If you are trying to be all formal about it, it’s good to start by defining your terminology. What do you mean by Consciousness and what do you mean by existence? And one of the best ways to define what you mean by a commonly used term is to delineate its boundaries. For example, what is not-consciousness? Not-quite-consciousness? Give an example of ten. Same with existence. What does it mean for something to not exist? Can you list a dozen of non-existing things?
For example, do pink unicorns exist? If not, how come they affect reality (you see a sentence about them on your computer monitor)? How is consciousness different from pink unicorns? Please do not latch on this one particular example, make up your own.
I am pretty sure you have no firm understanding of what you are talking about, even though it feels like you do in your gut, “but is hard to explain”. If you do not have a firm grasp of the basics, writing fancy lemmas and theorems may help you publish a philosophy paper but does not get your anywhere closer to understanding the issues.
If you are trying to be all formal about it, it’s good to start by defining your terminology. What do you mean by Consciousness and what do you mean by existence?
I’m trying to be slightly formal, but without getting too bogged down. Instead I would prefer to take a few shortcuts to see if the road ahead looks promising at all. So far I feel that the best I’ve managed is to say “If a system seems to itself to experience consciousness in the same way that we seem to experience it, then we can call it conscious”.
I am pretty sure you have no firm understanding of what you are talking about,
Not as sure as I am ;-) But I am trying to improve my understanding, and have no intention of writing philosophy papers.
If you are trying to be all formal about it, it’s good to start by defining your terminology. What do you mean by Consciousness and what do you mean by existence? And one of the best ways to define what you mean by a commonly used term is to delineate its boundaries. For example, what is not-consciousness? Not-quite-consciousness? Give an example of ten. Same with existence. What does it mean for something to not exist? Can you list a dozen of non-existing things?
For example, do pink unicorns exist? If not, how come they affect reality (you see a sentence about them on your computer monitor)? How is consciousness different from pink unicorns? Please do not latch on this one particular example, make up your own.
I am pretty sure you have no firm understanding of what you are talking about, even though it feels like you do in your gut, “but is hard to explain”. If you do not have a firm grasp of the basics, writing fancy lemmas and theorems may help you publish a philosophy paper but does not get your anywhere closer to understanding the issues.
I’m trying to be slightly formal, but without getting too bogged down. Instead I would prefer to take a few shortcuts to see if the road ahead looks promising at all. So far I feel that the best I’ve managed is to say “If a system seems to itself to experience consciousness in the same way that we seem to experience it, then we can call it conscious”.
Not as sure as I am ;-) But I am trying to improve my understanding, and have no intention of writing philosophy papers.