alt Hacker NewsYes I think it’s a linguistic confusion more than anything else.
To me, consciousness is not generally that you can be aware (conscious) of things around you and can react to them, lots of things can do that.
Consciousness is a shorthand for saying that something is conscious of itself, or conscious of its own consciousness. It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a sense that the observer is the same over time.
But frankly, it’s a terrible concept and my definition is plenty flawed too. In practice it is more of a moving goalpost to denote the specialness and superiority of humans over all. That thing we can’t quite put a finger on that makes us different. It is a secular euphemism for the soul. It is not very scientific.
And that is quite problematic because the privileges we ascribe to those on the wrong side of the line fall off a cliff. We rely on that line as a foundation for so much of our morals. We have seen the catastrophes that happen when a group has a different idea about the line.
I don’t have a solution to propose, it’s hard.
Replies
You can be aware and react subconsciously too.
The difference between conscious and subconscious is deliberation and speed.
The subconscious relies on shortcuts, the conscious takes more effort, at least when talking about cognition that seems to be the case.
> It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a sense that the observer is the same over time.
Which is kind of strange because folks who achieve insight examining their own perceptions and thoughts seem to dissolve the barrier between self and not-self.
I tend to prefer the term subjective experience for what you describe as a meta-ability.
Consciousness is too overloaded by conflicting definitions.
We could at least imagine the possibility of something coming across as conscious in every way without having a subjective experience of self.
Even a fully deterministic view of consciousness can be compatible with a possible split between entities that act-as-if but without a subjective experience, and those with.
The problem is that there is no reasonable way to prove a subjective experience - we're stuck self reporting. We can't even prove other humans have subjective experience.
It is also not clear that it matters of such entities can act identically.