Consciousness Trilemma

[Edwardo Piet]

No, that's your claim, which you keep coming back to with little more than ad hominem and appeals to incredulity.

Nonsense. I've pointed out the category error, the fact subjective experience isn't being addressed because Dennett is literally redefining "consciousness" so that a philosophical zombie can be said to be as "conscious" as we are.

 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.

Yes of course consciousness doesn't map onto ontologically objective reality because consciousness is ontologically subjective. It doesn't have to map onto it. The reality is that subjective experience exists.

If all the details of your description of something are in error, then are you in fact describing that thing?

I can be completely wrong about what I am conscious of but I can't be completely wrong about the fact I am conscious of something

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.

There's nothing vague about being a realist about the fact subjective experience itself cannot be an illusion. We can be mistaken about what we're experiencing but we cannot be mistaken about that we're experiencing.

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.

Nonsense. Dennett literally redefines consciousness and pretends to address it. The fact that Dennett thinks he has to be an elimatitvist about consciousness because it's subjective and science is objective betrays the category error he is making that Searle pointed out.

 

More vague and empty predicates.  You've just substituted the word 'experience' for consciousness.

Consciousness is subjective experience.

 Prove you're not using an empty predicate.  Describe to me what this mysterious 'experiencing' consists of?

Irrelevant. It doesn't matter what I'm experiencing or how wrong I am about it. I am still just addressing the fact that I am experiencing something and my experiencing itself cannot be an illusion.

As I have already asked... if all conscious experience is an illusion then what would it mean if it wasn't an illusion? There's literally no distinction if you say it's all an illusion, that's nonsense.

An illusion is something that appears to be some way but in reality is another way. But with subjective experience the way it is is how it appears. Even the illusions themselves still appear in our consciousness. To say they're not 'really' part of our conscious makes no sense whatsoever. We're conscious of illusions. This is all our consciousness. Dennett merely finds it easier to redefine consciousness into something easier for him to tackle. He thinks there is no hard problem because he's defined his way out of it rather than actually addressed it.

 (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.)

Wrong. It doesn't matter if it's remembered after the fact or not, the memory itself is still an experience. We may not have experienced it when we thought we did, and may not have dreamed it when we think we did, but what we think of is still being experienced. We can be completely wrong about what we are experiencing but we can't be wrong about that we are experiencing. That's literally impossible. Merely thinking or realizing we're wrong about our experience is itself an experience. An illusion of an experience is itself an experience, making the illusion in itself an illusion which means it isn't really an illusion at all. Not really not real=real. Double negative makes a positive you know.

Again, an illusion is something that appears one way but is different in reality. When we're talking about the reality of appearances themselves you can't make that distinction.

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

And you'd rather pretend it makes any sense whatsoever to say that your subjective experience is an "illusion" or that your consciousness is not subjective experience.

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]

Here's your citation. Go to 13:13





He says you are experiencing a red stripe... but there is no red stripe you are experiencing. It only seems that you are experiencing a red stripe.

That makes zero sense. Even though the red stripe is an illusion there's still is a red stripe you are experiencing. It's an illusory red stripe. The red stripe illusion exists in the form of neurons in your brain that produce the illusion of a red stripe that you experience. Duh.

He conflates illustriousness and nonexistence. Exactly as I said. See.

He decides, in his own words, to "quine" the reds stripe and he defines quining as "to deny the existence of something real or important." He literally admits to denying the existence of something real or important. Denying the existence of something important is bad enough... but to deny the existence of something real? That's utterly ridiculous. Denying the existence of something non-illusory? Seriously?

He needs to realize that words mean things and he can't just redefine anything and pretend to still make sense. Sure he can make sense of something but he can't make sense of the thing he is supposed to be addressing if he literally addresses something else and merely labels it with the same word. This isn't rocket science.

He says you can experience something that doesn't exist. That's literally the very definition of conflating nonexistence and illusoriness.