Like Paradiddle, I worry about the methodology, but my worry is different. It’s not just the conclusions that are suspect in my view: it’s the data. In particular, this --
Some people seemed to have multiple views on what consciousness is, in which cases I talked to them longer until they became fairly committed to one main idea.
-- is a serious problem. You are basically forcing your subjects to treat a cluster in thingspace as if it must be definable by a single property or process. Or perhaps they perceive you as urging them to pick a most important property. If I had to pick a single most important property of consciousness, I’d pick affect (responses 4, 5 and 6), but that doesn’t mean I think affect exhausts consciousness. Analogously, if you ask me for the single most important thing about a car, I’ll tell you that it gets one from point A to point B; but this doesn’t mean that’s my definition of “car”.
This is not to deny that “consciousness” is ambiguous! I agree that it is. I’m not sure whether that’s all that problematic, however. There are good reasons for everyday English speakers to group related aspects together. And when philosophers or neuroscientists try to answer questions about consciousness, in its various aspects which raise different questions, they typically clue you in as to which aspects they are addressing.
Like Paradiddle, I worry about the methodology, but my worry is different. It’s not just the conclusions that are suspect in my view: it’s the data. In particular, this --
-- is a serious problem. You are basically forcing your subjects to treat a cluster in thingspace as if it must be definable by a single property or process. Or perhaps they perceive you as urging them to pick a most important property. If I had to pick a single most important property of consciousness, I’d pick affect (responses 4, 5 and 6), but that doesn’t mean I think affect exhausts consciousness. Analogously, if you ask me for the single most important thing about a car, I’ll tell you that it gets one from point A to point B; but this doesn’t mean that’s my definition of “car”.
This is not to deny that “consciousness” is ambiguous! I agree that it is. I’m not sure whether that’s all that problematic, however. There are good reasons for everyday English speakers to group related aspects together. And when philosophers or neuroscientists try to answer questions about consciousness, in its various aspects which raise different questions, they typically clue you in as to which aspects they are addressing.