totally ignore the nuance. I still accept Eignor's point that only material organisms and organs evolve. Evolution of immaterial things like words and concepts are humans learning to use their newly arrived complex brain, however it arrived..

DAVID: Do you accept brain first?

dhw: Evolution can only work on something that exists. The brain evolved once it existed, and language evolved once it existed. I see no reason at all to suppose that our non-sapiens ancestors had no language of their own, and of course they had brains. My proposal is that the need for an enhanced range of communication caused the cells of the brain to make the necessary changes, much as the need to swim would have caused pre-whale legs to become flippers. We know that new uses of the brain cause it to change (think of the illiterate people who learn to read, taxi-drivers, musicians etc., whose brains change through the manner in which they are used). So your question should relate not to the prior existence of the brain but to the reason why an existing brain changed. You think your God dabbled with it, and I propose that the cell communities of which it is composed made changes in response to new demands, as is demonstrably the case with cell communities that adapt to new conditions. (See “Evolution of Language”)

DAVID: We know your theory that somehow cells have this innate intelligence to design new complexity. And you have no idea where that capacity came from, but you slyly admit God might have implanted the information. You are 'agnostic very lite', overwhelmed by my evidence for design.

dhw: There is nothing “sly” about it. And “we know” your anthropocentric theory of 3.8-billion-year-old programmes and/or divine dabblings, which only makes sense if we do not apply human reason to the history of life.

You constantly refuse to follow logical reasoning. If God is in charge, history shows us what He did, not why. Guessing why is pure guessing. What does your guessing prove. Nothing!

dhw: I have always balanced my acceptance of your logical design argument with the argument that we do not solve one mystery by creating another. I find your eternal, sourceless, immaterial conscious mind just as difficult to believe in as the ability of chance to assemble the first living cells.

You have a right to this position, and the right to guess, but guessing in worthless, whether you accept God or not.