In my experience, when reading about consciousness there are a couple types of claims you should be cautious of:
1) Claims that the causes of consciousness can be easily explained. As far as I can tell, they can't. Usually these explanations use the word "emergent" a lot, and tend to be linguistically impenetrable. Often more poetic than scientific when scrutinized closely.
2) Claims that consciousness doesn't exist. These arguments often feel like semantic nitpicking, and employ the word "illusion" as though it's somehow useful for explaining why you experience.
My pet criteria for whether a statement about consciousness is useful is:
"Can this possibly help explain how I can merge consciousness with someone (or something) else?"
To me, this feels like a tangible measurement for how materially useful a claim about consciousness might be. An example is literature on "Split-Brain" patients (such as https://www.nature.com/articles/483260a).
edit:
Another category to be wary of is:
3) Claims that we cannot understand consciousness. Usually these boil down to "how can consciousness understand itself?". Poetic and poignant, but not particularly useful or scientifically grounded.
1) Claims that the causes of consciousness can be easily explained. As far as I can tell, they can't. Usually these explanations use the word "emergent" a lot, and tend to be linguistically impenetrable. Often more poetic than scientific when scrutinized closely.
2) Claims that consciousness doesn't exist. These arguments often feel like semantic nitpicking, and employ the word "illusion" as though it's somehow useful for explaining why you experience.
My pet criteria for whether a statement about consciousness is useful is: "Can this possibly help explain how I can merge consciousness with someone (or something) else?" To me, this feels like a tangible measurement for how materially useful a claim about consciousness might be. An example is literature on "Split-Brain" patients (such as https://www.nature.com/articles/483260a).
edit: Another category to be wary of is:
3) Claims that we cannot understand consciousness. Usually these boil down to "how can consciousness understand itself?". Poetic and poignant, but not particularly useful or scientifically grounded.