Well said! I've made a similar distinction, calling Austin's version "manifest consciousness," consciousness as it seems to the subject, and Delilah and Harry's version "fundamental consciousness," the concept of something indescribable, unanalyzable, irreducible, and indetectable except for the subject.
To me, fundamental consciousness is a theoretical construct, an assumption that the Harry's of the world are making. But it's a problematic theory, because it has the hard problem, while manifest consciousness doesn't.
Overall the main point is Block's original concept of phenomenal consciousness is ambiguous and we need additional terms for the different ways people use the term "phenomenal consciousness."
I'll be curious to see what the other two meanings you found in Block's paper are.
Nice post! I think this does help clear up a confusion I sometimes have while reading philosophy.
I think I agree more with Austin. I mean, I know you just showed that their difference was merely semantic. However, Austin seems to think that there are different ways of looking at consciousness (the third-person point of view, and the first-person of view), even if it is ontologically the same thing. If you take requests, I'd like to hear you eventually explain "subjecthood" or "first person perspective" more. Why is there someone or something in my head that does the experiencing? Or is that somehow a confused notion? I tend to have panpsychism instincts similar to this:
In view of your link, I find that post and that author to be very confused. It will take more than a single essay to explain why. But the promotion of a vantage point to a thing is a strategy that needs to be defended with rigour, and I don’t think that’s possible. It’s still just a vantage point, and the idea that physicalism has no way of including vantage points is close to nonsensical to me. It leads to the Zombie Argument and epiphenomenalism.
I guess one takeaway from this essay is that we shouldn’t really be agreeing with Austin or Delilah when they argue with each other, because they have identical belief systems.
They only disagree about how one particular jargon terms maps to that belief system, and they both have evidence that their adopted mapping is in use.
We can argue about which one can claim majority backing within the linguistic community, but it is not the case that there is an overwhelming majority on either side. We can’t even argue that one is truer to the source, because Block himself was in a muddle. Delilah is much closer to Chalmers’ usage.
When scientists talk about phenomenal consciousness, they are trying to explain something within the scope of rho; most anti-physicalists over at r/consciousness are talking about delta.
The other takeaway is more of a hint for later essays. I believe that what is merely a semantic dispute in Austin and Delilah’s case is a real conceptual conflation in the minds of most hardists. They flip-flop between the two ideas and rely on both sub-concepts being mapped back to what they think is a single entity.
You are the best philosophy of mind writer out on Substack
Woah, thanks. That’s quite a compliment.
Please let me know if anything is not clear!
Well said! I've made a similar distinction, calling Austin's version "manifest consciousness," consciousness as it seems to the subject, and Delilah and Harry's version "fundamental consciousness," the concept of something indescribable, unanalyzable, irreducible, and indetectable except for the subject.
To me, fundamental consciousness is a theoretical construct, an assumption that the Harry's of the world are making. But it's a problematic theory, because it has the hard problem, while manifest consciousness doesn't.
Overall the main point is Block's original concept of phenomenal consciousness is ambiguous and we need additional terms for the different ways people use the term "phenomenal consciousness."
I'll be curious to see what the other two meanings you found in Block's paper are.
Nice post! I think this does help clear up a confusion I sometimes have while reading philosophy.
I think I agree more with Austin. I mean, I know you just showed that their difference was merely semantic. However, Austin seems to think that there are different ways of looking at consciousness (the third-person point of view, and the first-person of view), even if it is ontologically the same thing. If you take requests, I'd like to hear you eventually explain "subjecthood" or "first person perspective" more. Why is there someone or something in my head that does the experiencing? Or is that somehow a confused notion? I tend to have panpsychism instincts similar to this:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-160136466
Why isn't this post the right way forward on the hard problem?
In view of your link, I find that post and that author to be very confused. It will take more than a single essay to explain why. But the promotion of a vantage point to a thing is a strategy that needs to be defended with rigour, and I don’t think that’s possible. It’s still just a vantage point, and the idea that physicalism has no way of including vantage points is close to nonsensical to me. It leads to the Zombie Argument and epiphenomenalism.
I guess one takeaway from this essay is that we shouldn’t really be agreeing with Austin or Delilah when they argue with each other, because they have identical belief systems.
They only disagree about how one particular jargon terms maps to that belief system, and they both have evidence that their adopted mapping is in use.
We can argue about which one can claim majority backing within the linguistic community, but it is not the case that there is an overwhelming majority on either side. We can’t even argue that one is truer to the source, because Block himself was in a muddle. Delilah is much closer to Chalmers’ usage.
When scientists talk about phenomenal consciousness, they are trying to explain something within the scope of rho; most anti-physicalists over at r/consciousness are talking about delta.
The other takeaway is more of a hint for later essays. I believe that what is merely a semantic dispute in Austin and Delilah’s case is a real conceptual conflation in the minds of most hardists. They flip-flop between the two ideas and rely on both sub-concepts being mapped back to what they think is a single entity.