DB Roy wrote:The biggest problem of consciousness is consciousness. We say that consciousness is awareness but it is really experience. We are conscious because we experience the world around us. Everything we observe is an experience. The problem is that we can't explain why we should experience anything nor can we explain our experiences. What we take as hard, objective data is really a subjective experience that no one can explain. Where does consciousness come from? All these dry theories that try to explain it have to be understood through consciousness which is a subjective experience that no one can explain because we're trying to reduce consciousness to data which cannot be done. Consciousness is ultimately a quale. Subjective experience (qualia) is not data. Data can be understood through subjective experience but not the other way around. . . ..
Thanks for your thoughtful post, DB. I think I follow you here, but would perhaps say it a little differently.
Buddhists say that our sense of self is an illusion and this is probably more or less in line with what neurologists say too. For clarity's sake, I tend to think of self and consciousness as the same thing and use the terms interchangeably. Maybe incorrectly.
But though self may be an illusion, it still provides subjective meaning in our lives. Indeed, it's everything. So, even if we can accept that self is an illusion and that there is no divine agency in the universe, we are still guided by our emotions and, thus, we experience pleasure and pain. It's all subjective, yet meaningful.
Which is why Ant's Reductio ad absurdum is nonsense. Regardless of whether we believe there is divine agency, we all experience pain and pleasure. The love I feel for my wife and children is profoundly meaningful to me. My sense of loss when my mother suffered a stroke was profoundly painful to me. But you who are reading this cannot feel my sense of profound joy and profound loss except in empathy—in relation to your own loved ones.
Even Buddhists who meditate on the concept of no-self still experience pain and pleasure. A Buddhist meditative life only strives to reduce pain (and pleasure), not to eliminate it altogether.
So back to DB's point, though we may be able to scientifically explain consciousness (to some extent), we can never adequately explain our very subjective experiences in the same kind of way. This is the domain of poetry, is it not? But even the language of poetry will always fall far short. Feelings cannot be expressed in a mathematical formula. It's actually preposterous to think we could.
Charles Dickens satirizes the idea of reducing subjective feelings to formula in his book,
Hard Times. The very essence of a horse is something we see, feel, smell, we
experience on many levels. But Mr. Gradgrind here wants to eliminate all that subjective stuff . . .
“Bitzer,” said Thomas Gradgrind, “your definition of a horse.”
“Quadruped. Gramnivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve
incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod
with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.” Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
“Now girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “you know what a horse is.”
–Charles Dickens, Hard Times