Interesting post. I definitely agree that consciousness is a very conflated term. Also, I wouldn’t think that some people may pick vestibular sense or proprioception as the closest legible neighbors/subparts of (what they mean by) “consciousness”. A few nitpicks:
When the interviewees said that they consider (“their kind of”) consciousness valuable, did they mean it personally (e.g., I appreciate having it) or did they see it as a source of moral patienthood (“I believe creatures capable of introspection have moral value or at least more value than those that can’t introspect)?
A person may just have a very fuzzy nebulous concept which they have never tried to reduce to something else (and make sure that this reduced notion holds together with the rest of their world model). In that case, when asked to sit down, reflect, and describe it in terms of moving parts, they may simply latch onto a close neighbor in their personal concept space.
Can you point to two specific examples of conflationary alliances formed around drastically different understandings of this concept? I.e., these 3 people use “consciousness” to refer to X and these to mean Y and this is a major theme in their “conflict”. What examples you gave in part 2 looks to me like typical usage of mysterious answers as semantic stop signs.
Interesting post. I definitely agree that consciousness is a very conflated term. Also, I wouldn’t think that some people may pick vestibular sense or proprioception as the closest legible neighbors/subparts of (what they mean by) “consciousness”. A few nitpicks:
When the interviewees said that they consider (“their kind of”) consciousness valuable, did they mean it personally (e.g., I appreciate having it) or did they see it as a source of moral patienthood (“I believe creatures capable of introspection have moral value or at least more value than those that can’t introspect)?
A person may just have a very fuzzy nebulous concept which they have never tried to reduce to something else (and make sure that this reduced notion holds together with the rest of their world model). In that case, when asked to sit down, reflect, and describe it in terms of moving parts, they may simply latch onto a close neighbor in their personal concept space.
Can you point to two specific examples of conflationary alliances formed around drastically different understandings of this concept? I.e., these 3 people use “consciousness” to refer to X and these to mean Y and this is a major theme in their “conflict”. What examples you gave in part 2 looks to me like typical usage of mysterious answers as semantic stop signs.