by a 'fair roundup' I mean that at least the first few clauses can be attributed to the New Atheists, who today dominate atheistic discourse. The second few clauses are for the wowsers and their groupies, Robyn Williams for one.

Squeers,

I think you need to clarify what type of atheism you’re talking about here before we go any further. Until you do, we’re just talking past each other. Clearly you’re not talking about implicit atheism. So are you referring to explicit atheism; or specifically strong atheism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Definitions_and_distinctions

I don’t think you’ve even thought about this. As I mentioned earlier, I was talking about atheism in the broadest and most inclusive sense, but I don't think your narrative allows for that. Please get back to me once you have determined what it is that you're referring to, and we’ll take it from there.

I don’t know about your Dennett quote, though; I would want to see the complete quote and in context of what he was saying. It looks suspiciously brief to me.

<<Dennett dismisses qualitative consciousness by reductively dismissing the supposition of consciousness itself as symbolic fiction, since all physical registration of data is mere discordant matter—Hume’s bundles—to be made sense of via cultural resources, and not merely ‘words’ (which are what?).>>

Yes, but any number of de-sublimations concerning not narrative, but pre-narrative, may still be discovered. Take Foucault, for example; his critique of de-constructivist socialism suggests that pre-textual society, surprisingly, has objective value, but only if neo-cultural de-sublimation is invalid.

Squeers,

>>You’re still implying an objective stance for the observer in that he may ‘sometimes’ utilise language from a qualitative remove—that the mind (which is what?) may ‘use’ words ‘remotely’ as tools. <<

You are probably reacting to my suggestion that words are “not always” reliable signifiers. I presumed you had in mind what in philosophy of science they call adequate representations (“of reality” if you subscribe to scientific realism, i.e. explicit belief in reality independent of the observer, or just "empirically adequate" without reference to such reality, if you subscribe to van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism). Well, whichever your take, I just wanted to stress that not all representations are adequate (“not all theories are true” in the “naive”, i.e. pre-scientific and pre-philosophical, language).

Your question what is mind?, brings to my mind Augustine’s reaction to the question what is time: If you don’t ask me I know, if you ask me I don’t know. Besides, German does not, have a word for “mind” (Russian does) so it might not be such a universally used term.

>>The implication being that mind/brain is ‘independent’, rather than epiphenomenal, or programed/constructed by the host culture’s conceptual universe. <<

Well, rather than implication, this is the co-assumption of science - normal science or first order science - namely that the observer is independent of the observed. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is what I liked in their second order science: rather than being in OPPOSITION to first order by claiming that the observer always constructs parts of what he/she observes, it offers an EXTENSION of that first order situation (by adding insights coming from treating the observer as a priori involved with the observed, i.e. assuming that mind is epiphenomenal in your words) without dismissing insights obtained by “first order” science or philosophy.

If I may sidetrack, it is like I do not see my worldview as being in opposition to atheist (unless anti-theist) approaches to philosophy but rather as an extension (by assuming a dimension of reality they find superfluous).

(ctd)

(ctd)

>> My own conviction is that ‘potentially&#146; the mind ‘is’ at least somewhat free to discriminate, but in that case we must account for it, and that’s the problem. <<

Well, I presume this is the reason why they thought of a “second order” without dismissing the classical “first order”, perhaps not to solve this problem but to gain new insights. Like in physics Einstein could explain everything that Newton could, and in addition also phenomena that Newton could not.

>> As a Christian this is assumedly not a problem for you as you believe in an essential entity—a soul? <<

Soul is a word coming from religion, mind is something philosophers ponder over, and consciousness is something that is an enigma to scientists, but essentially all three concepts describe a quality that distinguishes us humans from other living organisms/beings. The philosophical problem that you touched upon is the same for Christian, atheist or other philosophers, and is non-existent for philosophically unsophisticated Christians or atheists or what you have. However, you are right that assuming a dimension of reality that natural science has no access to (and not only Christians have this belief) is related to this problem.

Besides, soul as an entity, able to exist independently from the “host”, is a rather naive understanding; software running the hardware/host is perhaps a better metaphor, but still just a metaphor.

>> This means I am not a ‘radical constructivist’, though I cannot deny that apart from genetic disposition, logic dictates that we are programmed from birth.<<

I don’t know about logic here, but I understand. From this perspective it is then amazing that “first order” (natural) science”, where the observer is assumed as not being part of what is being observed, has been so successful. The same for classical (first order?) epistemology where the subject is seen as strictly separate from the object of knowledge.

I am not sure you had the patience (and time) to read this through, but anyhow, thanks for the motivation that made me think over and formulate my own understandings.

George, AJ and Banjo, shall have to respond again when able.

AJ, the quote is from Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" but don't have page number handy.

Squeers,

Those words words you’ve attributed to Dennett don’t appear to be his at all. A Google search of your quote finds a book called ‘Cogito and the Unconscious: Sic 2’, that contains a chapter that appears to be contrasting the title of a chapter in Dennett's book, with the title of a chapter in a book written by some Austin character; to whom the quote is actually attributed (though it's not clear if this Austin is being quoted either):

"The title of chapter 8 of consciousness explained ("How Words Do Things with Us") makes the point clear by means of a reversal of Austin's How to Do Things with Words: our symbolic universe is a pandemonium of competing forces (words, phrases, syntactic figures …)..." (http://tinyurl.com/mj7rj6m)

I double-checked this by downloading a PDF of Dennett’s book (https://keychests.com/item.php?v=gwerpunzuex), and a CTRL+F search reveals nothing; not even if I search for small snippets of that quote. I got Adobe Acrobat to check for "suspect" words in case an inaccurate OCR job was preventing the quoted line from appearing in a CTRL+F search, but there were no words that Acrobat was unsure of. The quoted line simply isn't there.

Dennett’s alleged concession appears to have just been some sloppy Googling on your behalf, unfortunately.