Lovely and Suspect Ideas

Abstract

is so much that is brilliant, delightful, and right in Dennett's book that it is tempting try explain away, or sweep under the rug, the things that seem wrong. I was aware of one long standing disagreement between him and me, namely over the existence of But I had hoped that this was an isolated case. And, indeed, the book a whole presents a vision of mind and its place in nature (to steal C. D. Broad's phrase) that me admirable and basically right. It also me right on many particular issues of special concern philosophers, including Jackson' s knowledge argument, Searle's Chinese room argument, issues about zombies, and much else. But, alas, Dennett says a good deal that me wrong and which cannot be discounted, I have tried discount all passages in which he wields the term fiction, harmless hyperbole. Here I will focus on his claims about perceptual experience, in particular about real seemings and about qualia. Dennett's avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters often leaves it far from clear precisely what he is affirming and, especially, denying. Just what does his interlocutor Otto mean when he says that there seems be a pink ring? Sometimes, when Otto asks where the glowing pink rink is, he be buying into a sense-datum or phenomenal object view-the view that having an experience as of' a pink ring involves there really being a pink ring before one (there really being a pink object that is not just an intentional object). And such a view sometimes be Dennett's target when he talks about the experience of the Marilyn wallpaper, e.g., when he says that There is no medium that reproduces the wallpaper detail, that renders it for your inner Witness(p. 364). But sense-datum theory has few defenders nowadays, and unlikely be Dennett's main target. What Otto be maintaining, most of the time, is just the truism that there are perceptual experiences, the having of which constitutes things in the world appearing in certain ways us (or our being appeared to in certain ways), and that such experiences are distinct both from our judgments about the world and from such judgments we make about the experiences themselves. And Dennett