Sam Harris On Defining Consciousness

[The Grand Nudger]

Interesting though that you are the one who will always take the side of will as illusion.  So surely consciousness is not something we're doing.  At best -from a determinist's POV- consciousness is something that is happening to which we, rightly or wrongly, stake a claim as willers.  Seems to me you should be on my side on this one.  

Regardless, consciousness is hardly a naive intuition.  It is the most invisible of attributes.  If you wanted to bring it to someone's attention who did not have the concept, what would you point to?  Consciousness is basically noticing things and realizing that we are noticing them.  To me that is much too passive to describe as an act.  So I call it the realization of a state of being.  

Whether you conceptualize "we" or "we're doing" as an individual will, or as I do...shorthand for a collection of organic machines in motion, the question conveys and communicates the meaning of what we're discussing, eh?  Your consciousness seems very visible to me, from here.  I don't think I'd have trouble bringing attention to consciousness to someone who doesn't have the concept, though I wonder if there is such a person...a person who doesn't understand the concept of being aware.  "Do you see that tree"?  I'd ask. Honestly, if they had no concept of awareness I doubt we'd be able to have a discussion at all.....what with that, you know, requiring awareness.  

If you did nothing, why would I accept that you were any different than a statue or a rock?  Why would I accept that you even possess this attribute, whatever we call it, from wherever (and however) it arises.  I see you doing things - you perceive yourself to be doing these things...we both attribute this to consciousness.  

The difference seems to have something to do with perceiving oneself to be both an object in the world and also a subject with a particular point of view.  It is doubtful that a rock perceives anything at all.

Agreed, but why is it doubtful, in your estimation?  

The only one we know for sure that has consciousness is just our self.  I naturally and usefully infer that those objects in the world that look like me are also subjects with their own point of view.  If someone could unplug me from the world I know a la matrix, then I might realize I'd made some misattributions but it wouldn't be a mind blower on the same level as thinking that I my experience of myself was somehow counterfeit.  The existence of illusions does not undermine ourselves as subjects, just the attributions we make regarding the world.  Consciousness has more to do with our subject-hood than with what we are as objects.

I'm just as sure of your consciousness as I am of my own.  A statue or painting might look like you, but they do not -act- like you....so it's a little more than just looking that you base this upon, it's bound up in the doing, isn't it?