EDIT: fixed stupid brain bug Dennett's approach is absurd. Consciousness is the only thing in the Universe that is self-evident in the strict sense. Everything

EDIT: fixed stupid brain bug Dennett's approach is absurd. Consciousness is the only thing in the Universe that is self-evident in the strict sense. Everything else is at least second-hand stuff - see the brain in a vat hypothesis. To say that consciousness is an illusion is ridiculous; I can see how he gets there, but the conclusion is absurd. Somewhere along the way there's a mistake; no, I don't know where the mistake is, and I could not even begin to hypothesize. OP's article points out this predicament very well. It is a hard problem indeed. > One of the most promising theories (discussed in the podcast) assumes that consciousness is a fundamental attribute of reality, the other side of the coin (matter being the first one). I can hear the objections being raised already, but it's a neat promising step towards solving the hard problem. Suddenly the reducibility paradox vanishes. It would also relieve another problem. If you can't trivially reduce consciousness to neural activity, then how is it coupled with perception? There would appear to be a gap between the sensory chain and the fact of awareness. And then for consciousness to work, it would already have to be everywhere (in a sense, possibly even a somewhat metaphorical one, or at least non-trivial). The assumption you mention solves this problem. > here's a talk by Culadasa, very experienced meditator and a neuroscience professor It's very, very hard to agree with Dennett, and it's getting harder the more you advance in the practice of meditation. As soon as you realize that you can peel off and disconnect layers upon layers of perception (external at first, then the many internal layers too), and also greatly reduce the waves of what is commonly called "thinking", while consciousness does not diminish but instead becomes at once more vivid and more stable, more calm and more intense, less connected to external factors but more broad - all that talk about "the illusion of consciousness" starts to look extremely suspicious. It's not perception, and it's not thinking; it can relate to these things, but it's fundamentally different. It can ultimately exist completely independent of inputs, either external (sensory) or internal (thoughts, mind activity in the trivial sense, even memory). Don't just read about it. Go ahead and have the experience yourself. It changes a lot of perspectives. You don't even have to go all the way to the highest levels described in the literature - the intermediate stuff is revelatory enough already.