I believe the word “consciousness” is used in so many confused and conflicting ways that nobody should mention “consciousness” without clarifying what they mean by it.
This is a good point; you’re absolutely right that I should have addressed this issue in the OP. There seems to be broad agreement among people who find consciousness puzzling that Charlmers’ description of the “hard problem” does a pretty good job of specifying where the puzzle lies, regardless of whether they agree with Chalmers’ other views (my impression is that few do).
Unfortunately, that’s doesn’t clarify it for me. I’ve seen descriptions along these lines, and if I thought they were coherent and consistent with each other I would have assumed that’s were referring to the same thing. In particular, this segment is confusing:
If someone says “I can see that you have explained how DNA stores and transmits hereditary information from one generation to the next, but you have not explained how it is a gene”, then they are making a conceptual mistake. All it means to be a gene is to be an entity that performs the relevant storage and transmission function. But if someone says “I can see that you have explained how information is discriminated, integrated, and reported, but you have not explained how it is experienced”, they are not making a conceptual mistake.
It seems to me like someone asking the second question is making a conceptual mistake of exactly the same nature as someone asking the first question.
This is a good point; you’re absolutely right that I should have addressed this issue in the OP. There seems to be broad agreement among people who find consciousness puzzling that Charlmers’ description of the “hard problem” does a pretty good job of specifying where the puzzle lies, regardless of whether they agree with Chalmers’ other views (my impression is that few do).
Unfortunately, that’s doesn’t clarify it for me. I’ve seen descriptions along these lines, and if I thought they were coherent and consistent with each other I would have assumed that’s were referring to the same thing. In particular, this segment is confusing:
It seems to me like someone asking the second question is making a conceptual mistake of exactly the same nature as someone asking the first question.