Consciousness is a Magic Trick – Dan Dennett
The first problem in understanding our own minds is giving up many of the things we think we know. Dan Dennett is a philosopher of consciousness whose talk for TED, which uses visual illusions as illustrations, shows how consciousness is a kind of magic trick cooked up by our brains.
It's a very simple message, but a vital one in understanding the mind. What Dennett explains so neatly is that it's natural to think we're experts on consciousness - and psychology - by virtue of being conscious ourselves and having access to our own thought processes. But actually we're none of us quite as informed about ourselves as we'd like to think.
» For more on the psychological version of this point, read this series on how the inner workings of our minds are hidden from us.
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What's being tricked?
Is the trick being tricked? A strange loop? =P
The consciousness debate is a big semantics game. What he's calling "consciousness" seems more like mental perception.
What it really comes down to is discerning thought from awareness.
I love how these "philosophers" all reference each other, and never look to spiritual traditions (buddhism, yoga, etc) that have been explaining this stuff in very simple terms for thousands of years.
For example, Eckhart Tolle has broken down the whole mind/consciousness/awareness/identity thing to Westerners in a way that none of these busy little philosophers will ever be able to do, as long as they are trapped in their little thought buckets.
Of course, Dennett's ideas are a bit too deep to get the full grasp in a 10 min video.
Brian, your judgement seems a bit quick... Do you really know the people you are criticizing so sharply ?
The world we see out there, is the world "we" decided we want to see, but we decide to see only part of it, not for no reason.
The world is too complex for our brain to understand, too much information to process at once, this is why our mind filter things and interfere with the way we "see". I guess that in time, we will be able to process more and more information, to really experience the world and its wonders.
My blog post on it:
http://www.logblo.com/2008/10/30/GreatLectureDanDennettCanWeKnowOurOwnMinds.aspx
By the way, the problem with people thinking they're experts on consciousness is probably because they cannot be sure others have that consciousness.
Also, I’m a bit confused about what different people mean by “consciousness”.
Some of versions are — awareness of selves, perception, even up to “awareness of own culture” or something (“political consciousness”).
There are so many snags in this work. Maybe the biggest: Dennet is bent on identifying "facts," facts that are demonstrated through a sense of scientific rigor and empirically replicable points. I'm afraid, though, that there's too much going on socio-culturally speaking to turn this lecture hall into a laboratory.
For instance, his example using white space and the cubes. Rather than seek a "scientific" explanation for his case, I would suggest that any real illusion with colors and white space derives from a Western, Judea-Christian way of seeing things and creating order. Ask yourself: since when did the colors white or black become definitive colors to which we organize everything else spatially? Since a Western way of thinking took shape, with a primacy for writing in ordered, straight lines on a clean or blank (white) surface. In this case, I don't think his experiment points to any grand truth about the human mind and consciousness. His experiments are ultimately culturally bound, and they should apply to only the West.
Another example: suppose you delivered this lecture to a non-Western audience, putting it into their language fluently, maybe Quetchua. Would his conclusions remain the same for people whose worldview and way of seeing and being is not heavily dominated by Western standards? I seriously doubt it.
But it's a clever little show.
Landon: just blew my mind. And proves my point- this is all mond game stuff. Consciousness is beyond/outside of mind. It's the awareness that sees the mind- and has no 'cultural bias.' Only the mind knows bias. Consciousness is choiceless.