Sam Harris On Defining Consciousness

[bennyboy]

Waking up in the morning as an earthworm is, presumably, a bit different than waking up as Benny - and that makes your label less than useful, in that it is vague and immediately runs up against demonstrable observations of the thing we hope to explain.  

It's less than vague. . . it is a placeholder for "whatever it is."  But even saying that, it's non-trivial, because while I may not know what consciousness is, I can compare any definition to my own experience, and say what it is not, or what is insufficient.

  
In any case, if you have a problem with using our minds to seek knowledge here you should have a problem with using our minds to seek knowledge regarding -everything-.....including the comments you just made, regarding said circles.  It's now scorched earth, which I don't think is your intention.

If you are attempting to define consciousness in a greater context (in your case, a physicalist world view), but founding your arguments on consciousness itself, then you have that circle.  Other definitions or types of knowledge are different, because the mind itself gives them context.  For example, a bridge is a bridge because I have an awareness of gravity, of difficulties navigating a river, of the solidity of structures, etc.  Those experiences are sufficient context to know about bridges, and no attempt is being made to establish what reality underlies them.

Are you using some -other- apparatus than your consciousness (however achieved) to perceive, label, and define?  

This "using" word is problematic, because it implies an agent which is using something outside its agency for a goal generated within that agency; in other words, you are now talking about the nature of self, not just the awareness of self.

In either your view or my view, we'd have to decide whether the desire to define is part of one's agency. Unless you make a conscious choice to spawn that desire, how could it be? In fact, the same goes for thinking, for feeling, etc.

In other words, I wouldn't say that consciousness can be used, under any view or definition, or that it has the capacity for using. On this, I think, we can agree, no?