Consciousness Trilemma

[Neo-Scholastic]

That there are physiological systems that support conscious experience which can be altered by physical means is easy to establish in a lab.

Tonight I'll test that theory in my study with a tumbler of Aviation gin.

[Whateverist]

That there are physiological systems that support conscious experience which can be altered by physical means is easy to establish in a lab.

Tonight I'll test that theory in my study with a tumbler of Aviation gin.

Well no one can accuse you of settling for a small sample space.

[Edwardo Piet]

Here are my thoughts on the matter. Proposition (1) is based on incorrigible experience. To deny (1) is  the kind of schoolboy sophistry that takes contrarian hubris so far that it is willing to embrace self-contradiction and present it as some grand and unassailable philosophical Truth. People who deny (1) are not serious thinkers.

We agree 100% there.

Proposition (2) seems to mask a couple of underlying assumptions. It is true that any given subject has privileged access to their own conscious experience of external objects. In a sense that is always true of relationships between all physical objects. The bright side of the moon has "privileged access" to light from the sun that its dark side does not. At the same time, attributing axiological and intentional properties to physical objects presupposes some consciousness already having those properties. Doing otherwise violates the principle that something cannot give what it does not already have.

This maverick philosopher guy truly is an idiot because his so called propositions have other propositions smuggled into them.

So-called "propostion (2)" is two propositions. One is just true by definition: it states that our consciousness is subjective in nature. And the other is that consciousness can't be physical. Which is just a non-sequitur.

Proposition (3) is a preferred ontological stance inferred largely from prior experience and perceived parsimony. Parsimony is a useful guide, one best not suppose unnecessary elements in an explanation, but it doesn't rule out complexity or redundancies, and a stubborn insistence on parsimony can commit one to positing too few elements and ignoring the benefits of additional ones.

The problem with proposition two is not that it is a "stubborn insistence on parsimony.". Parsimony is never wrong because when evidence contradicts it that actually makes something else compatively more parsimonious.

The problem with proposition (3) is it presumes that physicalism/materialism has to be so reductionistic as to suggest that consciousness can eventually be explained in physical properties. But this particular popular version of physicalism is not the only one... and it makes far more sense to instead just believe that consciousness itself is physical like everything else.

Those people who believe in either a radical emergence or say that consciousness can be explained eventually by physical stuff of a completely different nature... both those groups of people are actually being rather dualistic without realizing it.

[Whateverist]

(*Hat-tip Maverick Philosopher, here)

It appears that of the following three propositions only two can be true:

1) Conscious experience is not an illusion.

The supposition that consciousness is an illusion is all too frequently taken as the absurd claim that consciousness doesn't exist; that we are all zombies.  But I don't interpret it this way, and I think it's little more than an appeal to ridicule to do so.  In the world of stage magic, an illusion is giving the appearance that something is one thing, say sawing a woman in half, when in reality it is another thing.  If we apply this definition to consciousness, then the claim is that consciousness is something other than it appears.  This appearance of consciousness includes the following: that it is unified; exists as a point in space; exists in the present moment; and so on.  If consciousness is viewed as a process of some sort, then none of these attributes can actually be real.  So the person that is claiming that consciousness is not an illusion is indirectly claiming that it is not a result of a process; that it is a thing in itself.  This entails ontological commitments to the existence of a unique entity that is totally unlike the physical entities with which we are familiar.  I don't think most non-illusion advocates are aware of the ontological commitments they are taking on.  It's true that parsimony is a heuristic and not a law, and even at that is frequently misinterpreted.  However, I think that taking such an ontological stance is not only against the law of parsimony, it is an extravagant addition to our ontological repertoire.  Gods?  Souls?  Consciousnesses?  How manyfold must the ontological categories multiply before it is recognized as absurd?  This is the defeater for #1.

Heartily agree with this.  That conscious experience exists is beyond doubt.  That we are the author of that experience is part wish, part deduction and part hunch.  But it is an illusion.  The truth is the "I" I appear to be is a mystery.  

To say "I experience consciousness", subjugates consciousness to the whim of this "I".  But the shoe is on the other foot.  Consciousness posits the "I" as part of whatever this mystery might be.  That isn't to say that the "I" which consciousness creates is without any volitional power; that doesn't seem true to me.  But not all of the intentionality of the being in which the "I" has arisen is attributable to that "I".  We are not in possession of the totality of our self.  We are only a part, but not an inconsequential, purely epiphenomenal part.  We do things, but not everything we do represents the will of the "I" - and we can't easily tell which is which.  I for one am happy to have been granted this "I".  It may not be all I would like it to be but it's a nice respite from the chaos and wonder of the mystery.

[Neo-Scholastic]

To say "I experience consciousness", subjugates consciousness to the whim of this "I".  But the shoe is on the other foot.  Consciousness posits the "I" as part of whatever this mystery might be.  That isn't to say that the "I" which consciousness creates is without any volitional power; that doesn't seem true to me.  But not all of the intentionality of the being in which the "I" has arisen is attributable to that "I".  We are not in possession of the totality of our self.  We are only a part, but not an inconsequential, purely epiphenomenal part.  We do things, but not everything we do represents the will of the "I" - and we can't easily tell which is which.  I for one am happy to have been granted this "I".  It may not be all I would like it to be but it's a nice respite from the chaos and wonder of the mystery.

There is just a little bit of a moral danger in this position. For many people the notion of self-identity is bound to their personal autonomy. One of the arguments for abortion is that a fetus is not really a person, as in a self-conscious being with identity, and therefore it is okay to kill it. Once you start going around saying things like "personal identity it an illusion" that seems to undermine the basis for self-sovereignty and the consequences of that kind of thinking are never good.

[bennyboy]

1) Conscious experience is not an illusion.
2) Conscious experience has an essentially subjective character that purely physical processes do not share.
3) The only acceptable explanation of conscious experience is in terms of physical properties alone.

Here are my thoughts on the matter. Proposition (1) is based on incorrigible experience. To deny (1) is  the kind of schoolboy sophistry that takes contrarian hubris so far that it is willing to embrace self-contradiction and present it as some grand and unassailable philosophical Truth. People who deny (1) are not serious thinkers.

I still don't understand what you MEAN by illusion in this context.  Do you mean that if (1) is false, there's really no consciousness, but I think I have the illusion that I am conscious anyway?  I'm not debating, I just want you to define what (1) would even mean.

[The Grand Nudger]

There is just a little bit of a moral danger in this position. For many people the notion of self-identity is bound to their personal autonomy. One of the arguments for abortion is that a fetus is not really a person, as in a self-conscious being with identity, and therefore it is okay to kill it.

No, there isn't, and the argument from personhood is a legal argument, not an argument regarding their consciousness.

Once you start going around saying things like "personal identity it an illusion" that seems to undermine the basis for self-sovereignty and the consequences of that kind of thinking are never good.

Suppose it -did- undermine the basis of self sovereignty, which it doesn't, so what?  We should hush and whisper about it, rather than let anyone hear the truth? It's a serious field of study, nobody has time for that nonsense.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Here are my thoughts on the matter. Proposition (1) is based on incorrigible experience. To deny (1) is  the kind of schoolboy sophistry that takes contrarian hubris so far that it is willing to embrace self-contradiction and present it as some grand and unassailable philosophical Truth. People who deny (1) are not serious thinkers.

I still don't understand what you MEAN by illusion in this context.  Do you mean that if (1) is false, there's really no consciousness, but I think I have the illusion that I am conscious anyway?  I'm not debating, I just want you to define what (1) would even mean.

In the most extreme case it is a complete lack of experience, which Jor for instance does not hold apparently. One level down from that is the idea that consciousness isn't anything at all - more like the center of gravity in statics, a fictional point from which to calculate force vectors.

[bennyboy]

I still don't understand what you MEAN by illusion in this context.  Do you mean that if (1) is false, there's really no consciousness, but I think I have the illusion that I am conscious anyway?  I'm not debating, I just want you to define what (1) would even mean.

In the most extreme case it is a complete lack of experience, which Jor for instance does not hold apparently. One level down from that is the idea that consciousness isn't anything at all - more like the center of gravity in statics, a fictional point from which to calculate force vectors.

Oh.  That sounds like word salad to me.  The word "consciousness" is about something-- and you don't have to be able to define exactly WHAT that something is when you open your eyes in the morning and become aware that you are experiencing things.  You can't really call labels illusions; you can only call our perceptions of whatever we made the label for mistaken.

Whether there is an "I" who through some process actively experiences things, or whether "I" is simply a label for a connected collection of experiences in the context of an individual body, that's a different story.  But in either case, it would be perhaps the sense of the agency of the self, or perhaps the reality of an objective perceived world, which would be the illusion, not the consciousness itself.

[Amarok]

On the subject of self sovereignty once again Neo seems to rely on "But that sounds scary so let's pretend it's not so"