Atla wrote: ↑July 12th, 2019, 3:46 pmPeople like you and Searle, who don't realize that the English word "consciousness" refers to a mix of two (or more) different components, have not even understood what the core problem of philosophy is. Let alone how to solve the problem. This is why Western philosohy is a dead end. You will never understand consiousness before you realize that the two components have basically nothing to do with each other.People like me and Searle do know the meanings of "consciousness"!
"'Consciousness,' says Professor Ward, 'is the vaguest, most protean, and most treacherous of psychological terms'; and Bain, writing in 1880, distinguished no less than thirteen meanings of the word; he could find more today! The ambiguity of the term seems to be due, in the last resort, to the running together of two fundamental meanings, the one of which is scientific or psychological, the other logical or philosophical. In the latter, the logical meaning, consciousness is awareness or knowledge, and 'conscious of ' means 'aware of '; in the former, the scientific meaning, consciousness is mental experience, experience regarded from the psychological point of view, and one can no more use the phrase 'conscious of ' than one can use 'mental of.' If you think how natural it is to say 'I was conscious of so-and-so,' you will realise that the logical meaning is generally current[.]"
(Titchener, Edward B. A Beginner's Psychology. New York: Macmillan, 1916. pp. 323-4)
1. transitive consciousness = consciousness-of: consciousness = awareness (extrospective or introspective), cognition (knowledge), or perception (inner/internal or outer/external)
2. intransitive consciousness: consciousness = phenomenal consciousness = subjective experience
[This is what I and Searle mean by "consciousness"!]
"Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind."
(Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. 2:1;19.)
This is a classical example of a higher-order definition of consciousness that equates consciousness with introspective/reflective awareness of one's experiences. But the cognitive capacity for introspection/reflection is arguably unnecessary for the capacity for experience.