The essential feature is subjective experience of sensations, referred to as qualia. I've seen no debate about that.
"In philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience"
Shows that qualia is defined in terms of "conscious experience." If qualia is an essential feature of consciousness then the Wikipedia definition is a recursive definition.
The definition of the word "Sword" is "Sword" which is true but tells me nothing at the same time.
"The thing that is indicated when you say 'that thing there!'"
appears linguistically empty, because its meaning is not found in the words, but in something extra-verbal that it is intended to point to.
The problem in the debate surrounding consciousness is that there are two basic positions to hold, which are often talking past each other:
1) Oh yes, I see what is being indicated! There is something to discuss.
2) There is nothing here but a meaningless verbal tangle which will disappear when it is untangled.
This problem is similar to, but more intractable than discussing the color blue with someone who has always been blind. The blind person may never actually experience what it is to see blue, the 'qualium,' but there are physical hooks such as the associated frequency of light, and a tangible consensus amongst those who are not blind as to whether an object can be called blue or not.
The latter is missing from the problem of consciousness, which makes it a far more difficult and fascinating problem.
>The latter is missing from the problem of consciousness, which makes it a far more difficult and fascinating problem.
You are talking about whether some topic can be observed. The example you cite is observation through sight. A blind person cannot observe color. Observation is the key to gathering evidence. The words an "observation" and a piece of "evidence" refer to the exact same concept. Thus your statement is equivalent to saying Blind men can only gain knowledge about color through evidence and that consciousness lacks any sort of evidence.
Many things in this world lack evidence including Scientology and Creationism. We classify some of these things as absurd. Other things are classified as religion or something that is not absurd.
In my mind the logic is equivalent. The vast number of possibilities of the unknown renders most unobserved theories to be by probability more likely to be absurd. Thus Christianity is just as absurd as Scientology. However extraneous factors influence Christianity to be perceived differently even though logically the foundations come from the same absurd unobservable arguments.
Consciousness I believe is much of the same thing. A linguistic phenomenon lending weight to what is otherwise absurd by default. It is just a complicated category where the capability of being able to have certain thoughts is classified as conscious. Or should I say the ability to be aware of certain things? I'm not sure? Fascinating yes but if you look carefully at what I was actually fascinated about you'll see that I'm just talking about how to define a word. Is "consciousnesses" awareness or thought? A definition of a word is not profound.
The profoundness you feel is again just a linguistic illusion. It's similar to the question: "What does it mean to be American?" American is purely a made up word and basically just a over complicated category with nothing intrinsically interesting about it outside of American culture.
To sum it all up. A recursive definition and lack of evidence renders the whole quest to discover what consciousness is quite uninteresting.
> I feel like I’m taking crazy pills - or perhaps that philosophical zombies walk among us.
Basically the above is an insult. Essentially you're calling me and anyone with a differing opinion then you "crazy" or a walking philosophical zombie. Literally you're just trying to get around a technicality by indirectly labeling me. Might as well just say "Reading your post I feel like I'm taking crazy pills."
Feel free to debate my points but nobody feels good when they're labeled as crazy.
I am saying consciousness is just an arbitrary category for an arbitrary set of phenomena. Trying to codify this arbitrary category is like trying to codify what it means to be American, or what it means to be Trans or whatever. It's Pointless because the complexity within these categories are purely made up.
I'm saying consciousness is the same thing. Is an Ant conscious? Well it depends on your arbitrary classification of what it means to be conscious. And that's the point. It's Arbitrary. It's made up. It's not worth talking about what it is to be American in a scientific paper anymore then it is to talk about what it means to be conscious.
Some may argue that an ant is conscious because it feels pain. Others may argue that consciousness does not involve pain. And if you observe this from a very high level you will see the argument is simply about a definition of an arbitrary word. It is not interesting to debate about vocabulary.
And knowing for yourself still needs an explanation.