Does consciousness exist?

To answer the title question, of course consciousness exists.

Galen Strawson has an article in the New York Review of Books (h/t Brian Leiter):

• The Consciousness Deniers

I doubt that I am on Strawson’s list of deniers, but perhaps only because he doesn’t know who I am.

What is the silliest claim ever made? The competition is fierce, but I think the answer is easy. Some people have denied the existence of consciousness: conscious experience, the subjective character of experience, the “what-it-is-like” of experience.

Given that introduction, I would probably fit right in with Strawson’s deniers.

We know that consciousness exists, because physicians (medical doctors) can reliably tell whether a patient it conscious.  But that is not what Strawson is talking about.  He is concerned with qualia (the so-called qualities of experience).

Here’s the problem.  “Qualia” is a noun.  “Consciousness” is a noun.  A noun is supposed to be used to refer to an object.  So the question is one of whether there can be a purely subjective object.  And I don’t see how there could be such a thing.  To me, “subjective object” looks oxymoronic.

I see the emphasis on qualia and subjective experience as misguided.  It is an attempt to talk about and describe what cannot be talked about and described.  I don’t expect it to go anywhere.

To be clear, I do support free speech.  I won’t be attempting to stop talk about qualia and the like.  But it does seem a waste of effort.

The what-is-it-like

Strawson also mentions the “what-is-it-like”.  This apparently comes from Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat”.  This kind of talk, too, seems misguided.

I could not tell you what it is like to be me.  The very expression “what is it like” suggests likening to something else.  But I have not been anybody other than myself, so such comparison is impossible.

Strangely, I think I could probably say more about what it is like to be a bat, than I could say about what it is like to be me.  And that’s without my ever having been a bat.

What I could say about being a bat does not come from a study of qualia.  It comes from a study of perception, of the problems that perception has to solve, of the problems of getting and using information to negotiate the environment.

In his essay, Nagel makes an issue over the fact that the bat uses echo-location (or sonar) as an important source of information.  What I have to say about being a bat is, mostly, that Nagel is making a mistake on this emphasis on the use of sonar.  For the bat, I expect it all has to do with the acquiring and using information.  And the particular sensory mode used for that information is not going to be nearly as important as Nagel seems to believe.

The “what is it like” discussions pretend to ask a question that cannot be answered and that should not be asked.  The discussions sometimes seem to be attempts to make cognition seem mysterious and almost mystical.  However, our own conscious experience comes naturally to us, so there does not seem to be any reason for mysticism.

That’s my two cents worth of commentary.