[coldtea]

>The underlying reality, however, what exists in itself and not just for us or for other creatures, is accurately represented only by the scientific image—ultimately in the language of physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and neurophysiology."

They are also mediated by consciousness. Unconscious scientists rarely do experiments or interpret their results.

This is epistemology 101.

[kerkeslager]

The underlying reality is absolutely not mediated by human consciousness, and I think the author's mistake here is even bringing up the human scientific fields, which muddies their point.

Dennett does end up explaining a lot of epistemology 101 because his audience isn't philosophy academia.

Dennett's innovation, which isn't described well by this book review, is to assert that epistemology is driven by reproductive pressure (both genetic and memetic).

[hprotagonist]

>The underlying reality is absolutely not mediated by human consciousness...

and, being a conscious human who can only rely on data inferred through his sense organs: who are _you_ to say?

[manyoso]

How is that an innovation?!

Materialists have been asserting since forever that consciousness arises from the brain and that the brain evolved according to Darwin's laws. What is new in Dennett's viewpoint?

[kerkeslager]

Dennett goes into a lot more detail as to the processes by which evolution affects consciousness and the resulting properties of consciousness than anyone in my (admittedly limited) reading.

[coldtea]

>The underlying reality is absolutely not mediated by human consciousness

How does anybody even know that, or anything else, except through their, wait for it..., human consciousness?

[kerkeslager]

There are two pieces of evidence which allow me to hypothesize the existence of an objective reality from within my subjective experience:

1. My subjective experience makes predictions which are wrong within my subjective experience in ways which my subjective experience does not explain. Or put another way, I experience cognitive dissonance.

2. When I attempt to align my subjective experience with a hypothetical objective reality (that is, when I attempt to learn) the predictions made from my subjective experience are wrong less frequently. Or put another way, learning decreases cognitive dissonance.

Of course, these subjective experiences could be explained by a self-flagellating subjective experience that inflicts me with cognitive dissonance and then rewards me for attempting to align my subjective experience with a nonexistent objective reality. But that is (subjectively!) too convoluted an explanation to be satisfactory.

[GavinMcG]

And yes, of course it's epistemology 101. But a lot of people haven't taken epistemology, and this article is a review of Dennett's book which delves into these issues for the general public.

Edit: typo has been fixed.

[coldtea]

>I assume you mean "mediated" rather than "medicated".

Oops, yes, fixed that. I always make tons of typos on my HN comments.