It is possible, I suppose, that the thing that makes us conscious is different from the thing that makes us talk about consciousness -- but there's certainly no evidence for it, and it's a damned silly idea in any case.
True, but it seems to me almost trivially true that explaining why we talk about consciousness makes a theory positing that we "are conscious" otiose. What other evidence is there? What other evidence could there be? The profession of belief in mysterious "raw experience" merely expresses a cognitive bias, the acceptance of which should be a deep embarrassment to exponents who call themselves rationalist.
The term "self-awareness," however, is quite misleading. I can have awareness of my inner states--some knowledge about what I'm thinking--without having mysterious raw experience. "Self-awareness" here is used by raw-experience believers to mean something special: knowledge of "what it is like to be me." (Thomas Nagel.) The ambiguous usage of self-awareness obfuscates the problem, making belief in "raw experience" seem reasonable, when it's really a believed (and beloved) superstition.
Today's post, Against Modal Logics was originally published on 27 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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