Consciousness Trilemma

[bennyboy]

An element that cannot be found.  An element that good reasons™ suggest to us cannot exist, and an element that is not required.

Sure it can be found. . . in consciousness. Saying "We can't find it, so it doesn't exist" isn't very useful for things that obviously exist. . . like my consciousness.

-which would be unfortunate, since the sense of awareness can't possibly be happening "now"

That's what happening means-- a change of state occurring now.

.....because, at the very least, information processing takes time.  It could -only- have happened "then", unless "now", like consciousness, to us..is just a post processing narrative.  Eliminative materialists have no problem with post processing narratives as-consciousness.  That;s what many of them think the perception of now, and seeming in the now, is.  A compelling story about a then, chock full of error, chock full of illusion.  

Post-processing by what? There's your mechanism of consciousness. Post-processing when? There's your time.

Does seeming seem coordinated, or does seeming seem present?  It can be one, and not the other.  I also think that seeming is coordinated. So do eliminative materialists, sort of.  Coordinated by what, however?  The seeming singular entity of consciousness that exists in the present moment, or the actual process which is distributed throughout space and time?

Seeming is present, but the content of seeming may be from disparate times. I think your stance is predicated on consciousness-as-information: you think "I'm conscious," but the thinking, and the feeling of awareness, take time to process.

I don't think consciousness is that, though you have to coin it in those terms when you try to form ideas about it or to express them.

So are eliminative materialists.  After all...that's what they're trying to explain.

Calling brute facts illusion isn't much of an explanation.