Consciousness Trilemma

[Angrboda]

If consciousness was not actually what people thought it was, would there be any point in adhering to that definition?   

It is what people think it is. People think consciouisness is subjective experience. It is subjective experience. I already explained all this.

No, that's your claim, which you keep coming back to with little more than ad hominem and appeals to incredulity.  Unless consciousness is an impenetrable mystery, then it can be described.  This is the bone which eliminative materialists have picked with you, that these descriptions do not map to an objective reality.  You bleating about consciousness not being an illusion is sidestepping this point in order to make your own.  You're misrepresenting what the eliminative materialists are saying just so you can make a point.

Your subjective experience™ is real, OFC it is, it's just not what you think it is?

Right, it's not an illusion regardless of how mistaken about the details of it I am. Same with you. Your subjective experience is not an illusion, it's a reality. And yet Dennett claims that consciousness is an illusion because he thinks subjective experience is incompatible with science. Which is an irrelevant conclusion because the reality of subjective experience is much more knowable than science is.

If all the details of your description of something are in error, then are you in fact describing that thing?  This is the point where eliminative materialists diverge from your naive realism.  There is a whole field, phenomenology, devoted to describing what this 'seeming to be' is like, and the question is, does anything objectively real correspond to that description?  The eliminative materialist says no, but your only response has been to change the subject to be about some ineffable 'seeming' that doesn't, apparently, have any description.  It just is.  And to argue that point -- a point that nobody but you is disputing -- you've marshaled nothing but your incredulity.  Despite your inestimable verbiage arguing that some ineffable seeming must exist, that is not the position which the eliminative materialist is disputing.  She is saying that your/our descriptions of that seeming are wrong.  Consciousness is described as a seeming that is located inside the head at a precise point.  That* description of this seeming is in error.  Consciousness is spread across space in the brain, so this pinpoint 'seeming' is necessarily wrong.  Once you get beyond your superficial definition that consciousness is an ineffable seeming, that's where descriptions start and the potential for illusion begins.  The problem is that you're not saying anything by mouthing the label 'consciousness' without a description.  Consciousness is that description.  You're simply using a placeholder for the thing and claiming that your placeholder cannot be in error.  Well, duh.  It's just a placeholder.  If you move beyond that placeholder into describing what consciousness actually is, then you open up the possibility that what you think (describe) consciousness is can be wrong.

He thinks that those traditional definitions of consciousness hinge on a naive understanding of the mind.  He's trying to explain the same thing as those, in his estimation, naive theories of mind are trying to explain...so he uses the shared term.  I guess he could have used a different word, but Ham, cmon...lol?

Yes he should have used a different word instead of pretending to be talking about consciousness.

Given that you're the one who keeps referring to vague and empty predicates about 'consciousness', you're not one to be pointing any fingers.

What ridiculous position?

The ridiculous position of pretending to talk about consciousness without talking about consciousness.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia, quoting John Searle

To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain

Searle is confused.  Dennett is referring to the objective characteristics of brains as being the foundation of the subjective experiences.  Searle is basically straw-manning Dennett in an attempt to make him look foolish.  The only person looking foolish here is Searle.

 

Why can't the specific aspects of specific types of specific descriptions of consciousness....what he is actually and explicitly addressing in that segment...be illusory?

For something to be an illusion it has to seem one way but be another way. Indeed we may seem to be experiencing many things and instead be experiencing many other things.. but the fact we are experiencing something cannot be an illusion. I.e. consciousness cannot be an illusion.

We could actually be dreaming right now. But we are experiencing something even if this is all a dream. The experience is not an illusion even if what we think is happening is. Obviously we really are experiencing this even if 'this' is not realling happening.

More vague and empty predicates.  You've just substituted the word 'experience' for consciousness.  Prove you're not using an empty predicate.  Describe to me what this mysterious 'experiencing' consists of?  You're just using a common phenomenon which is readily recognized as a placeholder for actually saying something concrete about the phenomenon.  And you back up your empty words with nothing but incredulity.  If you actually can manage to say something concrete about consciousness, maybe you'll have actually said something.  But instead, all we get are these appeals to the ineffable.  (Btw, there is some evidence that the 'experience' of dreams is remembered after the fact.  So the idea that you 'experience' a dream would be...  an illusion.)

Do you think that the experience you have, of how it feels to be the humonculus, will map to a discrete mental state analogous to the humonculus?

I don't have to have any theory of consciousness at all, Cartesian or non-Cartensian to be a realist about my subjective experience. All of that is irrelevant.

Of course it is, you'd rather stick to your empty predicates.

I know that I am really experiencing something. The fact I really am means it's not an illusion.

What would it mean for me to not really be experiencing anything at all? Do you realize that that's impossible without me being a philosophical zombie yet? Do you realize that Dennett is wrong about us all being zombies yet? Do you realize that not experiencing at all and only SEEMING to experience something is identical to REALLY experiencing something thereby making his whole claim that consciousness is an illusion utter nonsense?

Citation needed.  I haven't kept up with Dennett, but I doubt he says that we are philosophical zombies.

I understand that you're trying to have an argument with me about something entirely irrelevant to dennets statements as they regard -our- disagreement (you see, I;m not arguing that dennet is right, I;m suggesting that you are mistaken regarding the contents of dennet's position, for whatever reason).

I am not mistaken about Dennett's position. I am very familar about his position. He has literally said things like you can experience a red stripe that doesn't exist. That's nonsense. Even illusions exist, they just aren't real. He conflates illusoriness with nonexistence which is exactly what you falsely accused me of doing.

Citation needed. [emphasis mine]