Difficult to evaluate, with potential yellow flags.
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Introduction
Attempts to define consciousness are as numerous as they are fruitless. People speak about completely different things. Lying in a donor chair with a tourniquet on my left hand and actively losing that very consciousness, I decided to figure out why is it so. It seems to me that the problem is deeper than the distinction proposed by Chalmers between psychological and phenomenal consciousness, and that phenomenal consciousness itself has irreducible, mutually contradictory facets.
Intuitions About Consciousness
For my purposes, I use the following intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, none of which I am willing to painlessly abandon, although contradictions—albeit resolvable through refinement of formulations—emerge already at the stage of listing them.
So, in the view of this non-specialist but advanced user, consciousness:
1. Is binary: it "turns on" and "turns off"; at any moment, one can definitely say about an object whether it possesses consciousness or not.
2. At the same time, has gradations: your pale and reclining obedient servant, slowly thinking exactly one thought and holding attention on only one element of context, without regrets admits being less conscious than the rosy-cheeked nurse who holds three such unfortunates in her attention simultaneously.
3. Is countable: the nurse and I do not share one consciousness; I can swear (if philosophy accepts such arguments) that there are two.
4. At the same time, is potentially fragmentable: I cannot vouch for how many consciousnesses, say, I and my tulpa-cat-girl share, or, using less extravagant examples, my acquaintance with dissociative identity disorder and his alter, sharing one functional brain organization, inputs, and outputs.
5. Is not identical in its different manifestations: my consciousness and the nurse's consciousness are different and not interchangeable; if we were to "swap consciousnesses," we would notice it, a trope exploited in culture as "they switched bodies."
6. Is intermittent: if I do black out next time, my consciousness will be interrupted; my body will lack it for a time; the same happens when I fall asleep. It also follows from this that not everything possesses it, and I can assert this from the first-person perspective, despite its privacy.
7. Yet, it is identical over time: I will recover, and the same consciousness will return to my body.
8. Has object-components: my consciousness contains the chair, the tourniquet, the nurse, the needle in my hand through which a camel could easily pass, the swaying bag of warm blood, the concerned volunteer...
9. Has action-components: while being conscious of what is happening, I hear, see, and feel it; if one component of my experience is removed, the experience will not be the same.
10. Does not exist without a subject possessing it: "consciousness without a body," if conceivable, is certainly not known to us as a concrete object; moreover, the content of such consciousness, without means of interacting with the external environment, would have to be completely closed in on itself, which also seems impossible without at least one external "push."
11. Is intentional: does not exist "in itself," without directedness towards something.
The Status of Consciousness
In discussions of phenomenal consciousness, especially in neuroscience, the terms are used interchangeably, speaking of it as an object one can possess, a process that can be performed, and a property of a system. However, this seems not entirely correct to me. Behavioral tests for consciousness in animals aim to determine a certain permanent and inalienable property of "consciousness"; in discussing and interpreting their results, it would sound foolish to suggest that this animal species is in principle capable of the process of conscious awareness but is not using this ability at the moment. Viewing consciousness as a process, we want to see something similar to other known physiological processes, like heartbeat or bile secretion; ideally—to point to a group of neurons exchanging electrical signals and say, "the awareness of the color red happened here just now." Consciousness as an object figures in first-person conversations about it or in attempts to imagine the world from someone else's perspective—as that very "world." The intuitions above, however, demand either their own rejection or the rejection of at least one of these ways of description.
In favor of consciousness-as-object speak its countability and fragmentability, divisibility into other objects, binarity, diversity, and identity over time. For consciousness-as-process —intermittence, binarity, divisibility into actions, dependence on a subject, and intentionality. For consciousness-as-property —dependence on a subject and the presence of gradations.
What follows?
An attempt to confine consciousness to one of these ontologies, or even to renounce just one of them, crosses out critical intuitions and redefines the subject of conversation. Without resorting to near-mystical conclusions that language is ill-suited for talking about consciousness and prevents us from solving its mystery, I note the necessity of caution in using the shades of meaning of this term and limiting its working definition to one of these ontologies in further research. The three facets do not exist one without the other in the world familiar to us; it is also logically inconceivable for one of them to be separated from the other two. Considering only one of them inevitably deprives the conversation of necessary completeness and gives rise to the inability of the derived theory to explain some phenomena of subjective reality.
The three terms—consciousness, conscious awareness, and the act of being conscious/aware — can be compared to the three levels at which modern cognitive science speaks of consciousness: mental processes experienced from the first-person perspective; behavioral processes observed from the third-person perspective; neural processes observed from the third-person perspective. It is clear that we are considering one and the same thing in three hypostases; but this triad forces us to use different terms for it—we cautiously don't call the activity of neurons or a mouse's behavior "joy" or "memory."
Conclusion
With this note, I have tried to unravel another terminological confusion that, in my opinion, plagues discussions about consciousness. Using my 11 dilettante intuitions, I have distinguished consciousness-as-object, consciousness-as-process, and consciousness-as-property as closely intertwined, inconceivable separately, yet different entities, and suggested being more careful with them. I have emphasized that for a complete discussion of consciousness, choosing one of these ontologies is fundamentally impossible. I propose attributing the possible absurdity of all the above to my inadequate physical condition and urge everyone without contraindications to donate blood.
Introduction
Attempts to define consciousness are as numerous as they are fruitless. People speak about completely different things. Lying in a donor chair with a tourniquet on my left hand and actively losing that very consciousness, I decided to figure out why is it so. It seems to me that the problem is deeper than the distinction proposed by Chalmers between psychological and phenomenal consciousness, and that phenomenal consciousness itself has irreducible, mutually contradictory facets.
Intuitions About Consciousness
For my purposes, I use the following intuitions about phenomenal consciousness, none of which I am willing to painlessly abandon, although contradictions—albeit resolvable through refinement of formulations—emerge already at the stage of listing them.
So, in the view of this non-specialist but advanced user, consciousness:
1. Is binary: it "turns on" and "turns off"; at any moment, one can definitely say about an object whether it possesses consciousness or not.
2. At the same time, has gradations: your pale and reclining obedient servant, slowly thinking exactly one thought and holding attention on only one element of context, without regrets admits being less conscious than the rosy-cheeked nurse who holds three such unfortunates in her attention simultaneously.
3. Is countable: the nurse and I do not share one consciousness; I can swear (if philosophy accepts such arguments) that there are two.
4. At the same time, is potentially fragmentable: I cannot vouch for how many consciousnesses, say, I and my tulpa-cat-girl share, or, using less extravagant examples, my acquaintance with dissociative identity disorder and his alter, sharing one functional brain organization, inputs, and outputs.
5. Is not identical in its different manifestations: my consciousness and the nurse's consciousness are different and not interchangeable; if we were to "swap consciousnesses," we would notice it, a trope exploited in culture as "they switched bodies."
6. Is intermittent: if I do black out next time, my consciousness will be interrupted; my body will lack it for a time; the same happens when I fall asleep. It also follows from this that not everything possesses it, and I can assert this from the first-person perspective, despite its privacy.
7. Yet, it is identical over time: I will recover, and the same consciousness will return to my body.
8. Has object-components: my consciousness contains the chair, the tourniquet, the nurse, the needle in my hand through which a camel could easily pass, the swaying bag of warm blood, the concerned volunteer...
9. Has action-components: while being conscious of what is happening, I hear, see, and feel it; if one component of my experience is removed, the experience will not be the same.
10. Does not exist without a subject possessing it: "consciousness without a body," if conceivable, is certainly not known to us as a concrete object; moreover, the content of such consciousness, without means of interacting with the external environment, would have to be completely closed in on itself, which also seems impossible without at least one external "push."
11. Is intentional: does not exist "in itself," without directedness towards something.
The Status of Consciousness
In discussions of phenomenal consciousness, especially in neuroscience, the terms are used interchangeably, speaking of it as an object one can possess, a process that can be performed, and a property of a system. However, this seems not entirely correct to me. Behavioral tests for consciousness in animals aim to determine a certain permanent and inalienable property of "consciousness"; in discussing and interpreting their results, it would sound foolish to suggest that this animal species is in principle capable of the process of conscious awareness but is not using this ability at the moment. Viewing consciousness as a process, we want to see something similar to other known physiological processes, like heartbeat or bile secretion; ideally—to point to a group of neurons exchanging electrical signals and say, "the awareness of the color red happened here just now." Consciousness as an object figures in first-person conversations about it or in attempts to imagine the world from someone else's perspective—as that very "world." The intuitions above, however, demand either their own rejection or the rejection of at least one of these ways of description.
In favor of consciousness-as-object speak its countability and fragmentability, divisibility into other objects, binarity, diversity, and identity over time. For consciousness-as-process —intermittence, binarity, divisibility into actions, dependence on a subject, and intentionality. For consciousness-as-property —dependence on a subject and the presence of gradations.
What follows?
An attempt to confine consciousness to one of these ontologies, or even to renounce just one of them, crosses out critical intuitions and redefines the subject of conversation. Without resorting to near-mystical conclusions that language is ill-suited for talking about consciousness and prevents us from solving its mystery, I note the necessity of caution in using the shades of meaning of this term and limiting its working definition to one of these ontologies in further research. The three facets do not exist one without the other in the world familiar to us; it is also logically inconceivable for one of them to be separated from the other two. Considering only one of them inevitably deprives the conversation of necessary completeness and gives rise to the inability of the derived theory to explain some phenomena of subjective reality.
The three terms—consciousness, conscious awareness, and the act of being conscious/aware — can be compared to the three levels at which modern cognitive science speaks of consciousness: mental processes experienced from the first-person perspective; behavioral processes observed from the third-person perspective; neural processes observed from the third-person perspective. It is clear that we are considering one and the same thing in three hypostases; but this triad forces us to use different terms for it—we cautiously don't call the activity of neurons or a mouse's behavior "joy" or "memory."
Conclusion
With this note, I have tried to unravel another terminological confusion that, in my opinion, plagues discussions about consciousness. Using my 11 dilettante intuitions, I have distinguished consciousness-as-object, consciousness-as-process, and consciousness-as-property as closely intertwined, inconceivable separately, yet different entities, and suggested being more careful with them. I have emphasized that for a complete discussion of consciousness, choosing one of these ontologies is fundamentally impossible. I propose attributing the possible absurdity of all the above to my inadequate physical condition and urge everyone without contraindications to donate blood.