Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a Bat"

Using this "subcomponent" concept, how far down must we reduce before we lose the "illusion" moniker and have an actual conscious experience?

I have no idea. Personally, I think experience reduces to brain function. Actually, I think most people would agree that at least part of experience reduces to brain function. That is, unless they want to claim that experience is in no way related to physical brain function.

But I have no idea whether some sort of "nano-experience" is a fundamental thing. I just don't think that full-blown experiences are fundamental.

~~ Paul

That seems to tug toward a path of complete denial of consciousness as a thing.  That at no matter the level, its an illusion.  To whom it is an illusion is never quite articulated it seems.  Its like an arbitrary theory without any evidence as far as I can tell.

That seems to tug toward a path of complete denial of consciousness as a thing.  That at no matter the level, its an illusion.  To whom it is an illusion is never quite articulated it seems.  Its like an arbitrary theory without any evidence as far as I can tell.

You're the one tugging it. I'm simply saying that it's hard to believe that every conscious experience is a separate, unitary, all-of-a-piece experience that cannot be broken down to some degree. If one was, that would seem to imply that it's not really connected to past experiences, which are clearly not stored as a giant library of high-level experiences.

Say I have various tomato experiences and then I eat a tomatillo. Does that suddenly create copies of all those experiences with a little tomatillo added to each one? I don't think so.

~~ Paul

You're the one tugging it. I'm simply saying that it's hard to believe that every conscious experience is a separate, unitary, all-of-a-piece experience that cannot be broken down to some degree. If one was, that would seem to imply that it's not really connected to past experiences, which are clearly not stored as a giant library of high-level experiences.

Say I have various tomato experiences and then I eat a tomatillo. Does that suddenly create copies of all those experiences with a little tomatillo added to each one? I don't think so.

~~ Paul

But I’m still confused how this at all dents he conciousness is fundamental argument. If you break experiences down into their parts, you would still have those parts be units of conciousness.

Why is it beside the point? My experience of a tomato or, specifically, the redness of a tomato, feels like a unitary experience. My claim is that unitary experience is actually a conflation of other component experiences. I'm making this claim to suggest that the unity of experiences is an illusion. And that's because I'm skeptical of the claim of irreducibility of experience, which is often made to suggest that experience is a fundamental thing. Some form of experience may be fundamental, but I believe people are greatly oversimplifying.

~~ Paul

All the other qualities of the tomato cannot - in any combination - create the experience of redness. If you were colour blind up until that point in your life and the suddenly the colour vision started working, you would have a new experience - that of the colour red. There is no way you could have had that experience by knowing everything else there is to know about a tomato.

Sorry Paul, I'm really not following what you are questioning and/or positing.

My reaction is primarily to the notion of our consciousness being an "illusion" and thus not real.  Specifically to the combinatorial experiences that lead to the tomato, are those individual elements illusions as well since they may be further reduced by the next, lower level of combinatorial experiences?

But I’m still confused how this at all dents he conciousness is fundamental argument. If you break experiences down into their parts, you would still have those parts be units of conciousness.

It simply questions the facile "conscious experiences are indivisible and fundamental" argument. Once you start considering what I think is really going on, things become complex, as well they should.

~~ Paul

All the other qualities of the tomato cannot - in any combination - create the experience of redness. If you were colour blind up until that point in your life and the suddenly the colour vision started working, you would have a new experience - that of the colour red. There is no way you could have had that experience by knowing everything else there is to know about a tomato.

Agreed, but after some time passes, do you really think that my experience of redness is a unitary thing? It's the same whether I'm imagining a tomato or blood or rust? No, it isn't. So then do I have three completely unrelated unitary color quales? I just don't think so.

~~ Paul

Sorry Paul, I'm really not following what you are questioning and/or positing.

My reaction is primarily to the notion of our consciousness being an "illusion" and thus not real.  Specifically to the combinatorial experiences that lead to the tomato, are those individual elements illusions as well since they may be further reduced by the next, lower level of combinatorial experiences?

Don't interpret my use of "illusion" to mean unreal. I'm using it to mean that the experience is built up from "smaller" experiences, some of which may not even be related to color. At some point we get to nano-experiences that cannot be reduced. I'm not currently arguing whether nano-experiences are fundamental to physics or constructed from non-experience-related physical stuff.

~~ Paul

Anyone asking “who is getting fooled in the illusion?” isn’t following the argument carefully enough. A more important question may be “can we reliably deduce anything fundamental about the nature of our consciousness purely by experiencing its functional interaction with our environment?” 

Whether biological or not we are beholden to its machinations.