I’ll start by acknowledging that this isn’t my idea, credit to Sam Harris. I also don’t know if this is even controversial, but I figured this would be a better place to post than in Showerthoughts.
By consciousness, I mean the subjective experience of what it feels like to be. As philosopher Thomas Nagel put it:
‘An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism.’
It’s at least conceivable that things like free will, the self, or even the entire universe could be an illusion. For all we know, we could be living in a simulation and nothing might be real. Even if you don’t believe that, there’s still a greater-than-zero chance you could be wrong. However, this doesn’t apply to consciousness itself. Even if everything is just a hallucination, it remains an undeniable fact that it feels like something to hallucinate. To claim that consciousness could be an illusion is a self-contradictory statement as consciousness is where illusions appear.
Consciousness is not necessary for illusions. Illusions are products of the senses and we know that unconscious things are subject to them. For example a radar glitch can produce an illusion of an object that isn’t really there. This occurs whether or not the radar operator is actually present in front of the radar screen, so it’s not an illusion of consciousness.
I also think it’s possible to have illusions about whether one is conscious or not. I have personally had fever dreams and found myself in a state where I was not sure whether I was asleep or awake. Similar things can be experienced under the effects of certain drugs, while other drugs can temporarily obliterate one’s entire sense of reality.
One thing we have established somewhat firmly is that the belief that consciousness is the source of decisionmaking is actually an illusion. In the lab we can detect unconscious mental processes attached to decisions which precede (by seconds) people’s conscious awareness of having made a decision.
I wouldn’t call a radar glitch an illusion necessarily. It’s more like an error or a false signal. I think of it kind of like tinnitus; you hear a sound that’s not really there but it’s not actually an illusion either.
The key word here is experience. The fact that you’re experiencing something means you’re consciouss. Consciousness is where experiences appear wether they’re real or imagined.
If I am asleep then I am unconscious by definition, yet I still experience dreaming.
You’re now ignoring the definition of consciousness stated in my open post. Dreams are happening in consciousness. An unconsciouss being by definition cannot have experiences. Not real or imagined (like dreams or drug induced ones) An example of true unconsciousness would be general anesthesia. You don’t even experience time passing. You hear the doctor counting backwards and then you’re all of a sudden waking up in a different room hours later. You don’t have any experience of the time in between.
I wasn’t sure of this issue with your argument but you’ve clarified it for me.
You’ve defined your way to a tautology. You’ve defined consciousness as ontologically prior to illusions and claimed the latter is necessarily dependent on the former. Thus it should not be a surprise to anyone that consciousness cannot be an illusion due to the definitional relationship you’ve created.
Unfortunately, this says nothing about the universe out there. It’s as controversial a statement as saying “all bachelors are unmarried.”
I’m not just saying that consciousness cannot be an illusion. I’m saying it’s the only thing that cannot be an illusion.