Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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Ok, I agree it can't be an illusion the way you define it, I don't think that would be an unpopular opinion.
I also maintain that it cannot be defined the way you define it.
You're also not offering a definition you like better. This is quite widely accepted definition among the people thinking about this stuff. If I were to leave it undefined it would be impossible to argue against the point I'm making because there wouldn't be certainty that we're even talking about the same thing.
I couldn't claim to have a definition as the origins of consciousness are still unknown to science and not formally defined.
However your definition is definitely not the widely accepted one. It doesn't even offer a proper definition, all it does is push the unknowns to "what it is like to be that organism".
Who defines what it is to "be" something? What is the smallest unit of "being"? Are we saying that consciousness is an inherent property of organisms or could it be recreated on a computer?
Consciousness is the fact that it feels like something to be. It's the feels like part that's relevant here. Not the to be part. It's the subjective quality of experience. It describes a phenomenom in the real world, doesn't explain it. There is no evidence of consciousness in the world except for the fact that you can experience it yourself. It's entirely subjective.
But then you're just pushing the unknown/undefined part to "feels like".
We cannot define it properly so we can't discuss it formally or make assertions like it's the only thing in the universe that is not an illusion.
You could assert "Cogito, ergo sum." but that's kind of been done before.