It’s not so much that I’m doubting whether I’m conscious, but rather I’m doubting whether I can figure out whether I’m conscious.
If you don’t doubt you are conscious, I’m not sure why you would need to figure out whether you are conscious—it seems to me that you already know based on direct experience.
Just like you can’t give me a description of consciousness, and you can’t give me a description of “pondering your own consciousness”, you can’t give me a description of “first person experiences” either.
That these things are difficult to describe is not in dispute; that is what I meant when I said “consciousness seems to defy precise definitions”. But, we can still talk about them as there seems to be a shared understanding of the concepts.
One need not have a precise definition of a thing to discuss and believe in that thing or to know that one is effected by that thing. For example, consider someone unschooled in physics beyond a grade-school level. He/she knows about gravity, knows that he/she is subject to the effects of gravity and can make (qualitative) predictions about the effects of gravity, even if he/she cannot say whether gravity is a force, a warping of spacetime, both of these things, neither of these things, or even understand the distinction. Similarly, there is enough of a common understanding of consciousness and first person experiences for a person to be confident that she/he is conscious and has first person experiences.
I do agree that the lack of precise definition (and, more importantly, the lack of measurable or externally observable manifestations) makes it impossible (at the present) for an observer to know whether some other entity is conscious.
If you don’t doubt you are conscious, I’m not sure why you would need to figure out whether you are conscious—it seems to me that you already know based on direct experience.
That these things are difficult to describe is not in dispute; that is what I meant when I said “consciousness seems to defy precise definitions”. But, we can still talk about them as there seems to be a shared understanding of the concepts.
One need not have a precise definition of a thing to discuss and believe in that thing or to know that one is effected by that thing. For example, consider someone unschooled in physics beyond a grade-school level. He/she knows about gravity, knows that he/she is subject to the effects of gravity and can make (qualitative) predictions about the effects of gravity, even if he/she cannot say whether gravity is a force, a warping of spacetime, both of these things, neither of these things, or even understand the distinction. Similarly, there is enough of a common understanding of consciousness and first person experiences for a person to be confident that she/he is conscious and has first person experiences.
I do agree that the lack of precise definition (and, more importantly, the lack of measurable or externally observable manifestations) makes it impossible (at the present) for an observer to know whether some other entity is conscious.