Take a moment to ask yourself this question: how would you know if there was no underlying feeling of general consciousness and your experience was just a sequence of very specific and simple sensations? Would you notice?
By hypothesis, I wouldn’t, any more than if I were dead. There would be no “I” to know these things. The fact that if I didn’t exist I wouldn’t be around to know it does not invalidate my perception that I do exist.
The fact is, I do have this experience. It seems that most other people do also, perhaps to varying degrees.
Is your attempt to stop and feel the “sentience” right now not just another specific experience?
Experience is the very thing that we have no explanation for. Why is it like something to be me, in the way it is not like something to be a rock?
BTW, the paper you link in footnote 4 actually (so far as the abstract says) argues against the relevance of consciousness to morality. But all the reasoning in the abstract is typical of philosophy so I’m not inclined to seek out the full text. Footnote 6 is as much a refutation of IIT as evidence for it.
By hypothesis, I wouldn’t, any more than if I were dead. There would be no “I” to know these things. The fact that if I didn’t exist I wouldn’t be around to know it does not invalidate my perception that I do exist.
The fact is, I do have this experience. It seems that most other people do also, perhaps to varying degrees.
Experience is the very thing that we have no explanation for. Why is it like something to be me, in the way it is not like something to be a rock?
BTW, the paper you link in footnote 4 actually (so far as the abstract says) argues against the relevance of consciousness to morality. But all the reasoning in the abstract is typical of philosophy so I’m not inclined to seek out the full text. Footnote 6 is as much a refutation of IIT as evidence for it.