To be fair, as soon as we go near anything really subjective, the nomenclature seems to fall apart across most disciplines. For obvious reasons, I suppose.
For example, the term "Nous":
For example, the term "Nous":
I think that the difficulty in defining it comes for the fact that good definitions are so fundamentally simple that people miss their depth. My favorite one is this, and please give it a chance before rejecting it. See if it distinguishes consciousness from all other concepts:
Consciousness is that which cannot be doubted.
At best (assuming conscious cannot be doubted) it's like saying "Cars are those things which move fast". In the sense that it describes one property of cars, or consciousness, but not a unique property. Other things move fast, not just cars, other things could be beyond doubt than just consciousness.
At worst (assuming consciousness can be doubted) it's like saying "Cars are those things which flap around", which is utterly nonsense, and unhelpful. Plenty of things "flap around", but cars don't...
My point is, if you don't already have a strong preconception of what "consciousness" is, that definition is worse than no definition at all.
There are many propositions that cannot be doubted, so that's insufficiently precise. For instance, I do not doubt that I perceive things via my senses, but perception doesn't require consciousness.
It also leaves entirely undefined what "doubt" means. Your attempted definition would seem to assume that only conscious entities can "doubt", but is that really true?
You could if you were stuck in Inception land. We dream that we perceive things. Also if you were a brain in a vat, you would not be perceiving anything.
Arguably, Neo never actually perceived anything until he took the red pill and woke up.
I don't think that's possible. His perceptual faculties would have been completely undeveloped in that case, so he wouldn't have even been able to see, stand, hear, or anything. Arguably, the matrix made use of his perceptual faculties. It would be orders of magnitude easier to do so than trying to reproduce them in the vat apparatus.
I think people are fond of trying to separate perception and experience, but I'm not sure that's valid. I don't think an eliminativist would make this distinction, for example.
Problem for the eliminativist is that there are experiences which aren't perceptual. The reason for thinking we can separate perceptual experience from perceiving is because it is brain activation which results in an experience, which can happen without sensory stimulation. When we dream, we're activating our visual and auditory cortexes to create those experiences. Electrodes or magnetic stimulation can do the same on a much cruder level. And a schizophrenic may hear voices because their brain fails to distinguish between internal thoughts and external voices.
Right, and because there's little difference I generally refer to them all as perceptual. It seems perfectly cogent to say "electrode stimulation can create visual perceptions". I think "experience" in most such sentences is simply redundant. It either refers specifically to the activation of perceptual faculties, or it refers to something "beyond" perceptual faculties which may not exist (qualia).
The act of perception directly implies that some self-aware entity is perceiving. For instance the camera is capturing the image, but you can't say "this camera is perceiving" We rather say "this camera is taking picture"
No it doesn't. It's entirely sensible to say that the AI that detects faces is perceiving.
I can even doubt that 1 + 1 = 2, because I cannot prove to myself that I am not completely crazy. This is not a new idea at all, it's the "cogito ergo sum" of Descartes.
> Your attempted definition would seem to assume that only conscious entities can "doubt", but is that really true?
It is not necessary to assume that. It is enough to assume that a conscious entity cannot doubt its own consciousness in good faith.
Even if completely crazy, you still doubtless perceive and experience.
> It is enough to assume that a conscious entity cannot doubt its own consciousness in good faith.
If by "consciousness" you mean subjectivity, then I disagree. We cannot doubt that we have something that we conclude is subjectivity. The real question/the hard problem is determining whether such a conclusion is true.
But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (COGITO ERGO SUM), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search."
-- Rene Descartes (Discourse on Method)
Begs the question: it assume the existence of "I" (a subject) in proving the existence of "I". The fallacy-free version is, "this is a thought, therefore thoughts exist".
So using this definition of consciousness, and looking at Plato's most famous quote: The unexamined life... is apparently the only conscious one. Huh.
The problem is that we are convinced that any experience or object can be defined within language.
The truth is that somethings are undefinable. And as soon as you attempt to define it, label it, you have already lost it.