As far as I'm concerned I just am that inner world. This feels a bit like essentialism to me. >you would need some state in order to build such an inner world
We can imagine and create new things but their attributes are always recombinations of the attributes of old things we already know about. a green ball has an associations with 'grass' and 'apple' among many other things. My guess is that conscious perception requires both representations of oneself and the object, together with associated memories. It's possible to unconsciously interact with objects. What remains? Is there some other source of a priori stimulus? A generative factor from which perturbations in consciousness arise? Is there nothing but consciousness of being conscious? Absent that, is there simply a feeling of existence? This is the root at which we strike. We've removed the requirement of outside stimulus, so now remove the inner stimulus of memory. This seems to be where your argument kicks in since you would need some state in order to build such an inner world but I think the point of the article is that you could suppose that there is some aspect of consciousness that underpins the whole thing. This seems absurd (and I think it is) and that is why 2 is brought on as a further distinguishing factor, perhaps the distinguishing factor since you can now imagine a consciousness existing with only reference to itself. This is really just behaviorism and I argue that it would also apply to an individual in that their inner experience may very well just be an illusion. If you accept 1 alone then you leave open the question of the zombie problem usually given as every conscious agent except for yourself is just acting as if they have an inner life but really are just responding to outside stimulus by some unknown mechanism. This is the conscious agent acting on itself.ġ is generally agreed upon as the required part of the definition. This is the world acting upon a conscious agent and the agent acting upon the world.Ģ) awareness of oneself and one's inner experience and self reflection and the ability to cause changes in oneself. I think the confusion here is due to the fact that there are two arguable parts to the definition of consciousness.ġ) awareness of objects, events and other stimuli and the ability to respond to those inputs with some output.