March 2023

A few years ago I wrote an amateur paper on consciousness, or more precisely, a paper describing the notion that we don’t have any reason to believe that anything such as consciousness exists. I sent the paper to a journal, but of course it didn’t get published. It was something of an immature rebellious manifest anyway.

I'm not saying we have an absence of evidence for the existence of consciousness, although we do. I’m saying we have an absence of reason to assume that consciousness exists. It is the traditional debate of the existence of God - there is no evidence on either the existence or non-existence of the supreme being, as is the case with consciousness.

The easiest way to demonstrate the redundancy of the concept is, ironically, the philosophical zombie argument. Imagine that the world was just like it is, but no person had consciousness. Everyone behaved exactly as they do now, but there would not be anyone home; only walking meat machines. By definition, you would not be able to tell the difference. In this scenario, the only person with a consciousness would be you. Our p-zombies have an identical human brain, too, just absent whatever we believe consciousness to be.

Now, how would you know that you had a consciousness? How could you determine that for yourself? More importantly, how could you prove it? You could say to yourself that you experience things, that you had to have a consciousness, but then again, so can every p-zombie. What changes can you induce in the physical world that prove you to have a consciousness and not be a p-zombie like those around you?

I have not been able to figure out the answer, and I find it unlikely that anyone can. As it happens, the concept of consciousness only exists in our language domain, and has zero influence on the physical world. Too often we mistake language as an accurate mirror of reality.


Thanks to Benjamin, Olli, Matti & Itamar for reading different drafts of this essay.