Consciousness is poorly defined, and Dennett is talking about consciousness (in the vaguest sense), not sentience.Volenta wrote:What do we make out of Daniel Dennett's views on consciousness. I find it very strange to argue that human culture and/or language are the reason we have (a higher) consciousness. If you define consciousness as ability to obtain an accurate picture of reality, it surely helps. But an more intense subjective experience, I don't think so...
Dennett knows all of these animals are sentient- and he should know that sentience is the most morally relevant quality.
The problem is that he's dealing with such a poorly defined term; and it's a word he should know better than to use. So, I'd say shame on him for even using the word, but his views on semantics are a bit different and he likes to rebel and use these kinds of words, struggling to put new meaning to them.
As far as his claims regarding language and culture, though, he is largely correct. Those humans with language are more than those without- and we have examples of this. Likewise, those chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, etc. with advanced language learning are more than those without.
They go from being more impulsive and emotional beings to more rational ones, because language (or something related) becomes part of thought itself. By using language, we give names and abstraction to categories of things, and this process helps us understand and reason about the world around us.
Language produces a higher level of thought, in humans and other species alike. Language is special, in that sense.
In that particular regard, we are probably the most advanced. There are other animals with rudimentary language, and cetaceans may come close. Elephants may too, and some other social animals.Don't particularly like how he thinks of humans being this special, no other animal even coming close in matching us.
He may have phrased himself poorly, or he may be wrong.
Other great apes aren't actually that close, with regards to language proficiency, UNLESS we raise them and teach them language. It actually gives them the ability to think more abstractly - like humans.
His point on human culture, in that regard, is correct. It sustains itself.
Language is a large part of what makes us what we are. We aren't special because we're humans, we're special because of language - and he seems to have admitted this - being human just makes us a little better at learning language (though not much better at it than other apes, it's enough to make a pretty big difference across generations, where human language ability is high enough to build upon itself, where in other apes it is more likely to degrade over generations and fall out of use).
Language is big. Very big. It may not be very morally relevant (there are humans without language ability), but cognitively, it's huge.Animals do not have all the same cognitive capabilities we have—like language—but a lot of them we actually share. Some capabilities are even better developed in other animals (like short term memory of chimpanzees).
You can actually map differences in human behavior and effective cognitive ability to language proficiency and even types of languages.
It's an area of study, but compare, for example, Chinese to European language.
This kind of thing may go the way of phrenology eventually, or it might be on the right track.
It's like the difference in trying to program a computer by assembling logic gates, and using a higher level programming language.
I don't care how intelligent you are, or how big your brain is, the latter gives you a huge edge. It's the advantage of abstraction and generalization of functions- without named variables, that becomes pointless.
And within that edge, differences in the kind of language you use are going to give you different advantages and disadvantages depending on what kind of project you're doing.
What he should have said, is consciousness is a wishy-washy undefined term with mystical undertones at best.Daniel Dennett wrote:A better understanding of consciousness in humans is needed before the discussion can be extended validly to animal consciousness.
The bottom line is that nobody knows what anybody else is even talking about when we talk about human consciousness, or higher and lower states. Most of it is woo woo.
This isn't about non-human consciousness, it's about the word 'consciousness' itself, and its failure to be clearly defined.
To his credit, Dennett has made some progress with that, but I think he still gives the word far too much credit.
He should be more clear about how unclear the term is.
People need to stop using that word unless they're talking about consciousness in the medical sense- awake or not.
Nonsense. Consciousness in that sense isn't even defined. YES, there IS a level of information processing that isn't 'hard-wired' and is instilled by human culture and language- and if Dennett is trying to define consciousness as THIS thing, then he should do that, and stop trying to make this look like a meaningful claim about consciousness instead of an attempted definition of consciousness.Daniel Dennett wrote:Consciousness requires a certain kind of informational organization that does not seem to be 'hard-wired' in humans, but is instilled by human culture.
Based on the above as a definition, yes, that is true. Without that, though, he's just spinning his wheels.Daniel Dennett wrote:Moreover, consciousness is not a black-or-white, all-or-nothing type of phenomenon, as is often assumed.
He didn't say animals are not conscious. He's saying speculation about their level of consciousness (as he sees it and implicitly defined it) isn't very grounded in evidence.Daniel Dennett wrote:The differences between humans and other species are so great that speculations about animal consciousness seem ungrounded.
Remember, he's not talking about sentience here. He's talking about that meaningless vague wishy-washy word "consciousness", which is itself undefined.
As he should have defined it above (but failed to do), his statement is basically correct. If you take consciousness to be the stuff that is not hard-wired, but the contribution to perception and world views that society provides, then we don't know exactly how a bat, or any other animal (or even other humans from other cultures- which Dennett refused to mention), views the world within his or her own framework (through upbringing and learned experiences in the world).
It sounds like he wants to explore what thought and perception of the world are like without formal language, or within a more rudimentary framework.Daniel Dennett wrote:Many authors simply assume that an animal like a bat has a point of view, but there seems to be little interest in exploring the details involved.
Though it also seems like he may be giving his view of consciousness far too much credit with regards to its contributions to "point of view".
You know that little voice in your head that talks when you're thinking?
Turn it off. No voice. No language. Try to keep it off, and do something new. No words, no voice in your head.
Try to keep it off and reason, or work out something. Not even the idea of words. Drop the concepts entirely. If you're going to sit, drop the concept of sitting. Don't summon up the categorical associations of chair.
It's hard to do.
The thing with humans, is we're so reliant on using language, and its conceptual structures, that we can't think without it because it keeps turning itself back on, and those concepts keep coming back into your head- so it's hard to understand the experience of another being who may have more rudimentary language ability, and what its experience of thinking is like without that (even another human being, raised without language, or in a very different language).
It's not inconceivable, though, and I think this is where Dennett could stand to use his imagination a little bit. The differences are not so vast and unfathomable that they can not be approximated.
A highly abstract computer simulation would get the same job done (one with things and actions for which we don't have names), to give us direct experience of thought without advanced language and cultural context. In this respect, Dennett is surprisingly unimaginative.
