I really just meant the more general point that “consciousness doesn’t exist (if consciousness is defined as X)” is the same statement as “consciousness does not mean X, but rather Y”
If you stipulate that consciousness means Y consciousness, not X consciousness, you haven’t proven anything about X consciousness.
If I stipulate that when I say, “duck”, I mean mallards, I imply nothing about the existential status of muscovys or teals. In order to figure out what is, real you have to look, not juggle definitions.
If you have an infallible way of establishing what really exists, that in some way bypasses language, and a normative rule that every term must have a realworld referent, then you might be in a place where you you can say what a word really means.
Otherwise, language is just custom.
I’m interested in whether you can say more about how exactly you define consciousness such that illusionism is not consciousness. (As I mentioned, I’m not sure I’ll disagree with your definition!)
Illusionism is not consciousness because it is a theory of consciousness.
Illusionism explicitly does not explain consciousness as typically defined, but instead switches the topic to third person reports of consciousness.
Edit1:
I think that if attention schema theory can explain every thought and feeling I have about consciousness (as in my silly example conversation in the “meta-problem of consciousness” section), then there’s nothing left to explain
Explaining consciousness as part of the hard problem of consciousness is different to explaining-away consciousness (or explaining reports of consciousness) as part of the meta problem of consciousness.
Edit2:
There are two ways of not knowing the correct explanation of something:
the way where no one has any idea, and the way where everyone has an idea… but no one knows which explanation is right because they are explaining different things in different ways.
Having an explanation is only useful in the first situation. Otherwise, the whole problem is the difference between “an explanation” and “the explanation”.
Explaining consciousness as part of the hard problem of consciousness is different to explaining-away consciousness (or explaining reports of consciousness) as part of the meta problem of consciousness.
I commented here why I think that it shouldn’t be possible to fully explain reports of consciousness without also fully explaining the hard problem of consciousness in the process of doing so. I take it you disagree (correct?) but do you see where I’m coming from? Can you be more specific about how you think about that?
If you stipulate that consciousness means Y consciousness, not X consciousness, you haven’t proven anything about X consciousness.
If I stipulate that when I say, “duck”, I mean mallards, I imply nothing about the existential status of muscovys or teals. In order to figure out what is, real you have to look, not juggle definitions.
If you have an infallible way of establishing what really exists, that in some way bypasses language, and a normative rule that every term must have a realworld referent, then you might be in a place where you you can say what a word really means.
Otherwise, language is just custom.
Illusionism is not consciousness because it is a theory of consciousness.
Illusionism explicitly does not explain consciousness as typically defined, but instead switches the topic to third person reports of consciousness.
Edit1:
Explaining consciousness as part of the hard problem of consciousness is different to explaining-away consciousness (or explaining reports of consciousness) as part of the meta problem of consciousness.
Edit2:
There are two ways of not knowing the correct explanation of something: the way where no one has any idea, and the way where everyone has an idea… but no one knows which explanation is right because they are explaining different things in different ways.
Having an explanation is only useful in the first situation. Otherwise, the whole problem is the difference between “an explanation” and “the explanation”.
I commented here why I think that it shouldn’t be possible to fully explain reports of consciousness without also fully explaining the hard problem of consciousness in the process of doing so. I take it you disagree (correct?) but do you see where I’m coming from? Can you be more specific about how you think about that?