Sunday 15 October 2017

Defining Consciousness

When I say science completely leaves out consciousness in its description of reality, people frequently ask what my definition of consciousness is.

But what do they mean by "definition of consciousness"? They must mean either:

a) What do I mean by the word "consciousness".

or

b) What is the scientific definition of consciousness? i.e how does consciousness fit into our scientific description of reality.

But regarding "a", obviously we all know what consciousness means. It's all our thoughts, feelings, perceptions etc. So, given that the person is conscious, he knows what consciousness refers to. So presumably he is not requesting this (and it's always a he).

So he must be asking for a scientific definition of consciousness. But science completely leaves out consciousness in its description of reality, as I said in the beginning!
This is the type of futile "conversation" I have with people on the net.

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