Consciousness Trilemma

[Angrboda]

Everything I am saying backs up what I have said. Conscious experience itself cannot be an illusion because experience is however things seem to be to us and it's just a tautology that however things seem to us is however they seem to us.

You're just doubling down on the same failed interpretation. Conscious experience appears to us in a specific way. It's not this way but that way. As long as the seeming to be has a particularity, it can be mistaken. That is what conscious experience being an illusion means and you've done nothing but talk around that fact with assertions that have nothing to do with the original claim that "Conscious experience is not an illusion" may be false. You're literally a party of one off in your own little world talking about something nobody has claimed. Your 'tautology' is not equivalent to the original claim. That makes all your claims about consciousness being however things seem to us irrelevant to the original claim. You are guilty of ignoratio elenchi and you don't even see it.

You're trying, you're really trying but neither you nor Rhythm is going to get there because you fail to apprehend the logical errors you're making and when either of you fail too hard to address my argument you both fall back on either bare assertions that it's not true by definition that conscious experience itself really does seem to us how it really does seem to us or you make the category error of asking me to provide third person perspective epistemically objective evidence for the reality of first person perspective ontologically subjective conscious experience, or last of all, you merely barely assert that what I am saying is word salad, psychobabble or that a term is meaningless when you don't understand.

Sure, sure. We're not the ones addressing an irrelevant restatement of the original claim. Conscious experience being an illusion doesn't mean that whatever way it appears to us is not the way it appears to us, it's saying that the way it appears to us is not the way it is. And your restatement of the original claim is a bollocks misinterpretation of what we have been saying, and of the original claim.

And the fact you merely insist that when the elimativists say that consciousness experience is illusory that that doesn't mean that consciousness experience is unreal it is clearly you that is merely talking semantic nonsense. You're simply denying the meanings of words and making shit up there.

The dichotomy you introduced was that Dennett believed all things had third person representation or else they were not real, in the sense of being nonexistent. That was the sense of 'real' which I was denying and here we have you yet again misrepresenting the situation. Words have multiple meanings depending upon context. In that context you were equating not real with nonexistent and that is distinct from the sense in which we've been using the term illusory in this thread. So yes, words have meanings, but it is you that has botched up what those meanings are, not I. That you're here effectively lying about the context of that sentence again is distressing, but hardly surprising.

I had little hopes for Rhythm understanding this but I'm actually rather sad that you do not understand this, Jor, because I not only like you a lot as a person but I also on occassion admire you as someone who appears to be fairly intelligent and is at the very least rather well educated. And on an irrelevant note: It rather saddens me that you can't even disagree with me about this without thinking that I'm an asshole.

What I understand is that you've taken the original claim and interpreted it in a way that is not true to the original claim. Far from being this great philosophical mind, you're the one who has introduced matter into the original claim and are bandying it about, along with an abuse of philosophical terms, as if you had something. All you've got is your misstatement of the premise "Conscious experience is not an illusion." I don't think you are an asshole, that was invective. I do think you are grossly mistaken about whether conscious experience can be an illusion and your empty talk about "it is what it is" is just so much distraction from the original claim. That you don't understand that point is your main failing here. I understand perfectly well what you're saying, as I understand also that it has nothing to do with the original claim. You keep coming back to "it is what it is" as if it were your saving grace, but in reality it's just an Albatross about your neck. All this "seeming is what it seems to us" is just so much irrelevant garbage. You haven't come close to demonstrating your original assertion. And no, that's not a category error, it's asking you to put up some sort of argument for why conscious experience is not an illusion, which is what you've claimed.

[bennyboy]

Sure, sure.  We're not the ones addressing an irrelevant restatement of the original claim.  Conscious experience being an illusion doesn't mean that whatever way it appears to us is not the way it appears to us, it's saying that the way it appears to us is not the way it is.  And your restatement of the original claim is a bollocks misinterpretation of what we have been saying, and of the original claim.

Does conscious experience have an appearance? How could that be the case? It seems to me that consciousness is an awareness of the fact of awareness. What illusory view can one hold of that?

[Angrboda]

Sure, sure.  We're not the ones addressing an irrelevant restatement of the original claim.  Conscious experience being an illusion doesn't mean that whatever way it appears to us is not the way it appears to us, it's saying that the way it appears to us is not the way it is.  And your restatement of the original claim is a bollocks misinterpretation of what we have been saying, and of the original claim.

Does conscious experience have an appearance?  How could that be the case?  It seems to me that consciousness is an awareness of the fact of awareness.  What illusory view can one hold of that?

Apparently you've fallen into the same sinkhole as Hammy. Of course consciousness has an appearance, it is all about its 'appearing' and nothing else. Do you feel that your consciousness exists on the other side of town? No, it has a distinct appearance of occurring inside your head. Consciousness is an awareness of the fact of awareness, but it is not only that. It in its subjectivity implicitly postulates various things about its existence. Is your consciousness unified or not? That's an appearance. Does it occur in the moment or is it spread out in time? That's an appearance.

Sartre has said that consciousness is both consciousness of something, the intentional subject, but that consciousness is also consciousness of being conscious. It is this second form of conscious intention that is about itself. This is why consciousness has an appearance, because it is its own intentional subject. And there is no anchor on the fidelity of that intentionality to what is. It's not a mirror which reflects an unobstructed subject. It is a construct like all the rest of the features of consciousness. And in no way can we be sure that it isn't misrepresenting itself to itself. If we accept that consciousness is a process occurring in the brain, then it seems unavoidable that certain features of that construct, not only may be untrue, but in fact must be untrue. The alternative to that interpretation is a form of the Cartesian theater, in which consciousness appears as a bubble in a stream of non-conscious material. That's simply postponing the necessary reduction.

[Edwardo Piet]

It's a mistake and unparsimonious to think that consciousness is both consciousness of being conscious and also consciousness of something else. There's a barrier between our minds and external reality. We can only experience things how they seem to us.

You say that consciousness is not only the awareness of how things seem to us because it's both consciousness of the intentional subject and the consciousness of being conscious. But by following Satre like that you are being dualistic in that you are creating a dividing line between the experiencer and the experience. You are making the very mistake that Dennett tries to warn people against. And Dennett's failed solution is to say that consciousness is illusory because he thinks only physical things can be real and he thinks that illusions in consciousness means the consciousness itself is an illusion.

So you're either failing to notice the very real distinction between internal and external reality or you're equivocating between the two and helping yourself to dualistm without realizing it. Pretending there's a distinction between the expereince and the experiencer when there isn't.

Our conscious self/our consciousness is a bundle of qualia that is experienced in the brain. You can't pretend that there's both the experience of the internal world and the experience of the external world because all experience is experienced internally as consciousness. It's the very notion of a conscious 'self' (Dennett refers to it as a homunculous and he's right about this part) that is an illusion, not consciousness or conscious experience itself. There is no dividing line between the experiencer and all experience is subejctive. The brain cannot literally detect and experience the external world, it can only experience its own interpretations of what seems to be an external world which it cannot know for sure even exists as a real external world.

And at any given moment whether you're observing the perception of your own thinking (you're introspecting) or you're observing your own perception of what you perceive to be an external world (you're extrospecting)... you can only do one or the other. And in both cases what you're conscious of is your own perception and how things seem to you, whether it's directed at your own model of what seems to be external or whether it's directed at your own model of what seems to be your own introspection. Which is identical to how you really do experience your introspection. In both cases, the experience of an apparent external world and the experience of an apparent introspective internal world: the appearance of it as your conscious experience is identical to what your conscious experience simply is at the time.

One of the key differences between me and Bennyboy is that he helps himself unparsimoniously to dualism. And you, Jor, are being similarly unparsimonious and dualistic by believing in the illusion of the self and the dividing line between the experience and the experiencer, the false distiniciton you mention that Satre points out. Ironically you're believing in the very homunculus that Dennett warns against. And his warning against that is something he actually got right.

Someone criticizies Dennett saying that it's not as though Dennett is saying that the emperor has no clothes it's as though he is saying the clothes have no emperor and he says they're right. And he is indeed right if he's talking about a homunculous or a conscious self/experiencer that is seperate from the conscious experience. But it can't be applied to conscious experience itself and be said that even conscious experience is an illusion. That would be to say that not only do the clothes haven no emperor but the clothes, which are analogous to qualia in this analogy, aren't even 'really' experienced. And that they're not 'really' there. And even the clothes themselves are illusion. That would be a nonsensical mistake. And yet by saying that conscious experience itself is an illusion rather than it merely being the notion that there is a homunclous that lives in our consciousness that is the illusion, Dennett is making a mistake. Because consciousness itself can't be an illusion even when people are deluded and think that there is a homunculous or separate 'expereincer' from their experience involded (which is more of a delusion than an illusion... we don't even perceive what we think we perceive. Illusions have to be perceived, but the homunculous isn't. No one ever experiences a conscious 'experiencer' in their consciousness seperate from the conscious experience itself... they incoherently believe they do because of their own amateur faliure to make sense of or explain their consciousness. That's an example of 'folk psychology' that really is bullshit.). Or even when they think that they can be conscious of external objective reality as it really is as opposed to how it merely appears in their own consciousness, making it still subjective internal reality experienced as external objective reality rather than it actually being external objective reality. And no matter how deluded they are about thinking that what they are experiencing now isn't what happened a moment ago when it is... that appearance or experience is still happening in that exact moment, even if what it represents actually happened a moment ago. And the appearance is the consciousness. Consciousness does indeed take time to be experienced but it's only consciousness when it's being experienced because consciousness is experiential in nature. It doesn't matter if we're talking about brain states that were present before the consciousness, the part of the brain state that appears to the consciousness in the moment is the consciousness. The parts of the brain that in the moment are appearing as consciousness are identical to those parts of the brain in the moment. They are entirely physical and experienced mentally but that mental experience is still physical in substance, that's simply not how it appears to us. It doesn't make it any less real. In fact, the way it appears to us is more knowable and real than the external reality and external brain that seems to be there.

You can't say that both the conscious and unconscious parts of the brain are conscious (Note: When I mention 'the conscious parts of the brain' I'm not saying that some parts of the brain are specific parts of the brain that 'become conscious', nor am I even saying that specific static parts of the brain, and always those specific parts in those specific places, are identical to consciousness. I'm not saying there are special conscious centers in the brain and I am certainly not saying that there is any Cartesian Theatre. I agree with Dennett that there is no specific part of the brain where consciousness 'comes together' and I agree with Dennett that there are no special conscious centres in the brain. I also agree with Dennett that the brain doesn't 'generate' consciousness. And I agree with him that there is no extra step and I agree with him about his multiple drafts theory in that the brain is competing with itself and vying for attention and whatever parts that win are just experienced as consciousness. That's how we perceive consciousness. My point is that that very perception is the consciousness and that certainly doesn't make it an illusion. What I don't agree with him about is his non-sequitur that therefore consciousness is illusory because it's something experienced as non-physical when in 'reality' it's physical. So the non-physical experience he concludes must be an 'illusion'. No, the experience is the most certainly known thing in the universe, and is physical itself like the rest of reality. Just because we experience it differently doesn't mean it's any less real. In fact, we have zero knowledge of physical reality outside of our own conscious experience of it (our conscious experience of it also being wholly physical... in fact everything we ever think we're studying is actually us only studying our own consciousness. We only ever experience conscious phenomenal objects and this is all science can address. The unconscious noumenal world is unreachable by definition and therefore absolutely unfalsifiable and unverifiable. Science doesn't ever test, verify, falsify or study the external objective world it tests, verifies, falsifies and studies how we (or scientists) experience the external world. The entirety of science is phenomenological). Our experience of consciousness isn't this illusory alien thing that doesn't appear to map onto physical reality so it must be an illusion experienced by a physical brain. It is the most known and familar aspect of the physical, in fact the only physical aspect that we can truly be certain of as being real and experience directly.(even if how we appear to experience the external world is an illusion and 'real reality' underneath is actually The Matrix... our subjective experience itself is very real, even if it's just false memories of things that never happened, the experience of that false memory itself is at least real and knowable) That is simply how our physical brain is experienced. There's no illusion. It's a nonsense for him to conclude that consciousness itself is an illusion and can't be real because he thinks it seems non-physical and all of real reality is physical. (He thinks it seems non-physical and so he thinks it is an illusion but it doesn't seem non-physical he just thinks it does. It's a delusion on his part, not an illusion on anyone's part. You can be deluded about the way things seem to you but a delusion and illusion is not the same thing. You can think something seems to you a way that it doesn't, that doesn't change the reality of how things really seem to you regardless of your delusion). He's explanations about the brain are right. (And the delusion of the homunculous, Caretesian theater, emperor or the conscious expereincer as seperate from the experience. He's got all that right. All those concepts are indeed silly and pathetic naive folk-psychology. But they are delusions, not illusions. We don't expereince that homuncuolous just because we think we do. The whole point is that there is no homunculous, not even as an illusion, we just think there is because of failures in logic and explanation and failures in our own sense-making of our own consciousness). But his re-definitions of consciousness and non-sequiturs about the so-called 'illusion' of conscious experience itself are epic fails. He's not right about everything.

And the point is that the parts of the brain that seem to be conscious from the first person perspective is identical to the experience of consciousness. I'm not talking about experiments done on the brain that 'seem' to indicate the parts of the brain that are consciousness from a third person perspective. That indication itself only seems to be the case to the people studying the brain and that seeming that they are experiencing is their own consciousness.

[The Grand Nudger]

Consciousness itself, like the contents of conscious experience, appears to us as something that it is not, or cannot be.  In this way, just like the contents of conscious experience are illusory, so too is consciousness itself.

What are the conscious and unconscious parts, that we....in your estimation, cannot mistake or misspeak for each other?  At what point does the information processing of the brain become the seat of consciousness? A person who holds a view in the spectrum of Dennets would probably tell you that there is no difference between consciousness and information processing. That the one is the other, that there are, therefore...no "conscious and unconscious" parts of the brain. It's an incoherent proposition, in their point of view. In their view, and in the view of nuerology, conscious is and must be distributed. Hence, in their opinion, there can be no humonculus. The way it feels to feel as such, is an illusion...as is the way it feels to feel as such in the present...information processing takes time there can only -be- a post hoc narrative about a "then".

There is no there, in there, and no now. There doesn't seem to be an I in there now, for that matter, not that it -would- matter.

[bennyboy]

Apparently you've fallen into the same sinkhole as Hammy.  Of course consciousness has an appearance, it is all about its 'appearing' and nothing else.  Do you feel that your consciousness exists on the other side of town?  No, it has a distinct appearance of occurring inside your head.  Consciousness is an awareness of the fact of awareness, but it is not only that.  It in its subjectivity implicitly postulates various things about its existence.  Is your consciousness unified or not?  That's an appearance.  Does it occur in the moment or is it spread out in time?  That's an appearance.

I disagree with these semantics. Consciousness is the awareness of the fact of awareness, and the other things you mentioned are ideas about it.

Sartre has said that consciousness is both consciousness of something, the intentional subject, but that consciousness is also consciousness of being conscious.  It is this second form of conscious intention that is about itself.  This is why consciousness has an appearance, because it is its own intentional subject.  And there is no anchor on the fidelity of that intentionality to what is.  It's not a mirror which reflects an unobstructed subject.  It is a construct like all the rest of the features of consciousness.  And in no way can we be sure that it isn't misrepresenting itself to itself.  If we accept that consciousness is a process occurring in the brain, then it seems unavoidable that certain features of that construct, not only may be untrue, but in fact must be untrue.  The alternative to that interpretation is a form of the Cartesian theater, in which consciousness appears as a bubble in a stream of non-conscious material.  That's simply postponing the necessary reduction.

This consciousness-as-object really isn't consciousness at all. It's an idea of consciousness, a component of the world view. As I said to Hammy, this isn't so much a theory of mind as an extension of the other components of one's world view.

This is especially so in the case of a material monist view, since there's no observation that can be made about the minds of others without begging the question.

[Angrboda]

It's a mistake and unparsimonious to think that consciousness is both consciousness of being conscious and also consciousness of something else. There's a barrier between our minds and external reality. We can only experience things how they seem to us.

You say that consciousness is not only the awareness of how things seem to us because it's both consciousness of the intentional subject and the consciousness of being conscious. But by following Satre like that you are being dualistic in that you are creating a dividing line between the experiencer and the experience.

No I am not. I am differentiating different aspects of consciousness, not availing myself of dualism. There is manifestly an aspect of consciousness that is about itself while you are having intentionality of a subject. Can you answer the question, "Were you conscious ten seconds ago?" If you can, then obviously you were aware that you were aware at the time. That's all that is necessary to show that point. The rest of this is just meaningless posturing.

Our conscious self/our consciousness is a bundle of qualia that is experienced in the brain. You can't pretend that there's both  the experience of the internal world and the experience of the external world because all experience is experienced internally as consciousness. It's the very notion of a conscious 'self' (Dennett refers to it as a homunculous and he's right about this part) that is an illusion, not consciousness or conscious experience itself. There is no dividing line between the experiencer and all experience is subejctive. The brain cannot literally detect and experience the external world, it can only experience its own interpretations of what seems to be an external world which it cannot know for sure even exists as a real external world.

Your tactic is to totalize the discussion by denying that differences exist where they do in fact exist. Of course all experience is subjective. That's not saying anything. You completely misunderstand Sartre's point and cast it in your totalizing language. Our consciousness is a bundle of qualia, and some of those qualia have the apparent referent of consciousness itself. This is not using dualism to introduce a dividing line between the experiencer and the experience, it is simply taking note of what's there. This idea that consciousness of consciousness is the same as introspection is simply not true. Your lack of imagination has led you down the primrose path to yet another false dichotomy.

And at any given moment whether you're observing the perception of your own thinking (you're introspecting) or you're observing your own perception of what you perceive to be an external world (you're extrospecting)... you can only do one or the other.

That's the false dichotomy I was speaking of. If you aren't aware of being aware, how are you aware that you are aware of something external? Extrospection must include this "being aware of being aware" or else we would have no conscious experience at all.

One of the key differences between me and Bennyboy is that he helps himself unparsimoniously to dualism. And you, Jor, are being similarly parsimonious and dualistic by believing in the illusion of the self and the dividing line between the experience and the experiencer, the false distiniciton you mention that Satre points out. Ironically you're believing in the very homunculus that Dennett warns against. And his warning against that is something he actually got right.

More irrelevant posturing.

Someone criticizies Dennett saying that it's not as though Dennett is saying that the emperor has no clothes it's as though he is saying the clothes have no emperor and he says they're right. And he is indeed right if he's talking about a homunculous or a conscious self/experiencer that is seperate from the conscious experience. But it can't be applied to conscious experience itself and be said that even conscious experience is an illusion. That would be to say that not only do the clothes haven no emperor but the clothes, which are analogous to qualia in this analogy, aren't even 'really' experienced. And that they're not 'really' there. And even the clothes themselves are illusion. That would be a nonsensical mistake. And yet by saying that conscious experience itself is an illusion rather than merely the notion that there is a homunclous that lives in our consciousness Dennett is making a mistake. Because consciousness itself can't be an illusion even when people are deluded and think that there is a homunculous or separate 'expereincer' from their experience involded  (which is more of a delusion than an illusion... we don't even perceive what we think we perceive. Illusions have to be perceived, but the homunculous isn't. No one ever experiences a conscious 'experiencer' in their consciousness seperate from the conscious experience itself... they incoherently believe they do because of their own amateur faliure to make sense of or explain their consciousness. That's an example of 'folk psychology' that really is bullshit.).

More meaningless posturing.

The parts of the brain that in the moment are appearing as consciousness are identical to those parts of the brain in the moment. They are entirely physical and experienced mentally but that mental experience is still physical in substance, that's simply not how it appears to us. It doesn't make it any less real. In fact, the way it appears to us is more knowable and real than the external reality and external brain that seems to be there.

And you imply that you aren't guilty of word salad expressions. This is nothing but. Your claim that I'm availing myself of dualism is nothing but rubbish assertion followed by a lot of posturing (and I do mean a lot).

[The Grand Nudger]

This is especially so in the case of a material monist view, since there's no observation that can be made about the minds of others without begging the question.

This gave me a great way to bring you round to the fold.  You have a penchant for stating that materialism cannot, for example, explain consciousness.  This, in your estimation, is indicative of some problem with materialism.  Eliminative materialists agree that many explanations of consciousness -cannot- explain consciousness, because, from an eliminative materialist's pov..what they describe is not only not happening, it can't happen.  

Where you see a problem with materialism, they see a problem with the description.

[Angrboda]

Apparently you've fallen into the same sinkhole as Hammy.  Of course consciousness has an appearance, it is all about its 'appearing' and nothing else.  Do you feel that your consciousness exists on the other side of town?  No, it has a distinct appearance of occurring inside your head.  Consciousness is an awareness of the fact of awareness, but it is not only that.  It in its subjectivity implicitly postulates various things about its existence.  Is your consciousness unified or not?  That's an appearance.  Does it occur in the moment or is it spread out in time?  That's an appearance.

I disagree with these semantics.  Consciousness is the awareness of the fact of awareness, and the other things you mentioned are ideas about it.

Label it how you like, the fact is that these ideas or impressions occur concurrently with the experience of the intentional subject. They can be made into ideas when we talk about them or when we introspect, but these ideas are still there while you're experiencing contemplation of an intentional subject. Introducing a semantic distinction does not in and of itself introduce a phenomenological distinction. The phenomenological picture is that we are aware of being aware while we are aware of other things.

Sartre has said that consciousness is both consciousness of something, the intentional subject, but that consciousness is also consciousness of being conscious.  It is this second form of conscious intention that is about itself.  This is why consciousness has an appearance, because it is its own intentional subject.  And there is no anchor on the fidelity of that intentionality to what is.  It's not a mirror which reflects an unobstructed subject.  It is a construct like all the rest of the features of consciousness.  And in no way can we be sure that it isn't misrepresenting itself to itself.  If we accept that consciousness is a process occurring in the brain, then it seems unavoidable that certain features of that construct, not only may be untrue, but in fact must be untrue.  The alternative to that interpretation is a form of the Cartesian theater, in which consciousness appears as a bubble in a stream of non-conscious material.  That's simply postponing the necessary reduction.

This consciousness-as-object really isn't consciousness at all.  It's an idea of consciousness, a component of the world view.  As I said to Hammy, this isn't so much a theory of mind as an extension of the other components of one's world view.

Now you're making an empty semantic argument. The fact that these distinctions can appear as intentional subjects is no evidence that when they appear in the phenomenology of consciousness that they do so as intentional subjects. They do not. They appear as qualia having an apparent referent of consciousness itself. It's not a theory of mind, it's just an observation of what is present in the contents of consciousness at any time.

This is especially so in the case of a material monist view, since there's no observation that can be made about the minds of others without begging the question.

Ho hum. And this has what to do with the point under discussion?

[Edwardo Piet]

No I am not.  I am differentiating different aspects of consciousness, not availing myself of dualism.  There is manifestly an aspect of consciousness that is about itself while you are having intentionality of a subject.  Can you answer the question, "Were you conscious ten seconds ago?"  If you can, then obviously you were aware that you were aware at the time.  That's all that is necessary to show that point.

Well this is all just irrelevant details again. All different aspects of consciousness are still all consciousness that we perceive and that very perception is the reality of consciousness.

Your tactic is to totalize the discussion by denying that differences exist where they do in fact exist.

I am not denying differences in consciousness I'm denying the hommunculous or the seperation between the experiencer and the experience as anything other than an incoherent delusion and failure of an explanation attempted by folk psychology. This is a part that Dennett gets right.

My whole point is that all these differences are irrelevant to the fact that the perception of consciousness is what consciousness is. You can't have an unperceived consciousness because that equates to an unconscious consciousness which isn't consciousness.  

Of course all experience is subjective.  That's not saying anything.

You're failing to realize that the implications of your arguments often lead to absurd conclusions that go against this obviousness that you say you recognize. To say that all experience is illusory or that consciousness experience itself is an illusion is just talking nonsense.

 

Our consciousness is a bundle of qualia, and some of those qualia have the apparent referent of consciousness itself.

You're pretending like only some of qualia is consciousness. You can't have unconscious qualia and you can't have consciousness that isn't experienced as qualia.

Consciousness and the way we perceive things subjectively/what it's like to be us from our own conscious perspective/qualia is all the same damn thing.

 This is not using dualism to introduce a dividing line between the experiencer and the experience, it is simply taking note of what's there.

Okay so you basically believe in the homunculous/Cartesian theaterer/little man in your brain. I can't take you seriously anymore.

You don't even get the parts right that Dennett actually gets right. When he talks about there being no man in your head or homunculous he's talking about that there is no subjective 'experiencer' in our consciousness that is 'having' the experience apart from the experience itself. The only 'experiencer' is our physical body and our brain and the brain states that win out is what consciousness is.

That's the false dichotomy I was speaking of.  If you aren't aware of being aware, how are you aware that you are aware of something external?  Extrospection must include this "being aware of being aware" or else we would have no conscious experience at all.

Lol you are saying the exact same thing that I have been trying to say here. But this just adds to my argument that therefore it makes no sense to say that our awareness is illusory. You are proving MY point.

---

The parts of the brain that in the moment are appearing as consciousness are identical to those parts of the brain in the moment. They are entirely physical and experienced mentally but that mental experience is still physical in substance, that's simply not how it appears to us. It doesn't make it any less real. In fact, the way it appears to us is more knowable and real than the external reality and external brain that seems to be there.

And you imply that you aren't guilty of word salad expressions.  This is nothing but.

That's not word salad that's exactly what I said.

I already gave an example of your own word salad. When you said that consciousness being illusory doesn't mean it isn't real. You may as well have said that just because there's no such thing as ghosts it doesn't mean that they don't exist.