Consciousness Trilemma

[Edwardo Piet]

Is it?  Dennet says, in no uncertain terms..that he doesn't think that consciousness described or defined as as x exists...and you respond with

"ZOMG dennet says consciousness doesn't exist!" -over and over and over...........

Because he's committing a fallacy by changing the definition and then pretending he's addressing the first one. He cannot make any arguments against X existing if he's not even addressing it because he's instead defining it as Y.

Consciousness as most people believe in CANNOT be an illusion. It's literally the only thing we KNOW is true and we KNOW is real and we KNOW cannot be an illusion.

We can completely be mistaken about the essence and the details of it but the fact that we are conscious at all cannot be an illusion.

He does the same stupid shit with free will when he redefines it altogether and then responds to people who don't believe in what he doesn't believe in either with "you're a compatabilist in everything but name!" he may as well be a pantheist yelling at an atheist for refusing to label the universe "God".

What Dennett fails to realize is he is exposing his own position as nothing but empty labelling of other things.

Explain to me how, after making that mistake right at the outset, anything else you say pursuant to that can be relevant criticism of his position, rather than you fapping on endlessly about your own misapprehension?

I'm not making a mistake by saying that he is completely failing to address consciousness by labelling something else as consciousness.

Are zombies possible? They're not just possible, they're actual. We're all zombies. Nobody is conscious — not in the systematically mysterious way that supports such doctrines as epiphenomenalism."
B-mine.  The footnote to this passage, which has created the industry of sensationalism surround it...is this...

And he's wrong. The science supports epiphenomenalism. And no it's not "mysterious" but it is unfalsifiable. Studying things other than consciousness and then labelling it as "consciousness" and saying "See! We can study consciousness!" is just pathetic. That's like looking under the bed and failing to find any monsters and then labelling your bed as a "monster" and saying "look I found a monster!"

Consciousness by definition is unfalsifable and untouchable by science. You can study the mind, you can study how consciousness comes about, but you can't study the subjective experience of consciousness itself by merely labelling something else as "consciousness".

Meanwhile, he advocates for his own description and definition of consciousness..which sort of strongly suggests that he thinks that you have a consciousness...........even though he, like you, thinks that some people are super duper wrong about that consciousness..and as such, we do not possess the sort of consciousness -they- advocate for....like the one where consciousness is the stuff the soul does....or the experience of the non-existent humonculus.

He thinks we have a consciousness but he fails to realize that us being mistaken about aspects of our consciousness doesn't make our consciousness itself an illusion.. When the fuck will you understand?

Whether our consciousness is a soul, or magical or non-magical or any of that... the fact we appear to be consciousness means we must be conscious regardless of what kind of consciousness it is. And that CANNOT be an illusion.

You can't call the existence of something an illusion merely by addressing the essence of it.

It's horrendous how poor Dan's logic is when he's supposed to be a professional philosopher. But philosophy is indeed one area where the amateur can exceed the pro.

He talks about people experiencing red stripes that don't exist but only seem to exist. Lol. They must at least exist as illusions. He says there is no red stripe in our brain. Well, obviously not literally something that looks like a red stripe but there must be the corresponding brain cells that generate the illusion. There must be a "red stripe" in neurological form.

It's him who conflates nonexistence with illusoriness. Whether it's an illusion or not it must exist at least as an illusion.

And the point is even illusions are experienced consciously. Consciousness itself cannot be an illusion in any sense. Only the DETAILS of it can be. The fact we are conscious cannot be an illusion

How many times do I have to explain it to you? My position is always the same but yours is shifting. Now you've reverted to saying that I am responding as if he's saying consciousness doesn't exist or consciousness is an illusion. Why do you think I'm not the only one who responds to him like that? Because he's addressing what "consciousness" really means and saying it doesn't exist or it's an illusion. He can label something else as "consciousness" all he likes but if he's saying what consciousness actually is is an illusion then he is in at least one sense --in the sense that most people mean--saying consciousness is an illusion.

I am tired of you. You are so bad at logic. You are so thick. How many more times do I have to explain that being mistaken about the details of consciousness does not make consciousness itself an illusion?

By calling something else "consciousness". He simply fails to address "consciousness" at all. It makes no sense to say the original definition was "crap". There is no such thing as a "crap definition"... only a crappy understanding of a definition or a useful or useless definition. It doesn't fucking matter if "consciousness" the way most people mean it is a completely useless definition--it's not about utility. It's about the fact that he's addressing something else altogether so he can't make any arguments against the original definition.

Let's stop calling it "consciousness" since he has looking-glassed the word (Strawson's term for what Dennett does...To "looking-glass" a word is to redefine a word into something so you address literally everything except the very thing that you're supposed to address).... let's talk about subjective experience.

Subjective experience CANNOT be an illusion. The fact that we are experiencing something subjectively CANNOT be mistaken. We can be mistaken about the contents of it, we can be mistaken about the details of it, we can think we are experiencing one thing but we are in fact experiencing something else. But the fact we are experiencing SOMETHING SUBJECTIVELY.... that is the most certainly known fact in the universe and cannot be an illusion.

Now Dennett can redefine consciousness so it no longer means subjective experience... but then he can't actually address subjective experience at all. To jump back into talking about subjective experience again after changing the definition into something else other than subjective experience is to equivocate. Dennett is an equivocating fuckwit. Consciousness is subjective experience. Dennett needs to buy a fucking dictionary. Saying "you can't just trust tradition" won't cut it if all he's doing is speaking another language and pretending like he's addressing consciousness when he's not. It would make far more sense for him to use another word than to use the same word and change the meaning of it altogether.