Well, that's interesting, because there's no good scientific definition of consciousness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Neural_correlate...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Defining_conscio...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Information_Theory
It gets worse. When you look at it closely there's no useful reason to restrict any of these measures with arbitrary criteria to the things we consider candidates for consciousness, other than to reaffirm our prejudices.
In other words, there's no such thing as a good scientific definition without the philosophical context. You can have as accurate an arbitrary measure as you like, but that doesn't imbue it equally arbitrarily with your desired meaning.
There might never be a philosophically satisfactory definition of consciousness. Our subjective experience that we call consciousness might be an amalgamate of very different things happening at the brain level and a single definition might just not do. Meanwhile the operational definitions like the ones I mentioned allow us to make useful predictions and draw conclusions, for example that the brain activity that happens when we experience states most people would describe as consciousness also happens in certain animals. It is not perfect philosophically, but again, you could also have a long philosophical debate about what gravity is and you would never go anywhere scientifically - that's precisely what people did before the scientific revolution.
If you look at the formulation it starts out as a magical-seeming property, yet the definitions and processes do nothing to demystify that property. If you look at that process carefully you'll find the deceit: this is not an answer to the question of consciousness as asked. With the right philosophical treatment there might be hope of reconciliation, but without it the concept is just going to remain magical, without meaningful conclusions.
Aether is a great example, one I had in mind. Consciousness is very much like aether in some ways. It may well be that the only useful scientific thing to say about it at the end of the day is: it is not a useful concept to science. Much better than the contrivances offered up with no compelling connection to the subject.
The last word in TFA is 'qualia'. This is the problem. Canonical definitions of that term describe it as impossible to measure, or simply ineffable, which effectively puts it off the table for a scientific treatment. Regardless of what you think of what should constitute a scientific concept, the implication that these measurements alone elucidate an ineffable phenomenon is exactly the kind of thing that stinks of bullshit.
My only point is really that the lack of a great definition of consciousness doesn't diminish the value of research like the one cited here.
I don't deny that at all, in fact it is quite precisely what I endorse. Notice that the term consciousness lies on the left side, the excluded part. On the right side, you use the better-defined term, awareness. A definition that comes with better philosophical understanding. TFA, however, talks of qualia.
We might need to first answer to such questions before we gain any new insights of more philosophical nature.
I would say "different" rather than "more." Philosophy doesn't mean "weird stuff we don't really understand" and it can often be as boring as the implications of simple arithmetic or even the logic used in scientific endeavors. I wouldn't want to throw that out in the name of progress either.
I cannot agree the results are meaningless or "only reaffirm our prejudices".
The results described by the article and supported here are of the form "consciousness is X" where no question was asked that is answerable directly in terms of X, and no reconciliation has been made. That is the sense of meaninglessness I'm talking about. If you're still in doubt, or think that's somehow unimportant, grab the bull by the horns and deal with the implication that this is somehow ultimately a measure of qualia.
My only point is really that the lack of a great definition of consciousness doesn't diminish the value of research like the one cited here.
In that phrasing I am almost in agreement, if it wasn't for some of the claims made. Some very interesting things are being measured, but to go from these measurements to things like qualia is a leap I can't justify. A correlation between these measures and alertness, intelligence and kinds of awareness are easy to establish or contradict, and better yet: given those connections who is going to say "yeah but what are these results over here? it looks like manifest experience!"—?
Why doesn't the concept of, say, 'the gene' also need this backup? Or maybe all of those geneticists are also stumbling around in the dark without philosophers to guide them...
Gravity is arguably a more compelling concept to someone falling off a ladder than to a student in a high school physics class. But, so? Does gravity lose meaning on a scale that is too large or too small to fit human experience?
I'm not looking for a why—the common complaint about gravity—I just want all the whats to match up. The meaninglessness is in reference to the question of consciousness. If you supply this to the asker, they could rightly ask, "sure, but what about my question?" Perhaps there is no reconciliation and you might want to complain that the question is nonsense—that complaint would make a better answer than a collection of irrelevant facts.
And there are good argumnts suggesting that there'll never be such definition (summary: consciousness is inherently subjective).