I much appreciated your post on deep atheism, and will still finish that. I also found this above post, and I thought I could contribute to the understanding at some points (as a Thesean myself).
You seem to move to discussing content, not distinguished this from consciousness (as in Dennett’s work), and perhaps even conflate the two concepts. Consciousness, I would refer with to, the mere platform, the capability that enables content to be featured. The self/I Dennett (r.i.p.) would conceive as “center of narrative gravity”, in line with your reflections.
Pragmatically there are tradeoffs in wrongly or rightly having confidence or not having confidence in your first person perspectives. Most commonly a belief in the reality of (the content of) consciousness co-occurs with the belief that one simply cannot be wrong about certain aspects of it, as opposed to them being “mere illusions”, that not necessarily have realism. This is I think particulary relevant in, among many other highly relevant ethical applications, interpersonal power-dynamics, where the assertions in the necessary realism of some of (the content in) consciousness can only be effectively countered with a retalliatory healthy skepticism on this front. I also agree that how this should exactly look is not yet most clear, as is even also the case for a very senior scientist like Anil Seth, according to his reflections prompted by Daniel Dennett’s passing.
Hi Joe,
I much appreciated your post on deep atheism, and will still finish that. I also found this above post, and I thought I could contribute to the understanding at some points (as a Thesean myself).
You seem to move to discussing content, not distinguished this from consciousness (as in Dennett’s work), and perhaps even conflate the two concepts. Consciousness, I would refer with to, the mere platform, the capability that enables content to be featured. The self/I Dennett (r.i.p.) would conceive as “center of narrative gravity”, in line with your reflections.
Pragmatically there are tradeoffs in wrongly or rightly having confidence or not having confidence in your first person perspectives. Most commonly a belief in the reality of (the content of) consciousness co-occurs with the belief that one simply cannot be wrong about certain aspects of it, as opposed to them being “mere illusions”, that not necessarily have realism. This is I think particulary relevant in, among many other highly relevant ethical applications, interpersonal power-dynamics, where the assertions in the necessary realism of some of (the content in) consciousness can only be effectively countered with a retalliatory healthy skepticism on this front. I also agree that how this should exactly look is not yet most clear, as is even also the case for a very senior scientist like Anil Seth, according to his reflections prompted by Daniel Dennett’s passing.
Best,
Indra