{"id":196777,"date":"2024-09-29T17:24:41","date_gmt":"2024-09-29T22:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/consciousness-and-the-dennett-paradox"},"modified":"2024-09-29T17:24:41","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T22:24:41","slug":"consciousness-and-the-dennett-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/consciousness-and-the-dennett-paradox","title":{"rendered":"Consciousness and the Dennett Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/consciousness-and-the-dennett-paradox.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Hoboken, April 20, 2024. Daniel Dennett\u2019s death feels like the end of an era, the era of ultra-materialist, ultra-Darwinian, swaggering, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/johnhorgan.org\/cross-check\/the-delusion-of-scientific-omniscience\"><em>know-it-all scientism<\/em><\/a><em>. Who\u2019s left? Dawkins? Dennett isn\u2019t as smart as he thinks he is, I liked to say, because no one is. He lacked the self-doubt gene, but he forced me to <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/johnhorgan.org\/cross-check\/self-doubt-is-my-superpower\"><em>doubt myself<\/em><\/a><em>, he made me rethink what I think, and what more can you ask of a philosopher? I first encountered Dennett\u2019s in-your-face brilliance in 1981 when I read The Mind\u2019s I, and his name popped up at a <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/johnhorgan.org\/cross-check\/the-consciousness-salon\"><em>consciousness shindig I attended just last week<\/em><\/a><em>. To honor Dennett, I\u2019m posting a free, revised version of my 2017 critique of his claim that consciousness is an \u201cillusion.\u201d I\u2019m also coining a phrase, \u201cthe Dennett Paradox,\u201d explained below.\u2014 John Horgan<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Of all the odd notions to emerge from debates over consciousness, the oddest is that it doesn\u2019t exist, at least not in the way we think it does. It is an illusion, like \u201cSanta Claus\u201d or \u201cAmerican democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Descartes said consciousness is the one undeniable fact of our existence, and I find it hard to disagree. I\u2019m conscious right now, as I type this sentence, and you are presumably conscious as you read it (although <a href=\"https:\/\/johnhorgan.org\/cross-check\/the-solipsism-problem\">I can\u2019t be absolutely sure<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hoboken, April 20, 2024. Daniel Dennett\u2019s death feels like the end of an era, the era of ultra-materialist, ultra-Darwinian, swaggering, know-it-all scientism. Who\u2019s left? Dawkins? Dennett isn\u2019t as smart as he thinks he is, I liked to say, because no one is. He lacked the self-doubt gene, but he forced me to doubt myself, he [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}