Consciousness Trilemma

[bennyboy]

I describe consciousness as the awareness of the fact of awareness.  In fact, I don't define it as that-- the word is is a label FOR that.  I know that I am conscious in this way, because it's the only way in which a person can be said to be conscious.

Except that this isn't true.  You -can't- be aware, in the present tense, of awareness.  What you "know", simply is not, and could not be.  Maybe you remember being aware of some moment far enough back in time for all pursuant processing to have occurred and you -call- that past moment the present moment, the moment in which you are currently "aware of being aware"....but?   You can't be aware of being aware, even in the barest sense as you're describing it here.....for the simple fact that processing takes time - and it pays to remember that this particular comment was aimed at a..shall we say..fuller(?) description of consciousness?

OTOH, it can certainly -seem- as though you are.  It seems that way to me too.  It's just that this very awareness is misrepresenting itself.  Eliminative materialists aren';t disputing the compelling nature of the experience of awareness as it presents itself to us, that you..personally, "know" this.   They doubt that this experience will, or even can map to a discrete mental state.  They doubt that what you know from your experience is (or can be) any more accurate (or reliable) with regards to itself than the misrepresentation.

We can't say that consciousness lags behind brain function and also that it IS brain function, since a thing cannot lag behind itself.  In a monist view, the consciousness must be exactly synchonized with the brain function since they are said to be one and the same, n'est-ce pas?

I think you mean that the things we experience are in the past, not that the consciousness which experiences them is.