= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
BiasedBayes comments on Not all theories of consciousness are created equal: a reply to Robert Lawrence Kuhn's recent article in Skeptic Magazine [Link] - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Comments (17)
Thanks for the post, I really liked the article overall. Nice general summary of the ideas. I agree with torekp. I also think that the term consciousness is too broad. Wanting to have a theory of consciousness is like wanting to have a "theory of disease". The overall term is too general and "consciousness" can mean many different things. This dilutes the conversation. We need to sharpen our semantic markers and not to rely on intuitive or prescientific ideas.Terms that do not "carve nature well at its joints" will lead our inquiry astray from the beginning.
When talking about consciousness one can mean for example:
-vigilance/wakefulness
-attention: focusing mental resources on specific information
-primary consciousness: having any form of subjective experience
-conscious access: how the attended information reaches awareness and becomes reportable to others
-phenomenal awareness/qualia
-sense of self/I
Neuroscience is needed to determine if our concepts are accurate (enough) in the first place. It can be that the "easy problem" is hard and the "hard problem" seems hard only because it engages ill posed intuitions.
I agree re: consciousness being too broad a term.
I use the term in the sense of "having an experience that isn't directly observable to others" but as you noted, people use it to mean LOTS of different other things. Thanks for articulating that thought.