Consciousness Trilemma

[Neo-Scholastic]

Hi Neo,

Hey.

It could be that consciousness operates like an old Mainframe Batch Scheduler, organising batch runs in the subconscious with my deliberate thought analogous to an Active Directory. If that were true, then consciousness would be no illusion but a necessary, hierarchic function to coordinate effort.

There was a time when consciousness was compared to pumps and clocks, then steam engines, and now computers. While there is some value in the comparison it is too tempting to stretch the analogy. The underlying physical structures are not even remotely similar. At best, current computer technology can simulate and model the mental capacities while not actually being them.

As far as can be demonstrated, there are no processes other than 'purely physical' ones. Some of them are subjective, some are objective but all are part of the superset 'purely physical'… Consciousness is a property of brains (or similar mass networks) so it's a property of a physical system. Easy!

I would turn that around. As far as we know there are only mental processes because everything we know about the physical world is mediated by experience.

Depends how you define…Given it can be demonstrated that even our deliberate thought seems to be generated and processed by the brain before we're 'consciously' aware of it, 'I' could be a fib told by the brain in order to provide the illusion of coherence to the outside world.

The binding problem cannot be solved using binding. In other words, the question of how multiple cognitive processes pull together in an apparent self-identity is not solved by positing an apparent self-identity.

The supposition that consciousness is an illusion is all too frequently taken as the absurd claim that consciousness doesn't exist; that we are all zombies. But I don't interpret it this way…the claim is that consciousness is something other than it appears. This appearance of consciousness includes the following: that it is unified; exists as a point in space; exists in the present moment; and so on.

Personally, I would not lay claim to all those assumptions. The contents of consciousness may not be, and probably are not, of a piece, but that does not entirely dispense with a kernel of consciousness capable of unifying disparate parts. Theseus’s ship comes to mind. Insisting that either its form or the substance defines it misses the boat (pun intended). The uniting factor, what maintains the ship as an identifiable ship is its purpose. It should come as no surprise that without intentionality the parts from which consciousness is assembled fall apart, in the same way that a parliamentary body dissolves without common cause.

While there is a folk expression about “a voice in your head” that doesn’t translate into the philosophical placement of a ghostly mind directing a body-machine pulling levers from the inside. As far as I can tell the general consensus is that, if it exists, mind/mental properties have no spacial extension and are without physical location although they may have apparent local effects. As for temporal extension, I have mixed feelings about that; time for me is a huge looming mystery. So I wouldn’t make any assumptions about the relationship between consciousness and time.

If consciousness is viewed as a process of some sort, then none of these attributes can actually be real… the person that is claiming that consciousness is not an illusion is indirectly claiming that it is not a result of a process; that it is a thing in itself. This entails ontological commitments to the existence of a unique entity that is totally unlike the physical entities with which we are familiar.

Or perhaps so familiar that it is easily missed, like Poe’s map game. Tables appear to be solid but are mostly empty space yet we don’t conclude from that that physical states and processes are not real. The world does not present itself to us directly as physical objects; but rather as experiences of objects. We live in a world of impressions, representations, signs, goals, and values. It is true that the properties of intelligible objects may not be as we suppose but that is not a reason to say they don’t exist at all just because they do not follow the same rules as physical objects. Moreover, it is not inconceivable that physical and intelligible objects don’t interact. Even if they are mostly empty space, tables are still tables – materials having forms fitted to specific purposes.