Sam Harris On Defining Consciousness

[The Grand Nudger]

^ +1

There is nothing like a mechanism, not even the faintest glimmer of one, about why matter is conscious.  There is only assumption and narrative: "Oh, well, of course there's consciousness.  That's what lets us run from lions," or whatever.  Or: "Of course it's all just physics, it's all in the brain."

The problem is that consciousness, as in the experience of qualia, is completely woo.  You can't see it or measure it.  You can't establish whether a given system has it.  In fact, to be philosophically honest, I cannot establish that it exists at all except as a label for my personal experiences.

I think that it might not be quite as woosome, or invisible as you're suggesting, instead...you are simply dissasitisfied with what we -do- see, what mechanisms do exist, what posssible routes to consciousness -aren't- woosome.  

There's really no problem with describing consciousness as "what lets us run away from the lions" except in that we might wish for it to be more (as you clearly do when you decide that consciousness is the experience of qualia). When's the last time the universe sought to satisfy our wishes, though? Conversely, what if it -is- woo......what if it doesn't actually exist....not even yours, qualia...I mean. The ghost in the machine. What does that change, where does that lead? Nothing, nowhere. I still don't see a problem, we're still running away from lions - the work is still being accomplished, there is still a demonstrable effect to investigate, and I'll still call that consciousness, even without qualia - which I already do...obviously.

I suppose an easy analogy I could make, about how this demand of qualia in order to accept consciousness seems to me. You've never seen a lion, and you demand that I bring you one...but, for some reason, you don;t think something can be a lion unless it's neon purple -that's how you imagine them to be, your mind suggests to you that lions are neon purple. I keep bringing you lions, tawny ones mostly, sometimes more exotic colors, but never a neon purple lion. Because of this, you decide that there are no lions. Perhaps, in the case of consciousness, as in the case of this neon purple lion, a little division would go a long way. After all, if you keep looking for something that may not be there, and using that absence to conclude that some -other- thing is also not present.....you're never going to find that other thing, no matter how many times it's set at your feet.

@ AFTT, there is -something- in our body of knowledge that suggests that......you're one of those somethings (of which, in truth...there appear to be a -great many-)......aren't you?