Consciousness Trilemma

[Angrboda]

Apparently you've fallen into the same sinkhole as Hammy.  Of course consciousness has an appearance, it is all about its 'appearing' and nothing else.  Do you feel that your consciousness exists on the other side of town?  No, it has a distinct appearance of occurring inside your head.  Consciousness is an awareness of the fact of awareness, but it is not only that.  It in its subjectivity implicitly postulates various things about its existence.  Is your consciousness unified or not?  That's an appearance.  Does it occur in the moment or is it spread out in time?  That's an appearance.

I disagree with these semantics.  Consciousness is the awareness of the fact of awareness, and the other things you mentioned are ideas about it.

Label it how you like, the fact is that these ideas or impressions occur concurrently with the experience of the intentional subject. They can be made into ideas when we talk about them or when we introspect, but these ideas are still there while you're experiencing contemplation of an intentional subject. Introducing a semantic distinction does not in and of itself introduce a phenomenological distinction. The phenomenological picture is that we are aware of being aware while we are aware of other things.

Sartre has said that consciousness is both consciousness of something, the intentional subject, but that consciousness is also consciousness of being conscious.  It is this second form of conscious intention that is about itself.  This is why consciousness has an appearance, because it is its own intentional subject.  And there is no anchor on the fidelity of that intentionality to what is.  It's not a mirror which reflects an unobstructed subject.  It is a construct like all the rest of the features of consciousness.  And in no way can we be sure that it isn't misrepresenting itself to itself.  If we accept that consciousness is a process occurring in the brain, then it seems unavoidable that certain features of that construct, not only may be untrue, but in fact must be untrue.  The alternative to that interpretation is a form of the Cartesian theater, in which consciousness appears as a bubble in a stream of non-conscious material.  That's simply postponing the necessary reduction.

This consciousness-as-object really isn't consciousness at all.  It's an idea of consciousness, a component of the world view.  As I said to Hammy, this isn't so much a theory of mind as an extension of the other components of one's world view.

Now you're making an empty semantic argument. The fact that these distinctions can appear as intentional subjects is no evidence that when they appear in the phenomenology of consciousness that they do so as intentional subjects. They do not. They appear as qualia having an apparent referent of consciousness itself. It's not a theory of mind, it's just an observation of what is present in the contents of consciousness at any time.

This is especially so in the case of a material monist view, since there's no observation that can be made about the minds of others without begging the question.

Ho hum. And this has what to do with the point under discussion?