5 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
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Comment by unknoahble at 17/01/2020 at 01:59 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
it's very obviously not an illusion
Isn't it the very endeavor of philosophy to determine whether what is very obvious is actually the case? Saying consciousness doesn't exist might be no more controversial than saying one dozen eggs doesn't exist, but rather twelve eggs with particular relations. The relations matter; ask yourself if you have ever had any conscious experience that wasn't extrinsic (i.e. implied the existence of things outside your "consciousness"). In any case, it does seem implausible to me how there could be any clearly delineated thing which is referred to by our ordinary use of the word "consciousness," though perhaps it (and all existence) is simply ontologically vague.
Comment by Spanktank35 at 17/01/2020 at 13:41 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I mean, the colour could look completely different. Heck you and I could see completely different things for red.
I think the thing is you could say the ball of fire is an illusion, from a perspective that, if one was to claim that that ball of fire must be a single thing, and someone was to say 'no that's just an illusion, it's just lots of atoms clumped close together to make it seem like it is a single thing'. Clearly the latter person is more correct, and that distinction is helpful. It's not that the phenomenon of consciousness doesn't exist, but that it isn't actually some extramaterial thing. And this certainly helps us in guiding what we are looking for when trying to determine the mechanism behind consciousness, which psychologists have a good chance of one day doing.