I’ll start by acknowledging that this isn’t my idea, credit to Sam Harris. I also don’t know if this is even controversial, but I figured this would be a better place to post than in Showerthoughts.
By consciousness, I mean the subjective experience of what it feels like to be. As philosopher Thomas Nagel put it:
‘An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism.’
It’s at least conceivable that things like free will, the self, or even the entire universe could be an illusion. For all we know, we could be living in a simulation and nothing might be real. Even if you don’t believe that, there’s still a greater-than-zero chance you could be wrong. However, this doesn’t apply to consciousness itself. Even if everything is just a hallucination, it remains an undeniable fact that it feels like something to hallucinate. To claim that consciousness could be an illusion is a self-contradictory statement as consciousness is where illusions appear.
Consciousness is as a convenient abstraction to explain the behaviour of human beings, but it doesn’t really refer to anything real. As such, I think that the claim “consciousness is not an illusion” is technically correct but misleading, since it implies that consciousness exists.
Nagel’s quote is extremely vague, since that ontological “to be” that he uses doesn’t really mean anything.
Just the two cents of some materialistic nobody.
Consciousness as defined by Nagel absolutely exists. If one want’s to define it differently then that’s fair but it’s not really an argument against the statement made in the title anymore then.
I’m not changing definitions. I’m stating that what he defined does not exist.
To go a bit deeper: regardless of whatever that “to be” is supposed to mean, the “subjective experience of what it feels like to be” is still an experience. And experiences do not exist in the physical = real = material sense; they’re solely abstractions. Like valence holes, software, or so many other things that are not real but convenient to explain the behaviour of real things.
The same applies to concepts like “mind”, “soul”, “spirit” and similar.
[No idea on why people are downvoting your comment though.]
But the point is not the ‘to be’ part but the ‘feels like’. It’s quite undeniable that what ever this existence is feels like something. It feels like something to be me, it feels like something to be you, it probably feels like something to be a cat but it likely doesn’t feel like anything to be a rock. General anesthesia doesn’t feel like anything. It cannot be experienced. Consciousness is the ability to have experiences.
But the point is not the ‘to be’ part but the ‘feels like’.
I neither said nor implied that the point is that “to be”. I highlighted that, no matter how you interpret it (because it’s vague and meaningless), the conclusion is the same because of the rest - because experiences do not exist in the physical = real = material sense.
It’s quite undeniable that what ever this existence is feels like something.
“Experiences” includes what we feel (in both senses). What exists is that bloody mess of matter and energy, that’s it.
cogito, ergo sum
This is the only absolute truth, for each of us. I may be a brain in a vat being fed false stimuli. I may be in a grand computer simulation. I may be a resident of Plato’s Cave. Everything I believe or guess about the world around me may be an illusion. But I do know that I think, and therefore, in some sense, I am.
The part I take issue with this is the “I” or “self”. That, I argue is an illusion. There is no centre to consciousness. There’s just consciousness. The correct saying would be “thinking is occuring”
Of course, you can think of consciousness as analogous to excitation of a field, and, like the electromagnetic field or gravitational field, there is no center, and everything is interconnected. And yet, like every particle is ultimately a wave in disguise, we can still meaningfully talk about individual particles, because some waves do behave that way sometimes.
An individual consciousness is particle-like. As a shorthand for “this relatively independent packet of consciousness which has measurable distinctiveness from other packets and does not freely share perceptions or memories with them,” it’s often more practical just to say “I” instead.
If the universe is a simulation then conciousness could be considered an illusion to those outside the simulation. From an internal perspective it wouldnt be an illusion as it’s the only thing that we experience.
However we have trouble even defining what counciousness is (an oversimplified quote from a philosopher doesn’t cover it) so it seems pointless to make such speculative black and white statements about it.
Consciousness is entirely subjective experience so other people’s perspective on it seems quite irrelevant.
What’s oversimplified about the definition I laid out?
Yes my point was that if there was a hypothetical being outside our universe looking in they could correctly say that our consciousness is an illusion from their subjective experience.
It’s an oversimplification because that is not the scientifically accepted definition of consciousness. It is currently undefined and seems to be an emergent property from the brain, the complex object known to us.
It feels like something to be. That’s an undeniable fact. Even if there’s a creator outside our universe that programmed us and our consciousness it still feels like something to be from my subjective point of view. That’s why consciousness under this definition cannot be an illusion. You’re free to disagree with the definition of it that I laid out but then you’re talking about a different thing and thus not arguing against the point I made.
Ok, I agree it can’t be an illusion the way you define it, I don’t think that would be an unpopular opinion.
I also maintain that it cannot be defined the way you define it.
You’re also not offering a definition you like better. This is quite widely accepted definition among the people thinking about this stuff. If I were to leave it undefined it would be impossible to argue against the point I’m making because there wouldn’t be certainty that we’re even talking about the same thing.
I couldn’t claim to have a definition as the origins of consciousness are still unknown to science and not formally defined.
However your definition is definitely not the widely accepted one. It doesn’t even offer a proper definition, all it does is push the unknowns to “what it is like to be that organism”.
Who defines what it is to “be” something? What is the smallest unit of “being”? Are we saying that consciousness is an inherent property of organisms or could it be recreated on a computer?
Consciousness is the fact that it feels like something to be. It’s the feels like part that’s relevant here. Not the to be part. It’s the subjective quality of experience. It describes a phenomenom in the real world, doesn’t explain it. There is no evidence of consciousness in the world except for the fact that you can experience it yourself. It’s entirely subjective.
“Something exists. Beyond that I dunno.” My god, it took a genius to cook up that one. Give that man some money.
But from what perspective?
If you take the perspective of someone inside the illusion/simulation, they could be simulated consciousness. But at the same time, from the outside, it isn’t actually consciousness because it’s all programmatic.
Now, it could be said that any sufficiently complex simulation that mimics consciousness within its parameters is creating consciousness, but it’s still the illusion of consciousness rather than the actual thing. Which perspective is real?
Does realness, as in an absolute and objective reality, even matter for consciousness?
Me, I err on the side of any consciousness that is internally perceived as consciousness is real in any meaningful sense, even if it isn’t objectively real.
If I dream, and other entities in my dream experience consciousness within themselves, I would call their consciousness real, even though they aren’t real. It would be a created, artificial consciousness, it might even be a lesser form of consciousness, but it would still have a given value of realness.
Which, as a side note, dreams where you switch between multiple perspectives as different entities (not always people), and even have different thoughts as different entities are a fucking trip. They’re rare, but so damn amazing to experience.
Maybe that kind of dream is creating consciousness, maybe it’s perceiving some external consciousness. But it’s still a discrete consciousness within itself.
In other words, if it’s an illusion that the consciousness typing this is consciousness, then it is such a complete consciousness that it is the same as whatever external consciousness created it. It’s subjectively real, and that matters more than any objective reality.
Consciousness is not necessary for illusions. Illusions are products of the senses and we know that unconscious things are subject to them. For example a radar glitch can produce an illusion of an object that isn’t really there. This occurs whether or not the radar operator is actually present in front of the radar screen, so it’s not an illusion of consciousness.
I also think it’s possible to have illusions about whether one is conscious or not. I have personally had fever dreams and found myself in a state where I was not sure whether I was asleep or awake. Similar things can be experienced under the effects of certain drugs, while other drugs can temporarily obliterate one’s entire sense of reality.
One thing we have established somewhat firmly is that the belief that consciousness is the source of decisionmaking is actually an illusion. In the lab we can detect unconscious mental processes attached to decisions which precede (by seconds) people’s conscious awareness of having made a decision.
I wouldn’t call a radar glitch an illusion necessarily. It’s more like an error or a false signal. I think of it kind of like tinnitus; you hear a sound that’s not really there but it’s not actually an illusion either.
Similar things can be experienced under the effects of certain drugs
The key word here is experience. The fact that you’re experiencing something means you’re consciouss. Consciousness is where experiences appear wether they’re real or imagined.
If I am asleep then I am unconscious by definition, yet I still experience dreaming.
You’re now ignoring the definition of consciousness stated in my open post. Dreams are happening in consciousness. An unconsciouss being by definition cannot have experiences. Not real or imagined (like dreams or drug induced ones) An example of true unconsciousness would be general anesthesia. You don’t even experience time passing. You hear the doctor counting backwards and then you’re all of a sudden waking up in a different room hours later. You don’t have any experience of the time in between.
I wasn’t sure of this issue with your argument but you’ve clarified it for me.
You’ve defined your way to a tautology. You’ve defined consciousness as ontologically prior to illusions and claimed the latter is necessarily dependent on the former. Thus it should not be a surprise to anyone that consciousness cannot be an illusion due to the definitional relationship you’ve created.
Unfortunately, this says nothing about the universe out there. It’s as controversial a statement as saying “all bachelors are unmarried.”
I’m not just saying that consciousness cannot be an illusion. I’m saying it’s the only thing that cannot be an illusion.
