Is This Real Purple?

Consciousness is an abstraction — not an illusion.

There are few greater ironies than scientists who hold clearly delusional views about the nature of consciousness. Unfortunately, this extends to some who specifically dedicate their lives to exploring the true nature of reality —philosophers. We could be tempted to forgive the odd geologist for holding embarrassingly wrong views about space, or a physicist illiterate in biology. But surely, the representatives of science — the philosophers — could be counted upon to be reliable in their department?

See for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjbWr3ODbAo

Daniel Dennett has since not recanted the view that “Consciousness is an illusion”. A massive blunder — and it is especially problematic when YouTubers can see through your thesis.

To declare that “Consciousness is an illusion” is to beg the question. What is real? Or is everything fake? And if everything is fake, what do you mean by real and fake? Or are these concepts that we must discard completely when describing the world?

In the second video (click “not recanted”), between 17:50 and 19:30, Dennett suggests the following:

Suppose I tell you that I saw a purple gown last night and in response, your mind conjures up an image of a purple gown. Did you actually see purple? Dennett tells us of course not — you merely saw a “representation” of purple. He goes on to suggest that if you want to see something really purple, we need to go out to the “world” and see a “real” purple gown. He also tells us that the “real” purple gown is purple in so far as the gown reflects light to human eyes in a particular way.

This kind of thinking is what happens when you double down on a fundamental mistake ad infinitum — one rotten belief will corrupt your entire ecosystem.

Say that you have a powerful imagination. When you think of a rainbow, it’s as if a rainbow is almost really there, though the colors are a bit washed out. But you see 7 colors, nonetheless. According to Dennett however, you’re an idiot for thinking you see 7 colors — this is only a representation of purple!

Dennett’s position is that real purple is only when you go out and your eyes see light of a particular wavelength. But for a moment, let’s accept Dennett’s proposition that your realistic, but not very realistic, imagination of a purple band within a rainbow is just a “representation” of purple, not anywhere close to “real” purple.

Suppose you were in a hyper-realistic VR simulator where no light was delivered to eyes at all — just a transcranial stimulation of your brain to deliver an image of a purple gown. What would Dennett say then? “Look, fool, you ain’t seeing purple. It’s a transcranially delivered representation of purple.” You would, sputtering, reply that sure, you don’t believe that you’re seeing any light — but that you are seeing a beautiful burgundy gown. Dennett replies — “Okay you know what let’s just call that “representation” as fake purple, from now on.”

It is easy to see why Dennett’s position is beyond flimsy. It is the parody of parodies. Dennett fails to realise that the cash value of purple is entirely defined by subjective experience — not by “objective” standards as Dennett proposes, such as the wavelength of light. The experience of purple is principally distinct from the concept of light, though they are related.

In response to the VR example, Dennett says “Okay, look. Real purple is defined by a specific set of firings in specific neurons.” “That’s fair, could you tell me which neurons and what kind of firing, please?” “Sure, I’ll find out.” Dennett goes off to find a volunteer who is willing to have his brain transcranially stimulated to figure out what purple really is — and that volunteer he decides is himself.

He sits down and begins to stimulate various parts of his brain. He incidentally happens to have a flash of purple.

But he is unsure — is this real purple or just a “representation” of purple? Genius.

In Dennett’s worldview, the world — or consciousness — is formed of successive illusions, all the way down. To where exactly, one might ask. If he replies “objective standards”, we can mock his naive assumption that the objective lies outside consciousness. And if Dennett concedes that this attempt to deconstruct subjective experience leads only towards concepts that are undoubtedly “illusory” in themselves (as Dennett seems to be saying), then what exactly, is the point of using the word illusory?

At 14:40 the interviewer asks him precisely this question — doesn’t the word illusion imply that there is someone who gets fooled?

Dennett replies no (which is the right answer) but then proceeds to talk of consciousness as a “user” illusion similar to that of display screens portraying representations of objects. He says that this is a “useful” illusion to the user — and goes on to suggest that without this kind of representation one wouldn’t able to control one’s body or do anything useful with their minds. But he ignores the fact that these might actually be inseparable from each other — that not having a sound mind and not being “able” to do mathematics, say, is the same thing. He is ignorant of the fact that the word “useful” and the phrase “user illusion” imply that there is someone or something outside of consciousness that this illusion happens to — which makes me wonder why he replied “no” in the first place.

Only one of two options can hold — either that there is such a person or thing that is a witness of conscious events who stands outside consciousness and is fooled because they think the world is as they see it only, or you accept the fact that consciousness is simply the space in which everything — including Dennett’s thoughts about the illusoriness of consciousness — occurs.

I take a walk in the park. Dan’s position is that the trees I see are an illusion — the trees are just a mental representation of a tree, not actual trees. He says that this a clever illusion to help us deal with the scientific reality of trees, which can fall on you, be used for wood, etc.

But my answer, on the other hand, is that my experience of a tree is not an illusion. I would not say that seeing a tree implies there is an actual wooden mass with certain scientifically determinable characteristics 10 meters away from me. But it is important that I call this representation a tree, whether or not I saw it walking in a real park or one constructed in a digital reality, because a “tree”, after all, references the perception of the mind — and not how it got there. We are free to explore in scientific terms as to what causes the representation of a tree in our minds without feeling the need to call some trees fake and others real — the representation of a tree is the same regardless of how they got there or how “superficial” they are.

Representations, of any kind, are structures, and we can understand that there are patterns and connections between various levels of representation — from the perceptual to the abstract. We may not fully understand these representations — but all of them occur within consciousness.