David E. Sanger, "China's Military Is Accused by U.S. in Cyberattacks," in The New York Times, May 7, 2013, at p. A1. (If you are in China or Cuba reading these words, do you believe that the U.S. government is innocent of all cybercrime or censorship efforts on-line based on what you have witnessed at these blogs? I am not the only person using NYPL computers.)
A call was received at my home from 773-897-5551, "Chicago, Illinois" on May 8, 2013 at 1:42 A.M. Numerous other calls at all hours of the day are made as part of continuing stress-inducement efforts. Coincidence?
May 6, 2013 at 2:15 P.M. Many harassments in writing today. I will continue to try to write about philosophical issues even under these circumstances.
New Jersey should be embarassed or embarrassed about labelling or labeling me as "unethical" while continuing to engage in cybercrime and unethical cover-ups of the truth. (The Oxford Companion to the English Language offers a great article on "options" with respect to doubled-consonant words, like counsellor or counselor.)
Jennifer Shuessler, "Philosophy That Stirs the Waters," in The New York Times, April 30, 2013, at p. C1. (Is the person writing as "Jennifer Shuessler" also writing as "Michiko Kakutani"? What other names does this person use in bylines at The New York Times? Does this person serve the interests of a particular party or politician, or government agency, in addition to being employed as a journalist?)
Please see my earlier essays "John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness" and "Daniel Dennett and the Theology of Science."
Daniel Dennett is not America's most popular or best read philosopher, Ms. Shuessler, since that honor probably goes to Cornel West. ("Cornel West On Universal Human Nature.")
Professor Dennett is not, in my opinion, the most original, smartest, or most daring and interesting of America's deep thinkers. All of the following philosophers are better in terms of those categories than Mr. Dennett: Judith Butler (originality and dazzle); Robert Brandom (most brilliant philosophical thinker in America); Noam Chomsky (more influential); John Searle (better writer, polemicist, generally correct on consciousness issues); John McDowell (the philosopher's philosopher on consciousness and the mind to say nothing of the Greeks); Colin McGinn (makes it clear why Dennett is wrong).
Given the foregoing "realities," why does Daniel Dennett merit a loving profile essay in The New York Times, at age 71, as his 19th book -- summarizing the previous 18 books! -- is about to appear, even as John Le Carre's new novel is subjected to a snotty dismissal for ideological reasons that appears under the name "Michiko Kakutani." (I suspect that there were insertions or alterations of "Ms. Kakutani's" text.)
"Sailing was still an apt illustration of the kinds of empirical problem solving [sic.] that Dennett has long preferred to the abstractions of more traditional philosophy."
The same person responsible for the faulty review of Le Carre's novel, perhaps, who takes herself to be very scientific about philosophical issues and whose humiliating periodic defeats in on-line debates against me (Jim Holt? Caitlin Flanagan? Larissa McFarquhar?) seems to be trying, desperately, to reiterate flawed arguments for very wrong conclusions on issues which she still does not quite understand and that she may never appreciate fully.
I will do my best to explain things, briefly and yet again, to Ms. Shuessler. Daniel Dennett can take care of himself, but Ms. Shuessler (as a "mere dabbler") is due for a corrective. ("Derek Parfit's Ethics" and "What is Enlightenment?" then "'Revolutionary Road': A Movie Review.")
It is not scientific nor helpful or brilliant to suggest that consciousness is "unreal," nor that qualia, subjectivity, feelings or the phenomenological experience of being a person in the world is an "illusion fobbed off on us by our selfish genes."
Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, clearly, are partners in crime. The most primal and indisputable reality of any person's life is the experience of being a self -- say, Daniel Dennett rather than John Searle.
We know immediately "what it feels like" to be a subject (aware, emoting, interpreting and intending) in a world of objects because we get up in the morning, visit the bathroom, feel hunger, experience pain when we strike our toes against the furniture, then read philosophy books suggesting that we are brains in a vat, count to ten, smile when we meet "Jennifer Shuessler," and explain things to skeptics (like Ms. Shuessler), patiently and in simple words. ("The Mind/Body Problem and Freedom" and "Hilary Putnam is Keeping It Real.")
We are animals, material bodies -- like dogs -- and therefore we must occupy space. This material condition has no bearing upon the reality of subjective awareness. Certainly, this does not undermine subjectivity. ("Mind and Machine" then "The Galatea Scenario and the Mind/Body Problem.")
To deny that we are aware and conscious in addition to being physical entities is to do so "consciously," as John Searle points out. By the same token, in order to pretend that we do not occupy space, we must be somewhere, occupying real space.
We are, and must be, dual aspect phenomena, subjective and objective at the same time. We exist in the form of a question, paradox, or mystery.
We cannot explain exactly how the messy gray matter of the brain "gives rise" to conscious awareness or precisely where subjectivity meets objectivity.
This problem is exceedingly difficult given the conceptual structure that we have inherited (our philosophical discourse) which was developed over three hundred years of thought on mind/body questions. ("John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness.")
There are important reasons for this genuine difficulty which should be explored because by doing so we may make a contribution to understanding that transcends the particular position we take on the ultimate issue. More important than the specific answer that we discover to the relation of brain and consciousness (or mind) is how we arrive at that answer.
Hence -- because of the difficulty for science -- bottom-line, pragmatist, empirically-minded and analytically-trained philosophers (Mr. Dennett) often simply deny that the problem exists. Rather than being a problem-solver, however, this denial of mind makes a philosopher a problem-avoider: "Consciousness is merely an illusion," they say, consciously. They delude themselves, in other words, perhaps unconsciously. ("Can you lie to yourself?")
This denial of the issue amounts to a physician's denial of the reality of cancer and death: "I do not know how to cure cancer," says your friendly doctor, "so why don't you go home and pretend that you do not have the disease, or that the illness is unreal, and that you will not die from it."
Problem solved? I doubt it. Unfortunately, cancer and death are not "illusions." Neither is the fact that I am aware of myself writing these words in disappointment at Professor Dennett's proposed "solution" to the problem of consciousness.
We know that we may experience cancer and that we will die someday because we are conscious creatures, living with the REALITY of these phenomena in human life and with our FEELINGS about such things, which are just as real and inescapable as the things themselves.
Daniel Dennett, Republicans, Burger King, television -- and many other items and persons existing in the universe are "consciously" known to us, making up the furnishings of our minds (as distinct from our brains) -- brains whose proper functioning makes consciousness possible. ("The Galatea Scenario and the Mind/Body Problem.")
In addition to brains, we need languages and cultures or social settings to be fully conscious and possess healthy minds. We will not find languages "in" brains, but we will not be able to learn a language if we have no brains.
Our languages and cultures are "where" we live our "inner-lives," which are always colored with affect or emotions, altering and being altered by the lives of others.
We know about suffering, loss, injustice, death because we also must have feelings about such things and, indeed, about Daniel Dennett as well as Jennifer Shuessler, or other persons who wish to deny us the reality of these feelings by dismissing them as "subjective."
Professor Dennett has not persuaded me that my conscious awareness is an illusion. Rather, he has convinced me that he is bewildered by the phenomenon of consciousness, since he is unable to explain consciousness within his ideology of scientism.
Mr. Dennett has chosen to ignore conciousness or pretend that it is "not there" rather than accept the limits of science which "are there." A thing may be subjective and yet quite real, like my memories, or my knowledge of numbers, as well as the taste of ice cream. ("What is Memory?")
I will give the final word to John Searle as we waive goodbye to Daniel Dennett and pass on the invitation to read his latest book as opposed to Mr. Le Carre's delicious new novel:
" ... Science does indeed aim at epistemic objectivity: The aim is to get a set of truths that are free of our special preferences and prejudices. But epistemic objectivity of method does not require objectivity of subject matter. It is just an objective fact -- in the epistemic sense -- that I and people like me have pains. But the mode of existence of these pains is subjective -- in the ontological sense. Dennett has a definition of science which excludes the possibility that science might investigate subjectivity, and he thinks the third-person objectivity of science forces him to this definition. But it is a bad pun on 'objectivity.' The aim of science is to get a systematic account of how the world works. One part of the world consists of ONTOLOGICALLY SUBJECTIVE PHENOMENA. If we have a definition of science that forbids us from investigating that part of the world, it is the definition that has to be changed and not the world."
"Consciousness Denied: Daniel Dennett's Account," in The Mystery of Consciousness (New York: NYRB, 1997), p. 114.
