4 ms·
Subjective experience (what most people mean when they say "consciousness") is basically prior to logic, language, etc. "Making sense" just doesn't have a way t
by andrewflnr 2mo ago
Subjective experience (what most people mean when they say "consciousness") is basically prior to logic, language, etc. "Making sense" just doesn't have a way to come to grips with it. Despite this, for most of us anyway, it plainly exists.
This is why it's The Hard Problem. We can neither ignore it nor make headway against it. It's no surprise that most attempts at talking about it are, as you've noticed, a disaster.
At the risk of making absurd claims about your interiority: you might be overthinking it. It's conceivable that you're an honest philosophical zombie in a world of conscious humans, but more likely whatever you do experience is the same thing everyone else is talking about, and you just don't resonate with their overly grandiose descriptions.
- kelseyfrog 2mo agoThank you for the generous and kind response. Part of me wonders if, like alexithymia[1], aphantasia, anauralia[2] and anendophasia[3], there exists the inability to recognize one's own conscious experience. We would never know. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia 2. https://www.anauralia.com/anauralia https://www.anauralia.com/anauralia 3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38728320/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38728320/
- andrewflnr 2mo agoIt seems more likely when you put it that way. Thanks for the interesting links regardless. Deeper cuts than the average aphantasia reference.