Iāll start by acknowledging that this isnāt my idea, credit to Sam Harris. I also donāt know if this is even controversial, but I figured this would be a better place to post than in Showerthoughts.
By consciousness, I mean the subjective experience of what it feels like to be. As philosopher Thomas Nagel put it:
āAn organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organismāsomething it is like for the organism.ā
Itās at least conceivable that things like free will, the self, or even the entire universe could be an illusion. For all we know, we could be living in a simulation and nothing might be real. Even if you donāt believe that, thereās still a greater-than-zero chance you could be wrong. However, this doesnāt apply to consciousness itself. Even if everything is just a hallucination, it remains an undeniable fact that it feels like something to hallucinate. To claim that consciousness could be an illusion is a self-contradictory statement as consciousness is where illusions appear.
Consciousness is not necessary for illusions. Illusions are products of the senses and we know that unconscious things are subject to them. For example a radar glitch can produce an illusion of an object that isnāt really there. This occurs whether or not the radar operator is actually present in front of the radar screen, so itās not an illusion of consciousness.
I also think itās possible to have illusions about whether one is conscious or not. I have personally had fever dreams and found myself in a state where I was not sure whether I was asleep or awake. Similar things can be experienced under the effects of certain drugs, while other drugs can temporarily obliterate oneās entire sense of reality.
One thing we have established somewhat firmly is that the belief that consciousness is the source of decisionmaking is actually an illusion. In the lab we can detect unconscious mental processes attached to decisions which precede (by seconds) peopleās conscious awareness of having made a decision.
I wouldnāt call a radar glitch an illusion necessarily. Itās more like an error or a false signal. I think of it kind of like tinnitus; you hear a sound thatās not really there but itās not actually an illusion either.
The key word here is experience. The fact that youāre experiencing something means youāre consciouss. Consciousness is where experiences appear wether theyāre real or imagined.
If I am asleep then I am unconscious by definition, yet I still experience dreaming.
Youāre now ignoring the definition of consciousness stated in my open post. Dreams are happening in consciousness. An unconsciouss being by definition cannot have experiences. Not real or imagined (like dreams or drug induced ones) An example of true unconsciousness would be general anesthesia. You donāt even experience time passing. You hear the doctor counting backwards and then youāre all of a sudden waking up in a different room hours later. You donāt have any experience of the time in between.
I wasnāt sure of this issue with your argument but youāve clarified it for me.
Youāve defined your way to a tautology. Youāve defined consciousness as ontologically prior to illusions and claimed the latter is necessarily dependent on the former. Thus it should not be a surprise to anyone that consciousness cannot be an illusion due to the definitional relationship youāve created.
Unfortunately, this says nothing about the universe out there. Itās as controversial a statement as saying āall bachelors are unmarried.ā
Iām not just saying that consciousness cannot be an illusion. Iām saying itās the only thing that cannot be an illusion.