{"id":18724,"date":"2017-03-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=447"},"modified":"2017-03-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T00:00:00","slug":"living-in-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/03\/living-in-illusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

T<\/span>homas Nagel reviews Daniel Dennett\u2019s latest, From Bacteria to Bach and Back<\/em><\/a>, in the NYRB<\/em><\/a>. It\u2019s a wild ride.<\/p>\n

Reality, real<\/em> reality, is the matter-in-process that science describes, Dennett argues. Dennett is famously, insanely consistent in his materialism. Nagel writes, \u201cBach\u2019s or Picasso\u2019s creative genius, and our conscious experience of hearing Bach\u2019s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto or seeing Picasso\u2019s Girl Before a Mirror, all arose by a sequence of physical events beginning with the chemical composition of the earth\u2019s surface before the appearance of unicellular organisms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of that real reality is completely outside our consciousness or understanding. We don\u2019t know how our brains work \u2013 no<\/em> one does; we don\u2019t know much about how anything works. Our bodies function without our conscious control, yet the physical and chemical processes churning along anyway. We understand very little about our own real reality, and the world around us continues in its processes without our aid.<\/p>\n

What we do<\/em> know as direct experience is not<\/em> reality. It is an evolution-created illusion, a \u201cmanifest image,\u201d the \u201cworld according to us.\u201d This manifest image is, Dennett explains, \u201ca user-illusion brilliantly designed by evolution to fit the needs of its users.\u201d Nagel explains, \u201cIn spite of the word \u2018illusion\u2019 he doesn\u2019t wish simply to deny the reality of the things that compose the manifest image; the things we see and hear and interact with are \u2018not mere fictions but different versions of what actually exists: real patterns.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Consciousness too is part of the manifest image, the illusion within which we survive in the world. In Nagel\u2019s summary, \u201cDennett holds that consciousness is not part of reality in the way the brain is. Rather, it is a particularly salient and convincing user-illusion, an illusion that is indispensable in our dealings with one another and in monitoring and managing ourselves, but an illusion nonetheless.\u201d <\/p>\n

This view of consciousness leads Dennett to \u201cdeny the authority of the first-person perspective with regard to consciousness and the mind generally. . . . our conception of conscious creatures with subjective inner lives\u2014which are not describable merely in physical terms\u2014is a useful fiction that allows us to predict how those creatures will behave and to interact with them.\u201d Farewell to Descartes, with a vengeance.<\/p>\n

Nagel doesn\u2019t believe it: \u201cDennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious\u2014that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle\u2019s words, \u2018maintaining a thesis at all costs.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are some intriguing turns of argument here. One of them is: Dennett denies the full reality of the \u201cworld according to us.\u201d That does seem implied by his manically consistent materialism. If we reverse the argument, though, perhaps there might be an argument along these lines: If \u201cthe world according to us\u201d is real, then materialism is not<\/em> true. Defending human experience entails battling materialism. And I have an inkling that an argument for the existence of God lies along that path somewhere.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Nagel reviews Daniel Dennett\u2019s latest, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, in the NYRB. It\u2019s a wild ride. Reality, real reality, is the matter-in-process that science describes, Dennett argues. Dennett is famously, insanely consistent in his materialism. Nagel writes, \u201cBach\u2019s or Picasso\u2019s creative genius, and our conscious experience of hearing Bach\u2019s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1802,1803,1452,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consciousness","category-daniel-dennett","category-materialism","category-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\nLiving in Illusion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Thomas Nagel reviews Daniel Dennett's latest, From Bacteria to Bach and Back, in the NYRB. 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