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Should the citations in these articles--particularly for the initial quotation--be more detailed? Page number, place of publication, etc?
"and the possibility of philosophical zombies" this sentence is inherently misleading to what dennet was trying to say. he was trying to say that the defintions under which such notions as thooughts and feelings were explained in relation to the "philosophical zombie" meant that in these ways we are all philosophical zombies because the notions are nonsensical or misleading. if you look back at his book, he described(it was almost a turing like description): that if something could act so like a human in all ways and under any scrutiny not come under doubt as to it being human then in no way could it ever not be human: it simply is human, because it would be impossible to replicate such behaviour and body-structure in that much depth.
this is what i got from it anyway, if you think i am incorrect i would like some feed back: my email is burtcataract@hotmail.com
and don't give me arguments in the vein of an intuition pump to do with blade runner (they weren't really robots, they were actors...hehehe) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.47.202.4 ( talk) 04:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
I have amended the entry to demonstrate the background to Multiple Drafts. Yes Dennett is an extremist in the field of consciousness studies and an encyclopedia article should make this clear. loxley 16:59, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
I will remove the peer review notice in 5 days if there is no more input/comment. loxley 13:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
There were some flat-out errors, as well as some distinctly unsympathetic POV comments. I did my best to correct them without a full rewrite, since the original did have plenty of good material despite these flaws. As always, I'm open to any comments and suggestions. Oh, and by the way, anyone who calls Dennett an extremist clearly has a POV. Alienus 02:51, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
NPOV is the policy and it does not mean NO point of view. Hitler was an extremist. Of course Dennett is an extremist in the philosophy of consciousness. loxley 09:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
In the case of philosophy, the epithet extremist is just flat-out meanignless if not a compliment. Today's extermist is often tomorrow's foresighted genius badly understood in his time. Just describe Dennett's opinions, the criticism of Dennett's opinions, Dennett's responses perhaps (this is where philopshy artciles get into difficuly IMO) and so on. Let the reader decided what is extrsmist or not extermist in Dennett's positions. -- Lacatosias 12:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
With all due respect, the previous version showed some rather obvious hostility (not to mention confusion) on this matter, and that's not NPOV. If you want to comment on the substance of my changes, feel free.
Alienus 09:51, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm disappointed. Your latest changes were pure POV, and not at all accurate. For example, Descartes believed that there was indeed a seat of consciousness where it all had to happen in order to count. In specific, he thought it was the immaterial soul, as contacted through the pineal gland. While this idea has, quite rightfully, fallen out of favor, its remnants remain in the notion of a hard before and after, as if the pineal gland now housed a homunculus sitting in front of a projection screen. This is one of the most strongly stated ideas in "Consciousness Explained", so I have trouble imagining how you might have missed it. Alienus 11:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Noting that Dennett used a straw man Cartesian Theatre argument in which things were instantaneously present is not a biased POV, it is accurate. Descartes, Kant, Clay, James etc... have all noted that conscious experience requires time. That Dennett incorrectly describes earlier ideas of consciousness as involving instantaneous awareness is crucial to understanding his ideas. Have you read Descartes or Kant, who both describe ideas as having duration? The big point here is whether Wikipedia should just report philosophical theories verbatim or put them in context. Apart from Augustine of Hippo I cannot think of any major philosopher of mind who has failed to notice that conscious experience requires a duration to be conscious experience. Even Augustine admits that God must be able to manage durations. You should have seen that Dennett was using a straw man argument the moment he mentioned Cartesian theatre - follow the link, it says that the "Cartesian theatre" was created by Dennett to disparage his imagined detractors. loxley 16:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
The issue was never whether there was a "during" to consciousness; it's obvious from the macro level that takes time to observe, decide and then act. The issue is whether there's a "before" and "after". According to the Cartesian model, all the sensory processing that occurs before the data arrives at the pineal is unconscious. Only when it arrives at the seat of consciousness (read: Cartesian theater) does it become conscious, such that the mind is truly aware of the data and can do the deciding, which leads to (equally unconscious) actions. In the course of deciding, the seat of consciousness can compare the input with prior memory and record new memories, so the perception actually "counts". If it is intercepted before, this is Stalineque. If it arrives but later arrivals overwrite the memory, it's Orwellian.
What makes Dennett's take on this distinct is that he denies that there is ever such a place for things to arrive at.
Instead, the moment any part of the nervous system senses something, it is potentially conscious and can be acted upon immediately, without waiting for instructions from the homunculus. It doesn't matter whether you agree with Dennett on this, what matters is that you be able to understand and fairly report what Dennett says, without nasty editorializing that attempts to undercut him. Remember, the NPOV policy requires that we offer a sympathetic description.
As for following the link to Cartesian theater, it turns out that I just rewrote that page, so I'm quite familiar with its contents. Once again, you have the issue wrong. It's not whether the term is intended to be somewhat disparaging -- of course it is, though not in a particularly crude way. It's whether the term is dishonest to the point where it's incontrovertibly a straw man. To say that it is, without attribution, is pure POV. Then again, using phrases like "imagined detractors" reveals that you've got plenty of excess POV, which you can't seem to curb. Any amount of research will turn up the fact that Dennett has a number of entirely real detractors, as well as real supporters.
Starting an edit war with me over this would be a mistake for many reasons, not the least of which being that you are demonstrably in the wrong. I'm sorry you disagree with Dennett,
but I'm not going to allow you to violate Wikipedia rules to take out your grudge. What I am going to do, however, is to edit the disuputed paragraph to lower the amount of misunderstanding it generates. I recommend that you leave the resulting change alone, at least until you can offer fair and knowledgable suggestions. Alienus 19:40, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
maybe i'm missing something here or maybe this is a POV to extreme, but the cartesian theater was never "made-up" to "attack" his "imagined detractors" . to me, he took a lot of contemporary theories (remember conciosness explained was published in 1991) to their logical conclusion and he came to the conclusion that they all seemed to rely on some form of cartesian theater, maybe he was wrong maybe not, but i don't think he did it maliciously. have you read the book; it is not a polemic.
i think you want it be an anti-daniel dennet page the way you are going about it.
"Dennett's ideas differ because they reject the idea of a view containing our experience and maintain that consciousness is to be found in the actions and flows of information from place to place."
This is flatly incorrect: Dennett does not reject the idea of a view containing our experience. He rejects the idea of a single, authoritative view. Instead, he argues for there being multiple drafts (hence the name of the theory), each constituting a view. The draft that wins out is the one that gets to claim that it's authoritative. In addition to your change being erroneous, you removed some text that was accurate, which made it a distinct step backwards. I am beginning to question the depth of your understanding of this theory. Alienus 03:48, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
OK, it looks somewhat balanced now. I am happy to leave the bit you reverted (without conceding the point(!)). You (Alienus) have improved the clarity of the explanation of the model, the article is positive about the theory but still has strong hints as to where a student should look if they are asked to criticise. loxley 10:37, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
All right. I think we're done here for now. Perhaps someone else would be able to further contribute to this and related articles, at which point our job would be to ensure that the quality is not degraded. Alienus 11:45, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I thought we had finished but you are once again stressing that Dennett's ideas about timing and the delegation of function are special or distinctive, they are not. His Orwell and Stalin are straw men, they do not represent the views of hardly any real philosophers. They are made up. Dennett has defeated imaginary opponents! This has been my whole point: other philosophers have analysed duration and timing in conscious experience (from Aristotle to Whitehead and Freud). Dennett uses straw men because he knows that real philosophers have already tackled this problem of time and come to various answers from Whitehead's time extension to Husserl's ideas (that are similar to Dennett's). Few, if any, of these real philosophers have proposed that we have an intantaneous view of the world, few would claim that the content of the duration of conscious experience is fixed. By defeating his straw men he is not giving us anything new except a false claim to priority in this field. Dennett's real contribution is his extreme eliminativism. He really is saying that you do not have phenomenal experience, you only have judgements. loxley 13:19, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
We were finished, until you made another erroneous change, without bringing it up in advance or explaining it after the fact.
The notion that Orwell and Stalin are straw men is inherently POV, since it's taking sides on precisely the issue in question.
Dennett is asserting that certain theories are unknowingly making one of these two equivalent errors, but the people he's accusing don't always agree. Stating that either side is right is POV. Reporting the claims of either side is not POV, and since this article is a summary of Dennett's ideas, it ought to be reporting his claims. So if you want to insert the claim that this is a straw man attack, find a reference.
Now, onto the factual issue. Yes, a key part of Dennett's theory is that it is explicitly behaviorist; consciousness is as consciousness does. He denies qualia outright, though he dos not deny that we have cooked feels, such as phenomenal experience. I think the article now makes that quite clear, even if it's not entirely clear to you.
But that's not why the theory's called Multiple Drafts! Rather, the title refers to the notion that the conclusions of any one part of the brain at any given moment -- a draft -- is not authoritative or final. Much like Wikipedia, there are a number of drafts over time, each overwriting and/or merging in with previous ones. Not only does the overall process (rather uncontroversially) fail to be instantaneous, but no instant or brief duration is inherently special. Let me explain this last part by analogy, since it's very clearly what you misunderstand about Dennett's ideas.
Imagine a river that slopes very gently from the foothills of a mountain all the way to the sea. We decide that we want to distinguish between the mountain water and the marsh water, and agree that water right near the start of the river, where mountain streams combine to create it, qualifies as mountain water, while the part right near the sea counts as marsh water. This is a useful categorization because marsh water floods the surrounding land, while mountain water remains within the banks.
However, we don't know quite where to draw the line between the two. Looking at any one part of the river, it barely seems to slope at all, so there doesn't seem to be any obvious point of division. In fact, it's almost hard to imagine how miles and miles of gentle sloping can accumulate into such a large vertical drop. Some people, due to their failure of imagination, instead decide that the only way for the drop to be accounted for is for there to be a waterfall somewhere in the middle, where the overwhelming majority of the altitude loss occurs. The falls form a natural division; above them is mountain water, below is marsh water, which is qualitatively different because of its distinctly low altitude.
Now to explicitly link the analogy to the matter at hand. The continuous stream of water from top to bottom corresponds to the processing the brain does, from receiving data to sending out commands in response. Mountain water is perception, marsh water is action. The waterfall is the Cartesian theater, where all the important work happens, while the level areas are nonconscious processing, which is interesting but not nearly as important. By analogy, Dennett is arguing that there isn't any waterfall, but that the water at any level might overflow the banks and qualify as conscious; marshiness is as marshiness does, regardless of altitude. Moreover, the water that overflows might rejoin the river, participating in another overflow later, as per multiple drafts. The invisible watefall, though, is just a cognitive illusion.
Note that the waterfall could be replaced with a series of rapids, given the drop somewhat more duration, but still amounts to postulating a before, during and after, with all the drop occurring during the during, not the flat before and after. This just makes the Cartesian theater a bit larger, without changing its special status. So the issue is not, and never has been, instantaneity. The issue is whether the process is continuous or discontinuous.
The reason this is considered so important by Dennett is that the job of the Cartesian theater is too big to swallow as one lump. In other words, it looks so hard as to be impossible, except by magical souls or something. It's only when we spread the job over the entire brain that it becomes soluble by a collection of processes, where none is individually conscious.
Now, I'm not asking you to agree with Dennnett.
If we all had to agree with something in order to edit an article about it, we'd be doing a whole lot less editing. What I am asking is that you look at what I wrote and see if it fits what Dennett is saying, however wrong you think Dennett is for saying it. If you don't do this, then you'll be as guilty of straw manning as you accuse him of being. Alienus 22:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but you're simply mistaken about the distinction, and your mistake is clearly the result of bias towards Chalmers' pro-zombie view. This removes your credibility on the matter, so I have to reject your suggestions. The only thing you got right is that the notion of a Cartesian theater is intended to be insulting towards Descartes. Alienus 23:15, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
I've tried to be patient with you, but you're failing to read what I'm writing. I've explained over and over and over again that instananeity is not the issue. You've ignored this. I don't know how to account for this continued error, but I don't see any reason to repeat myself further. I can only conclude that you do not understand what Dennett is claiming and, for whatever reason, are not interested in understanding. Please do not vandalize the page by spreading your confusion. I'm done now. Alienus 01:14, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
No, you summarized your own objections, which are based on your lack of understanding of Dennett's stance.
Worse, your hostility has let to editorializing and endorsing, instead of neutrally reporting. I've tried to clean up the worst of your excesses, bringing in verifiable sources and a more balanced treatment, but it's still a mess.
Frankly, it's getting to the point where your constant changes, and my partially successful attempts to incorporate instead of revert them, are lowering the quality of the page. The text is losing cohesiveness and flow, jumping about from place to place and shifting radically in tone. Soon, it'll be time for a drastic rewrite, which will likely lose whatever positive aspects either of us have contributed. I hope you're proud of yourself. Alienus 06:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Ok, the last time you poisoned the well, you didn't even bother making excuses in Talk, so I'm going to consider any futher changes to be simple vandalism. If you have something to contribute, talk about it first. Alienus 11:47, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Recently, Loxley made some massive and generally harmful changes to the article. While there is good reason to include relevant criticisms, there is no excuse for injecting POV under the guise of balance. What I'd like to do is carefully evaluate each portion of the attempted change and see if it can be incorporated in a balanced and honest way. However, Loxley is too busy edit-warring to allow this at the moment. So what I'm going to do is wait until Loxley goes away and finds someone else to harass, then revisit this issue. In short, I fully support the addition of further criticism, but I reject the way Loxley is trying to do it. Loxley is on record as being overwhelmingly hostile towards and clueless about Dennett, and has a long history of using everything from edit wars to admin manipulation in an attempt to get his way. I'm simply not going to allow this. Alienus 18:04, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
You have both exceeded Wikipedia:3RR. Take a rest; raise it with Wikipedia:RfC; come back tomorrow. Please. User:Noisy | Talk 18:18, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
(indent reset)
My goal here is really simple: I want the articles to be accurate. Loxley's goal is even simpler: he wants Dennett to look bad. Our goals conflict. If you look purely at the level of who's changing text, you can't see the difference in our goals. You have to look at the text being changed and the stated reasons for these changes. Otherwise, you wind up accusing both of us when I'm just acting in defense of the truth.
In any case, I'm more disgusted by this than you are, but my disgust is focused on the person responsible for turning these Dennett-related articles into a battleground. Alienus 15:58, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
(Reset indent)
Reply to Aaron: The text: In other words the Multiple Drafts model holds that stimuli are analysed after the event and that no modelling of the stimuli, such as filling in colours and shapes, occurs. Is a clarification, it can be removed if required but this idea of no "filling in" is central to Multiple drafts. I am sure Alienus will agree.
The big problem is the text in "criticisms" that Alienus removes over and over again. This lists the philosophical and scientific opposition to Multiple Drafts. It answers the question posed by User:Noisy:
"In the little wandering around that I've done on the internet today, Dennett and the Multiple Drafts model get little or no attention in the various internet dictionaries or encyclopaedias of philosophy"
This is why I entitled my change "Include explanation of why Multiple Drafts is not taught except as a curiosity", so that User:Noisy could see it was there.
I am not in the business of "making Dennett look bad", this is a philosophy article. I am in the business of presenting the various points of view on an issue. Now, Alienus did not answer my specific questions, he just called me a dog. I will repeat the questions, again requesting a specific answer. If we could address specific issues and resolve them we could make progress. Perhaps we could start with whether the "blind spot" is in fact "filled in" or whether Chalmers, Block, Velmans etc. have opposed Multiple Drafts? Did Alienus remove my comments on these issues because he disagreed with them? Alienus, please answer specifically. loxley 17:49, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that expanding on the description is pretty pointless. What I would like to see is a brief overview of pre-cursors to Dennett's model; other models that it is in competition with; developments or refinements of the model; place of the model in the current discussions of philosophy of the mind. I read CE and enjoyed it a lot, but I don't think that I'll be reading much more on the subject because my interests lie in different areas, and I don't think I have the knowledge to do any expansion. In the little wandering around that I've done on the internet today, Dennett and the Multiple Drafts model get little or no attention in the various internet dictionaries or encyclopaedias of philosophy, so it would be interesting to know if the model is being taught in universities. The best discussion I found was this, but it was way over my head.
I really would like to see this article developed, so can I ask that you set your differences aside and try and be a bit more dispassionate and try and work with WP:CITE in mind at all times, and bone up on the formatting of references and footnotes. User:Noisy | Talk 01:35, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I am disappointed!! Here is a rough but accurate definition of operationalism: the doctrine that the meaning of a proposition consists of the operations involved in proving or applying it
Dennett's position is called instrumentalism because it is indifferent with regard to the ontological and truth-functional status of mental phenomena. The concern is with the utility and and predictive efficay of modes of explnation and so on. This is a whopping error which I mnoticed right way and have corrected. But this article does indeed need to be examined very carefully.-- Lacatosias 10:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I've added this article to Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy of Mind in the section on articles needing attention. The structure of the article is odd and there needs to be some discussion of the significane of the Mutiple Drafts Model in modern philosophy of mind. Other than that, I think there is some good work in there.-- Lacatosias 12:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
There are refernces (references=sources for the artcile)for which I can find no mention or correspondence in the article. I shall move these to a section on ==addition reading== -- Lacatosias 17:49, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
What does the reference "(Korb 1993)" refers to? -- damiens.rf 14:27, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian ( talk) 21:34, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Multiple Drafts Model →
Multiple drafts model –
Per WP:MOSCAPS ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization"), and the guidance to downcase the names of models; and WP:TITLE, this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased. Lowercase will match the formatting of related article titles. Tony (talk) 10:21, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
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Should the citations in these articles--particularly for the initial quotation--be more detailed? Page number, place of publication, etc?
"and the possibility of philosophical zombies" this sentence is inherently misleading to what dennet was trying to say. he was trying to say that the defintions under which such notions as thooughts and feelings were explained in relation to the "philosophical zombie" meant that in these ways we are all philosophical zombies because the notions are nonsensical or misleading. if you look back at his book, he described(it was almost a turing like description): that if something could act so like a human in all ways and under any scrutiny not come under doubt as to it being human then in no way could it ever not be human: it simply is human, because it would be impossible to replicate such behaviour and body-structure in that much depth.
this is what i got from it anyway, if you think i am incorrect i would like some feed back: my email is burtcataract@hotmail.com
and don't give me arguments in the vein of an intuition pump to do with blade runner (they weren't really robots, they were actors...hehehe) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.47.202.4 ( talk) 04:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
I have amended the entry to demonstrate the background to Multiple Drafts. Yes Dennett is an extremist in the field of consciousness studies and an encyclopedia article should make this clear. loxley 16:59, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
I will remove the peer review notice in 5 days if there is no more input/comment. loxley 13:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
There were some flat-out errors, as well as some distinctly unsympathetic POV comments. I did my best to correct them without a full rewrite, since the original did have plenty of good material despite these flaws. As always, I'm open to any comments and suggestions. Oh, and by the way, anyone who calls Dennett an extremist clearly has a POV. Alienus 02:51, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
NPOV is the policy and it does not mean NO point of view. Hitler was an extremist. Of course Dennett is an extremist in the philosophy of consciousness. loxley 09:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
In the case of philosophy, the epithet extremist is just flat-out meanignless if not a compliment. Today's extermist is often tomorrow's foresighted genius badly understood in his time. Just describe Dennett's opinions, the criticism of Dennett's opinions, Dennett's responses perhaps (this is where philopshy artciles get into difficuly IMO) and so on. Let the reader decided what is extrsmist or not extermist in Dennett's positions. -- Lacatosias 12:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
With all due respect, the previous version showed some rather obvious hostility (not to mention confusion) on this matter, and that's not NPOV. If you want to comment on the substance of my changes, feel free.
Alienus 09:51, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm disappointed. Your latest changes were pure POV, and not at all accurate. For example, Descartes believed that there was indeed a seat of consciousness where it all had to happen in order to count. In specific, he thought it was the immaterial soul, as contacted through the pineal gland. While this idea has, quite rightfully, fallen out of favor, its remnants remain in the notion of a hard before and after, as if the pineal gland now housed a homunculus sitting in front of a projection screen. This is one of the most strongly stated ideas in "Consciousness Explained", so I have trouble imagining how you might have missed it. Alienus 11:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Noting that Dennett used a straw man Cartesian Theatre argument in which things were instantaneously present is not a biased POV, it is accurate. Descartes, Kant, Clay, James etc... have all noted that conscious experience requires time. That Dennett incorrectly describes earlier ideas of consciousness as involving instantaneous awareness is crucial to understanding his ideas. Have you read Descartes or Kant, who both describe ideas as having duration? The big point here is whether Wikipedia should just report philosophical theories verbatim or put them in context. Apart from Augustine of Hippo I cannot think of any major philosopher of mind who has failed to notice that conscious experience requires a duration to be conscious experience. Even Augustine admits that God must be able to manage durations. You should have seen that Dennett was using a straw man argument the moment he mentioned Cartesian theatre - follow the link, it says that the "Cartesian theatre" was created by Dennett to disparage his imagined detractors. loxley 16:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
The issue was never whether there was a "during" to consciousness; it's obvious from the macro level that takes time to observe, decide and then act. The issue is whether there's a "before" and "after". According to the Cartesian model, all the sensory processing that occurs before the data arrives at the pineal is unconscious. Only when it arrives at the seat of consciousness (read: Cartesian theater) does it become conscious, such that the mind is truly aware of the data and can do the deciding, which leads to (equally unconscious) actions. In the course of deciding, the seat of consciousness can compare the input with prior memory and record new memories, so the perception actually "counts". If it is intercepted before, this is Stalineque. If it arrives but later arrivals overwrite the memory, it's Orwellian.
What makes Dennett's take on this distinct is that he denies that there is ever such a place for things to arrive at.
Instead, the moment any part of the nervous system senses something, it is potentially conscious and can be acted upon immediately, without waiting for instructions from the homunculus. It doesn't matter whether you agree with Dennett on this, what matters is that you be able to understand and fairly report what Dennett says, without nasty editorializing that attempts to undercut him. Remember, the NPOV policy requires that we offer a sympathetic description.
As for following the link to Cartesian theater, it turns out that I just rewrote that page, so I'm quite familiar with its contents. Once again, you have the issue wrong. It's not whether the term is intended to be somewhat disparaging -- of course it is, though not in a particularly crude way. It's whether the term is dishonest to the point where it's incontrovertibly a straw man. To say that it is, without attribution, is pure POV. Then again, using phrases like "imagined detractors" reveals that you've got plenty of excess POV, which you can't seem to curb. Any amount of research will turn up the fact that Dennett has a number of entirely real detractors, as well as real supporters.
Starting an edit war with me over this would be a mistake for many reasons, not the least of which being that you are demonstrably in the wrong. I'm sorry you disagree with Dennett,
but I'm not going to allow you to violate Wikipedia rules to take out your grudge. What I am going to do, however, is to edit the disuputed paragraph to lower the amount of misunderstanding it generates. I recommend that you leave the resulting change alone, at least until you can offer fair and knowledgable suggestions. Alienus 19:40, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
maybe i'm missing something here or maybe this is a POV to extreme, but the cartesian theater was never "made-up" to "attack" his "imagined detractors" . to me, he took a lot of contemporary theories (remember conciosness explained was published in 1991) to their logical conclusion and he came to the conclusion that they all seemed to rely on some form of cartesian theater, maybe he was wrong maybe not, but i don't think he did it maliciously. have you read the book; it is not a polemic.
i think you want it be an anti-daniel dennet page the way you are going about it.
"Dennett's ideas differ because they reject the idea of a view containing our experience and maintain that consciousness is to be found in the actions and flows of information from place to place."
This is flatly incorrect: Dennett does not reject the idea of a view containing our experience. He rejects the idea of a single, authoritative view. Instead, he argues for there being multiple drafts (hence the name of the theory), each constituting a view. The draft that wins out is the one that gets to claim that it's authoritative. In addition to your change being erroneous, you removed some text that was accurate, which made it a distinct step backwards. I am beginning to question the depth of your understanding of this theory. Alienus 03:48, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
OK, it looks somewhat balanced now. I am happy to leave the bit you reverted (without conceding the point(!)). You (Alienus) have improved the clarity of the explanation of the model, the article is positive about the theory but still has strong hints as to where a student should look if they are asked to criticise. loxley 10:37, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
All right. I think we're done here for now. Perhaps someone else would be able to further contribute to this and related articles, at which point our job would be to ensure that the quality is not degraded. Alienus 11:45, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I thought we had finished but you are once again stressing that Dennett's ideas about timing and the delegation of function are special or distinctive, they are not. His Orwell and Stalin are straw men, they do not represent the views of hardly any real philosophers. They are made up. Dennett has defeated imaginary opponents! This has been my whole point: other philosophers have analysed duration and timing in conscious experience (from Aristotle to Whitehead and Freud). Dennett uses straw men because he knows that real philosophers have already tackled this problem of time and come to various answers from Whitehead's time extension to Husserl's ideas (that are similar to Dennett's). Few, if any, of these real philosophers have proposed that we have an intantaneous view of the world, few would claim that the content of the duration of conscious experience is fixed. By defeating his straw men he is not giving us anything new except a false claim to priority in this field. Dennett's real contribution is his extreme eliminativism. He really is saying that you do not have phenomenal experience, you only have judgements. loxley 13:19, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
We were finished, until you made another erroneous change, without bringing it up in advance or explaining it after the fact.
The notion that Orwell and Stalin are straw men is inherently POV, since it's taking sides on precisely the issue in question.
Dennett is asserting that certain theories are unknowingly making one of these two equivalent errors, but the people he's accusing don't always agree. Stating that either side is right is POV. Reporting the claims of either side is not POV, and since this article is a summary of Dennett's ideas, it ought to be reporting his claims. So if you want to insert the claim that this is a straw man attack, find a reference.
Now, onto the factual issue. Yes, a key part of Dennett's theory is that it is explicitly behaviorist; consciousness is as consciousness does. He denies qualia outright, though he dos not deny that we have cooked feels, such as phenomenal experience. I think the article now makes that quite clear, even if it's not entirely clear to you.
But that's not why the theory's called Multiple Drafts! Rather, the title refers to the notion that the conclusions of any one part of the brain at any given moment -- a draft -- is not authoritative or final. Much like Wikipedia, there are a number of drafts over time, each overwriting and/or merging in with previous ones. Not only does the overall process (rather uncontroversially) fail to be instantaneous, but no instant or brief duration is inherently special. Let me explain this last part by analogy, since it's very clearly what you misunderstand about Dennett's ideas.
Imagine a river that slopes very gently from the foothills of a mountain all the way to the sea. We decide that we want to distinguish between the mountain water and the marsh water, and agree that water right near the start of the river, where mountain streams combine to create it, qualifies as mountain water, while the part right near the sea counts as marsh water. This is a useful categorization because marsh water floods the surrounding land, while mountain water remains within the banks.
However, we don't know quite where to draw the line between the two. Looking at any one part of the river, it barely seems to slope at all, so there doesn't seem to be any obvious point of division. In fact, it's almost hard to imagine how miles and miles of gentle sloping can accumulate into such a large vertical drop. Some people, due to their failure of imagination, instead decide that the only way for the drop to be accounted for is for there to be a waterfall somewhere in the middle, where the overwhelming majority of the altitude loss occurs. The falls form a natural division; above them is mountain water, below is marsh water, which is qualitatively different because of its distinctly low altitude.
Now to explicitly link the analogy to the matter at hand. The continuous stream of water from top to bottom corresponds to the processing the brain does, from receiving data to sending out commands in response. Mountain water is perception, marsh water is action. The waterfall is the Cartesian theater, where all the important work happens, while the level areas are nonconscious processing, which is interesting but not nearly as important. By analogy, Dennett is arguing that there isn't any waterfall, but that the water at any level might overflow the banks and qualify as conscious; marshiness is as marshiness does, regardless of altitude. Moreover, the water that overflows might rejoin the river, participating in another overflow later, as per multiple drafts. The invisible watefall, though, is just a cognitive illusion.
Note that the waterfall could be replaced with a series of rapids, given the drop somewhat more duration, but still amounts to postulating a before, during and after, with all the drop occurring during the during, not the flat before and after. This just makes the Cartesian theater a bit larger, without changing its special status. So the issue is not, and never has been, instantaneity. The issue is whether the process is continuous or discontinuous.
The reason this is considered so important by Dennett is that the job of the Cartesian theater is too big to swallow as one lump. In other words, it looks so hard as to be impossible, except by magical souls or something. It's only when we spread the job over the entire brain that it becomes soluble by a collection of processes, where none is individually conscious.
Now, I'm not asking you to agree with Dennnett.
If we all had to agree with something in order to edit an article about it, we'd be doing a whole lot less editing. What I am asking is that you look at what I wrote and see if it fits what Dennett is saying, however wrong you think Dennett is for saying it. If you don't do this, then you'll be as guilty of straw manning as you accuse him of being. Alienus 22:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but you're simply mistaken about the distinction, and your mistake is clearly the result of bias towards Chalmers' pro-zombie view. This removes your credibility on the matter, so I have to reject your suggestions. The only thing you got right is that the notion of a Cartesian theater is intended to be insulting towards Descartes. Alienus 23:15, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
I've tried to be patient with you, but you're failing to read what I'm writing. I've explained over and over and over again that instananeity is not the issue. You've ignored this. I don't know how to account for this continued error, but I don't see any reason to repeat myself further. I can only conclude that you do not understand what Dennett is claiming and, for whatever reason, are not interested in understanding. Please do not vandalize the page by spreading your confusion. I'm done now. Alienus 01:14, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
No, you summarized your own objections, which are based on your lack of understanding of Dennett's stance.
Worse, your hostility has let to editorializing and endorsing, instead of neutrally reporting. I've tried to clean up the worst of your excesses, bringing in verifiable sources and a more balanced treatment, but it's still a mess.
Frankly, it's getting to the point where your constant changes, and my partially successful attempts to incorporate instead of revert them, are lowering the quality of the page. The text is losing cohesiveness and flow, jumping about from place to place and shifting radically in tone. Soon, it'll be time for a drastic rewrite, which will likely lose whatever positive aspects either of us have contributed. I hope you're proud of yourself. Alienus 06:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Ok, the last time you poisoned the well, you didn't even bother making excuses in Talk, so I'm going to consider any futher changes to be simple vandalism. If you have something to contribute, talk about it first. Alienus 11:47, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Recently, Loxley made some massive and generally harmful changes to the article. While there is good reason to include relevant criticisms, there is no excuse for injecting POV under the guise of balance. What I'd like to do is carefully evaluate each portion of the attempted change and see if it can be incorporated in a balanced and honest way. However, Loxley is too busy edit-warring to allow this at the moment. So what I'm going to do is wait until Loxley goes away and finds someone else to harass, then revisit this issue. In short, I fully support the addition of further criticism, but I reject the way Loxley is trying to do it. Loxley is on record as being overwhelmingly hostile towards and clueless about Dennett, and has a long history of using everything from edit wars to admin manipulation in an attempt to get his way. I'm simply not going to allow this. Alienus 18:04, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
You have both exceeded Wikipedia:3RR. Take a rest; raise it with Wikipedia:RfC; come back tomorrow. Please. User:Noisy | Talk 18:18, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
(indent reset)
My goal here is really simple: I want the articles to be accurate. Loxley's goal is even simpler: he wants Dennett to look bad. Our goals conflict. If you look purely at the level of who's changing text, you can't see the difference in our goals. You have to look at the text being changed and the stated reasons for these changes. Otherwise, you wind up accusing both of us when I'm just acting in defense of the truth.
In any case, I'm more disgusted by this than you are, but my disgust is focused on the person responsible for turning these Dennett-related articles into a battleground. Alienus 15:58, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
(Reset indent)
Reply to Aaron: The text: In other words the Multiple Drafts model holds that stimuli are analysed after the event and that no modelling of the stimuli, such as filling in colours and shapes, occurs. Is a clarification, it can be removed if required but this idea of no "filling in" is central to Multiple drafts. I am sure Alienus will agree.
The big problem is the text in "criticisms" that Alienus removes over and over again. This lists the philosophical and scientific opposition to Multiple Drafts. It answers the question posed by User:Noisy:
"In the little wandering around that I've done on the internet today, Dennett and the Multiple Drafts model get little or no attention in the various internet dictionaries or encyclopaedias of philosophy"
This is why I entitled my change "Include explanation of why Multiple Drafts is not taught except as a curiosity", so that User:Noisy could see it was there.
I am not in the business of "making Dennett look bad", this is a philosophy article. I am in the business of presenting the various points of view on an issue. Now, Alienus did not answer my specific questions, he just called me a dog. I will repeat the questions, again requesting a specific answer. If we could address specific issues and resolve them we could make progress. Perhaps we could start with whether the "blind spot" is in fact "filled in" or whether Chalmers, Block, Velmans etc. have opposed Multiple Drafts? Did Alienus remove my comments on these issues because he disagreed with them? Alienus, please answer specifically. loxley 17:49, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that expanding on the description is pretty pointless. What I would like to see is a brief overview of pre-cursors to Dennett's model; other models that it is in competition with; developments or refinements of the model; place of the model in the current discussions of philosophy of the mind. I read CE and enjoyed it a lot, but I don't think that I'll be reading much more on the subject because my interests lie in different areas, and I don't think I have the knowledge to do any expansion. In the little wandering around that I've done on the internet today, Dennett and the Multiple Drafts model get little or no attention in the various internet dictionaries or encyclopaedias of philosophy, so it would be interesting to know if the model is being taught in universities. The best discussion I found was this, but it was way over my head.
I really would like to see this article developed, so can I ask that you set your differences aside and try and be a bit more dispassionate and try and work with WP:CITE in mind at all times, and bone up on the formatting of references and footnotes. User:Noisy | Talk 01:35, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I am disappointed!! Here is a rough but accurate definition of operationalism: the doctrine that the meaning of a proposition consists of the operations involved in proving or applying it
Dennett's position is called instrumentalism because it is indifferent with regard to the ontological and truth-functional status of mental phenomena. The concern is with the utility and and predictive efficay of modes of explnation and so on. This is a whopping error which I mnoticed right way and have corrected. But this article does indeed need to be examined very carefully.-- Lacatosias 10:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I've added this article to Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy of Mind in the section on articles needing attention. The structure of the article is odd and there needs to be some discussion of the significane of the Mutiple Drafts Model in modern philosophy of mind. Other than that, I think there is some good work in there.-- Lacatosias 12:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
There are refernces (references=sources for the artcile)for which I can find no mention or correspondence in the article. I shall move these to a section on ==addition reading== -- Lacatosias 17:49, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
What does the reference "(Korb 1993)" refers to? -- damiens.rf 14:27, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian ( talk) 21:34, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Multiple Drafts Model →
Multiple drafts model –
Per WP:MOSCAPS ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization"), and the guidance to downcase the names of models; and WP:TITLE, this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased. Lowercase will match the formatting of related article titles. Tony (talk) 10:21, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
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