Badly formulated question. I think “consciousness” as subjective experience/ability of introspection/etc. is a concept we all intuitively know (from one example, but still...) and more or less agree on. Do you believe in the color red?
What’s under discussion is whether that intuitive concept is possible to be mapped to a specific property, and on what level. Assuming that is the question, I believe a mathematical structure (algorithm?) could be meaningfully called conscious or not conscious.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could be “dissolved” into some more specific, more useful properties, making the original concept appear too simplistic (I believe Dennett said something like this in Consciousness Explained).
Saying that “what we perceive as consciousness” has to exist by itself as a real (epiphenomenal) thing seems just silly to me. But then again I probably should read some Chalmers to understand the zombist side more clearly.
Badly formulated question. I think “consciousness” as subjective experience/ability of introspection/etc. is a concept we all intuitively know (from one example, but still...) and more or less agree on. Do you believe in the color red?
What’s under discussion is whether that intuitive concept is possible to be mapped to a specific property, and on what level. Assuming that is the question, I believe a mathematical structure (algorithm?) could be meaningfully called conscious or not conscious.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could be “dissolved” into some more specific, more useful properties, making the original concept appear too simplistic (I believe Dennett said something like this in Consciousness Explained).
Saying that “what we perceive as consciousness” has to exist by itself as a real (epiphenomenal) thing seems just silly to me. But then again I probably should read some Chalmers to understand the zombist side more clearly.