In other words, I’m trying to dissolve the question you’re asking. Am I making sense?
Not yet. I really think you need to read the GLUT post that nsheppard linked to.
I don’t need a soul to “talk about souls,” and I don’t need to be conscious to “talk about consciousness”
You do need to have those concepts, though, and concepts cannot arise without there being something that gave rise to them. That something may not have all the properties one ascribes to it (e.g. magical powers), but discovering that that one was mistaken about some aspects does not allow one to conclude that there is no such thing. One still has to discover what the right account of it is.
If consciousness is an illusion, what experiences the illusion?
it just needs to happen to be the case that my mouth emits a particular sequence of vibrations in the air
This falls foul of the GAZP v. GLUT thing. It cannot “just happen to be the case”. When you pull out for attention the case where a random process generates something that appears to be about consciousness, out of all the other random strings, you’ve used your own concept of consciousness to do that.
I think so; at least, I have now. (I don’t know why someone would downvote your comment, it wasn’t me.) So, something went wrong in his head, to the point that asking “was he, or was he not, conscious” is too abstract a question to ask. Nowadays, we’d want to do science to someone like that, to try to find out what was physically going on.
Not yet. I really think you need to read the GLUT post that nsheppard linked to.
You do need to have those concepts, though, and concepts cannot arise without there being something that gave rise to them. That something may not have all the properties one ascribes to it (e.g. magical powers), but discovering that that one was mistaken about some aspects does not allow one to conclude that there is no such thing. One still has to discover what the right account of it is.
If consciousness is an illusion, what experiences the illusion?
This falls foul of the GAZP v. GLUT thing. It cannot “just happen to be the case”. When you pull out for attention the case where a random process generates something that appears to be about consciousness, out of all the other random strings, you’ve used your own concept of consciousness to do that.
I’ve read GLUT. Have you read The Zombie Preacher of Somerset?
I think so; at least, I have now. (I don’t know why someone would downvote your comment, it wasn’t me.) So, something went wrong in his head, to the point that asking “was he, or was he not, conscious” is too abstract a question to ask. Nowadays, we’d want to do science to someone like that, to try to find out what was physically going on.
Sure, I’m happy with that interpretation.