The whole thing is hopelessly bogged down in linguistic vaguery to the point of making the key questions quite meaningless.
What is 'consciousness'?
Is it "the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings" as the first hit on Google suggests? If so, can we then define 'awake', 'aware', or even 'one' without circular reasoning?
Why isn't it acceptable to define consciousness as the operating instructions of the mind?
This quickly leads to another linguistic quagmire called 'free will'. If we agree that everything in our heads is governed by the laws of nature, we can agree that there are one of two possible reasons for any 'decision' we make: it was facilitated by a direct cause or it was random. There can be no other actor.
Assuming a direct cause following our operating instructions, does this mean that there is no free will? To answer that we have to open up the word 'choice'.
Choice: "an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities."
We loop around to the beginning.
You define 'decide' or 'choose' any way you want to. Tell me free will is real or fake. I don't care. All I know it there are no external actors in my head and things are either 100% predictable or random. Everything else here is a very roundabout argument about the way we use English. Boring.
What is 'consciousness'?
Is it "the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings" as the first hit on Google suggests? If so, can we then define 'awake', 'aware', or even 'one' without circular reasoning?
Why isn't it acceptable to define consciousness as the operating instructions of the mind?
This quickly leads to another linguistic quagmire called 'free will'. If we agree that everything in our heads is governed by the laws of nature, we can agree that there are one of two possible reasons for any 'decision' we make: it was facilitated by a direct cause or it was random. There can be no other actor.
Assuming a direct cause following our operating instructions, does this mean that there is no free will? To answer that we have to open up the word 'choice'.
Choice: "an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities."
We loop around to the beginning.
You define 'decide' or 'choose' any way you want to. Tell me free will is real or fake. I don't care. All I know it there are no external actors in my head and things are either 100% predictable or random. Everything else here is a very roundabout argument about the way we use English. Boring.