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Comment by foxyv | Hacker News Reader

The problem with solving the mystery of consciousness is that we don't even really have a definition of it that makes sense. Until then, the answer will inevitably be 42.

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I kind of suspect that rigorously defining consciousness may end up being a significant part of the problem of explaining consciousness.

Bible definition is quite interesting. AFAIU it defines consciousness as an ability to discern between good and evil

So humans aren't conscious?

I think you confuse consciousness with conscience. Apart from that, the Bible contains almost no definitions (and this has caused many problems in the past, even people killing each other as they disagreed on what certain things mean). If one wants precise definitions, they can be found in literature such as Abhidharmakosha.

Qualia.

Yep, but then the problem becomes defining what qualia actually is, and why it exists.

How are qualia necessary/sufficient for consciousness? Seems more related to the subjectivity of perception, which in itself doesn't require consciousness (or does it?)?

Qualia is the term for the sensations of color, sound, etc. And not just perception, but dreams, hallucinations, etc. That's what makes up consciousness/subjectivity.

Not everyone agrees with using the term qualia for sensation. There's various debates over the nature of perception. Some see sensation as just being directly aware of properties in the world, such as color. Doesn't work for all sensation (pain for example), and color realism has its own problems.

Bingo. To figure out how it works, we need to know what it is.

Consciousness is a social construct. That's the problem.

Many animals are likely conscious. They feel pain and see colors, etc.

Can you expand a bit more? Roughly speaking, someone has to tell you about consciousness before you can experience it? And how does that relate to a challenge of defining it?

> Roughly speaking, someone has to tell you about consciousness before you can experience it?

What does it mean to experience consciousness?

Are you a robot? If not you already know. The images you see, the feelings you feel, the smells etc, the fact that the something that gathers all of that into a neat packet to be experienced is the consciousness. Every human feels these things are special and thus experience consciousness but it has yet to be described by science how that works.

Are you contending that somebody who grows up in complete social isolation would not be conscious? If so, that doesn't make sense. And besides, we currently have no way of knowing that consciousness actually exists in any being other than ourselves, so there would be no way to measure it to test your hypothesis.

Until we have some way of doing that, I think it's more rational to assume all humans in a non catatonic state have some level of consciousness.

> Are you contending that somebody who grows up in complete social isolation would not be conscious?

I read GP's comment that in this case that someone wouldn't have a concept of consciousness in his consciousness.

Could a person who grows up in complete social isolation learn (or invent) a language? If not, could such a person name things or have a way to think about maps and symbols (representations of things) in a way that could lead to consciousness?

There are a number of interesting cases of people being raised without language, and then being studied later in life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation

I think it's a massive, massive stretch to make the claim that any of them weren't conscious.

Consciousness as a grouping category of many aspects of mental experience is a social construct, for sure. But the subjective phenomena themselves are not.

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