But are you having a raw experience of looking at this image? The answer to this question is not up to interpretation in the same way. You can’t be wrong about the claim “you are having a visual experience”.
Sometimes when I set an alarm, I turn it off and go back to sleep (oops!). Usually I remember what happened, and I have a fairly wide range of mental states in these memories—typically I am aware that it’s an alarm, and turn it off more or less understanding what’s going on, even if I’m not always making a rational decision. Rarely, I don’t understand that it’s an alarm at all, and afterwards just remember that in the early morning I was fumbling with some object that made noise. And a similar fraction of the time, I don’t remember turning off the alarm at all! I wonder what kind of processes animate me during those times.
Suppose turning off my alarm involved pressing a button labeled ‘I am having conscious experience.’ I think that whether this would be truth or lie, in those cases I have forgotten, would absolutely be up to interpretation.
If you disagree, and think that there’s some single correct criterion for whether I’m conscious or not when the button gets pressed, but you can’t tell me what it is and don’t have a standard of evidence for how to find it, then I’m not sure how much you actually disagree.
I’m not talking about access consciousness here. I’m not talking about the ability to report. I’m talking about phenomenal consciousness.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I predict you’re going to say “there’s no difference”, or “there’s nothing to consciousness besides reporting” or something, which is a position I have sympathy for and is closely related to the I talk about at the end of the post. But reporting is not what I’m talking about here.
Sometimes when I set an alarm, I turn it off and go back to sleep (oops!). Usually I remember what happened, and I have a fairly wide range of mental states in these memories—typically I am aware that it’s an alarm, and turn it off more or less understanding what’s going on, even if I’m not always making a rational decision. Rarely, I don’t understand that it’s an alarm at all, and afterwards just remember that in the early morning I was fumbling with some object that made noise. And a similar fraction of the time, I don’t remember turning off the alarm at all! I wonder what kind of processes animate me during those times.
Suppose turning off my alarm involved pressing a button labeled ‘I am having conscious experience.’ I think that whether this would be truth or lie, in those cases I have forgotten, would absolutely be up to interpretation.
If you disagree, and think that there’s some single correct criterion for whether I’m conscious or not when the button gets pressed, but you can’t tell me what it is and don’t have a standard of evidence for how to find it, then I’m not sure how much you actually disagree.
I’m not talking about access consciousness here. I’m not talking about the ability to report. I’m talking about phenomenal consciousness.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I predict you’re going to say “there’s no difference”, or “there’s nothing to consciousness besides reporting” or something, which is a position I have sympathy for and is closely related to the I talk about at the end of the post. But reporting is not what I’m talking about here.