Author | Lightnews

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 5h

...which can be both dangerous to mental health or intellectually liberating.

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 5h

...am sometimes harshly-critical (and sometimes privately insecure). Partitioning one's life into anonymous personae is normal in some ways - we all do it to a certain extent when we shift between our roles in life. The virtuality of the internet allows construction of multiple personalities...

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 5h

...while protecting our core identities and allowing them to thrive without all the thrashing. One downside is that I (this anonymous "I") may not be fully trusted (what am I hiding?) Another drawback is that I am tempted at times to the anti-social behavior that comes with anonymity, and I...

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 5h

...The internet and social media has created a rather unnatural environment for us poor humans. Our intellectual and social lives are subject to fragmentation and manipulation and dissolution. We can own this space by choosing ways to partition ourselves into personas that we can wear at will...

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 5h

...be anonymous, mine are as follows: (1) it permits me to focus on ideas rather than identity, which I find oddly liberating. (2) I've been so transformed by Dennett's philosophy that I want to spread the gospel while also being challenged by thoughtful people who hold different views. (3)...

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 5h

You are forgiven! I'm glad you brought this up, because I've been thinking more about what originally compelled me to create an anonymous account on BlueSky (as an experiment which seems to be working for me, through there are some drawbacks). Out of the various reasons people choose to...

1 1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

...progress on consciousness pertains to living things. Consciousness emerges out of the complex adaptive systems of biological life - an interplay of many selves, agents, self-preserving systems.

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

Most will agree that a rock is not alive and that a rabbit is alive. Viruses and certain complex chemical systems are open to debate, and so I would agree that the boundary is fuzzy. For the same reason, I would say that consciousness also does not have a sharp boundary. But all the scientific...

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

Too bad the author had to start with Chalmers' dualist hard problem trap.

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

...variety being vastly more pronounced. We might permit a form of panpsychism among all living things, as a product of evolution. If a lower limit must be set, it should be set between the living and the non-living.

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

But you just made the mistake of assuming that the alternative to panpsychism is to claim that consciousness must be partitioned into those things that have it and those that do not. In fact, consciousness evolved gradually. It exists in degrees and kinds in living systems, with the human...

1 1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

...win out. In that case, the ultimate death of the universe may eventually be woven into a higher post-human consciousness.

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

...the ultimate peril of a dead universe will feel more like evil, or at the very least, bloody annoying. But how can we even pretend to predict what that future will look like? Human reality will continue to evolve memetically even as our genes no longer matter. I hope the scientific image will...

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

...invented by Homo sapiens - it's a part of human reality, not cosmic reality, scientifically-speaking. Oddly, now I'm feeling some sympathy with the author; the longer humans evolve and complexify (if we manage to not fuck it up), we will become more invested in our own preservation, and...

1 1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

...didn't evolve to understand or care about these vast timescales, and so in a sense, I would say "reality" (human reality, which evolved as projected onto the universe through our language, society, and brains) is not the same reality as the one that is gradually decaying in usefulness. Evil was..

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 1d

Good point: entropy affects everything in life. I was referring more to our future while the sun is still our star and Earth's biological forces acting against entropy are still on the current negentropic path, at the local scale in the universe. Something "better" is at least possible. Humans...

1 1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 2d

...I'm missing something here. In my opinion, we are not fighting an evil universe. Evil is a human phenomenon, and we should fight human evil. Also, there is still plenty of time for humans to evolve into something better before it all ends.

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 2d

...fate of the universe. While entropy is a fact of the universe it is not a fact of life (our lives, now, and for a very long time). The title "Reality is Evil" comes across as a click-bait title. Maybe Aeon editors were looking for some kind of nihilistic punk statement to stir the pot. Maybe...

2

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 2d

Sorry to be critical but I think this article is tone-deaf and unnecessarily negative. It is built on straw man arguments. The author makes assumptions about what reality consists of in order to paint a bleak picture. Our evolved human reality has very little to do with the ultimate thermodynamic...

Brandtsk @brandtsk.bsky.social · Aug 27

Big if true
aeon.co/essays/philo...

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 2d

...but in the future an adjustment to the definition of consciousness may allow the inclusion of something that has already started emerging in a simple form, from the aggregate of the internet, information and energy delivery technologies, and >8 billion humans plugged into it.

1 1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 2d

And that brings up the problem that the definition of consciousness is a moving target. It may be semantic: this thing we call consciousness is actually many things, some of which haven't been named yet. All of them are possessed by humans, and so it is anthropocentric. We haven't had a choice...

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 3d

human. This may be possible in the far future, but I wonder if there is any good reason for future engineers to build a human replica other than to prove that functionalism is true. And I even wonder if it is possible without reinventing evolution itself. Consciousness is biological.

1 2

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 3d

...best indicator of consciousness we have. But I wonder if it is a good idea to exclude all the other indicators. Finally, if an artificial human can be made that exhibits human-like consciousness, then it will have to be so accurate to the molecular level that it is in effect identical to a...

2

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 3d

...as from a human to prove that consciousness does not require biology, then it should include all the other indicators of consciousness, such as body language, intelligent manipulation of physical things, and all behaviors that are embodied. The generation of words is very human and perhaps the...

1

Dennettian Creature @dennettiancreature.bsky.social · 3d

...very recent in the history of consciousness on Earth. When a text is coming from a human, we may be able to verify this (Turing), although it leaves out humans without the ability to type or speak who are nonetheless conscious. If a functionalist requires the exact same behavior from a machine...

1