Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[GrandizerII]

See this article in which third-person views of consciousness are contrasted with first-person.

Chalmers' article is really useful.

Yeah, it's a fascinating read.

This bit, I think, we can all relate here:

As I have said, the first-person is hard to talk about. One important reason is that every first-person concept has a corresponding third-person concept. The word "consciousness" has often been taken as a compact reference to all that is mysterious about the first-person; but obviously, there are some third-person aspects which are very relevant to the word. If consciousness means something like "awareness of self," then a third-person commentator can point to the properties of physical systems (like the brain) which are monitoring their own processing, and using this feedback to adjust their behaviour. "So," the reductionist will claim, "wasn't this just what you meant by the term?". The first-personite will of course reply "No, the problem is, how could a mere physical system experience this awareness." The reductionist will reply in character, and the two will go on, feeling that they are talking past each other. The two are talking about corresponding phenomena, but not necessarily about identical phenomena.

This direct correspondence between first-person and third-person phenomena is the cause of much of the confusion. It has led to a slippery terminological slope, where nobody is sure what words in the "mental" vocabulary are referring to at a given time. Increasingly, terms which were once reserved for first-person issues are now used to cover third-person issues also.

The word "mind" once stood for everything that was quintessentially first-person. Witness the phrase "mind-body problem," for instance. But over the years the emphasis of the term has changed, until now is now much more frequently used to refer to third-person phenomena. Terms in common parlance such as "the subconscious mind" bear witness to this fact. Cognitive science, which is essentially the third-person investigation of mechanisms of thought, is often described as the "study of mind." These days the word "mind" is a general coverall for abstractions from the brain, first-person or third-person.

The word "consciousness," even. People who talk of "the evolution of consciousness", and of its survival value, are obviously addressing third-person aspects of the problem. I don't mean to say that these aspects are uninteresting, but nevertheless these aspects are not what makes consciousness such a mysterious problem. It is a pity; for a while the word "consciousness" was a general indication that one was talking about the mysteries of the first-person. These days, this seems to be less often the case.

The cause of this confusion is of course the intimate relation that the first person has to the third person. We should never forget that the mind is caused by a brain, and that the brain is at the bottom line a physical system understandable from the third-person view. Although we do not know how, a first-person is emergent from a third-person-understandable substrate. A consequence of this is that much of interest from the first-person viewpoint corresponds directly to phenomena viewable from the third person. Even the thought which I am having now: "Wow, how could it be that a mere brain could experience this thought", is being supported by a pattern of neural activity in my brain.

Take "consciousness," for instance. Despite the fact that this word usually represents all that is mysterious about the first-person, it would be naive to expect that the phenomenon be completely separable from the third-person viewpoint. And indeed, there is much in the third-person viewpoint which gives us insight into consciousness. The third-person notion of a brain which is scanning itself, or observing (directly or indirectly) its own processing, for example, obviously has a lot to do with consciousness - it is an important part of the third-person substrate from which consciousness emerges.

But it would be a mistake to regard this view of consciousness as dissolving the first-person mysteries altogether (as is sometimes claimed). To make this distinction clear, I will always denote this view of consciousness as "third-person-consciousness", or in the interests of brevity, "3P-consciousness." (One should not confuse this third- -person view of consciousness with "consciousness of the third person," which is a different matter entirely.) When I use the word "consciousness" alone I will always mean "first-person-consciousness", which I will sometimes abbreviate "1P-consciousness."

This direct correspondence (some might even say isomorphism) between first-person phenomena and (a certain subset of) third-person phenomena seems to be what often leads to confusion when discussing first-person issues. Many commentators, particularly those in the third-person camp, give the illusion of reducing first-person mysteries by appropriating the usual first-person words to refer to the third-person phenomena to which they correspond. It would be a final irony if this was to happen to the word "first-person" itself. I hereby issue a plea that this word be off-limits to the third-personites. If they wish, they may argue that the first-person does not exist; but they may not pretend to 'explain' the first-person by describing only third-person phenomena.

It would be nice if every article on 'mind' and 'consciousness' came with a caveat at the beginning, alerting the reader whether it is to be the first-person or the third-person phenomena that will be discussed. It is not unusual to find a paper which seems to be addressing the great first-person mysteries, only for the reader to find halfway through that it is doing no such thing. Sometimes even authors themselves seem confused as to which questions they are addressing.

It seems that there are only about three expressions which these days are still reserved only for first-person phenomena. These are "qualia," "phenomenology," and "subjective experience." But even these words (particularly the last) may begin to be appropriated by reductionists; and besides, each of these words has a fairly limited domain of application. I will always use the term "first-person" as a general term covering the whole area of this metaphysical mystery.

Of course there is also the old standby "Mind-Body Problem." This phrase has probably outgrown its usefulness, with the change in usage of the word "Mind" and the change in emphasis from "body" to "brain." But I will still use it from time-to-time; no other phrase has such universal first-person connotations.

Note the amusing part in bold.