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"Surely the Chief Must Be Conscious" -Wittgenstein Symposium

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2012 7:37 am
by DanBlocker
At this year's Wittgenstein Symposium (http://www.alws.at/index.php/symposium/) I am going to talk about "The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of Private Language."

As you probably know Jaynes gave a lecture there 30 years ago. My lecture will be about, as you may have guessed, Jaynes and Wittgenstein. If anyone is in the neighborhood, please come along.

We can have a nice drink in an Austrian Beergarten.

Re: "Surely the Chief Must Be Conscious" -Wittgenstein Sympo

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 3:39 pm
by Moderator
Thanks Dan, let us know how your talk goes. I'm going to move this to the Conferences and Events section.

Re: "Surely the Chief Must Be Conscious" -Wittgenstein Sympo

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 2:02 am
by DanBlocker
The paper I read was very well received. It was a lot of fun. I was a bit surprised though that really no one in the audience (more than 30 people) seemed to have any idea who Jaynes was. So I added some biographical bits (telling them that Jaynes had his 15 minutes of fame).

It seemed to me that I got the message across about the origin of consciousness but sure enough in the question section a guy asked me wether I would agree that animals had a consciousness based on perceptions etc. Well...

Short answer, I said, no, but long answer: Maybe if we digest Jaynes and accept the possibility that even man can live happily without consciousness the urge to thrust consciousness on animals weakens.

Well known philosopher Alice Crary gave a lecture entitled "Freedom is for the Dogs", telling us, mainly based on anecdotes, that dogs are free (surely conscious) agents. I said that many people tell similar anecdotes about their cars but that somehow did not convince her.

Maybe I can give a version of my talk next year in Virginia. See you then.

Re: "Surely the chief must be conscious" [Wittgenstein Sympo

Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2012 10:16 pm
by Moderator
I'm glad to hear that your talk was well received. It sounds like it generated some good discussion.

Yes please submit an abstract for the upcoming Jaynes conference.