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Comment by bencollier49 | Hacker News Reader

Oh, it mildly offends me because I think it's wrong. And a cop-out.

You can’t explain something in terms of itself. Obviously at some point any process has to be explained in terms of lower level processes that don’t share the characteristics of the higher level process. The cop-out is in refusing to accept that, which results in circular arguments. Like any magic trick (or computer system), once you explain how it works, you’re saying the “magic” doesn’t exist. Consciousness is no exception.

But that's not what's going on here. This is like saying Microsoft Word doesn't exist because I can't see it if I look at the electrons in the computer. Or can't abstract it from there. Or possibly even who wrote the program. No, just "It doesn't exist", or "It's an illusion".

The concept of conscious thought was only created with subjective observation, people had simply assumed what their experience was. We still don't have solid evidence one way or the other but the evidence we do have seems to be pointing towards it being an illusion.

Most scientific methodology tries very hard to exclude subjective experience by design. Well, if you do that then of course there will be a lack of evidence for subjective phenomena!

Just in case you're tempted to downplay science's blind spot here, consider that this also means science has next to nothing to say about 99+% of your life.

If you take a reductionist stance in this domain you actually have to philosophically ground it in a way that you don't have to worry about too much in other fields of study. Otherwise you'll end up with an embarrassing phlogistic theory of consciousness.

So why is it wrong then? Can you provide empirical evidence to back up your claim?

I'll write a blog post on it later, it'll take more than a few sentences.

If by consciousness you mean what everybody means by consciousness there are no well-founded claims about it because it's not observable. If you want to redefine consciousness to mean desk lamps, then I strongly disagree with the conclusion that consciousness doesn't exist because I have a desk lamp right here.

> If by consciousness you mean what everybody means by consciousness there are no well-founded claims about it because it's not observable.

It is observable, but not externally verifiable; it literally encompasses the entirety of the category of things for which that is true.

The author admits that what he's really doing is playing games with definitions, and more interestingly, exploring the question of what conciousness is. To try and exploit shock value via tabloid-style meaning twisting is unworthy of the subject matter.

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