RE: The Value-Laden View of Life
yes. Consciousness is for the most part an illusion and there are pretty good evidence for this. Even in times we think we get it all "clear" our past experiences are so full of false concepts and perceptions that make the current experiences complete delusions (not just illusions). Consciousness is based on memories and past experiences. If memories are mostly made up shortcuts, mixed up with dreams and false perceptions (i will let you google it) then the sheer clusterfuck of the sum of all people's beliefs become nonsense.
There are philosophers who share your opinion, like Daniel Dennett, but then again he's the guy who believes free will exists. And that our actions are 100% determined. Go figure.
As a "philosopher" you shouldn't make these logical fallacies. I am an atheist, Stalin was an atheist, therefore I support mass killings? :) come on. don't let me catch your leg that easy.
"For the most part", you say, so I would ask about the part that remains. I'm aware of all the ways our minds trick us, but that's a different question. There is one thing about which it's impossible to be wrong - the one thing in the world we're certain about - and that's that we exist. That's what Descartes proved with his famous line (there's a whole passage and a whole book wrapped around that single line), even though it's fashionable sometimes now to challenge it, but really no one could ever prove him wrong without contradicting themselves. I could be a brain in a vat, you could be a robot, this could all be happening in my mind or in a dream, I could have been created just a millisecond ago and all my memories could be implanted - but there's one thing I can't be wrong about: I AM. (And by that, we mean consciousness, we mean our qualia to use the philosophical term.)
Let me rephrase that for you. "Alex is a philosopher. Therefore he should be very aware of this fallacy - just because Dennett is wrong about one thing, doesn't mean he's wrong about another thing. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that Alex wasn't making that fallacy. If that's true, then what else could he be trying to illustrate with that paragraph? Maybe he was trying to say 'There are great philosophers who share your opinion. But don't get all jolly just yet: just because they're great doesn't mean they're right. After all, the same philosopher, despite his greatness, is a compatibilist about free will.' Yes, that seems like a far more reasonable interpretation."
Or maybe, even better: "That was just a side-thought, after all Alex always tends to talk too much."
(I am also aware the fallacy of which you have accused me is a different one than the one I used in my rephrasing.)
The other part is the limited spectrum of our perception as biological beings with a specific setup. The only thing that is impossible to be proven wrong is that everything changes. Everything else is a subject for debate.
As for the second part. You are trying to bullshit your way through. You made a fallacy. get over it.
[I'm having an almost identical discussion in another post and I thought you'd love to read @heretickitten's response, which is like your own, and I love the way it's worded:]
No, I'm saying that consciousness doesn't really exist. The illusion is just a bubble surrounding a machine.
We are already living in the illusion. What IS consciousness? It's hard to define, right?
It's just the idea of taking in sensory information and processing it, isn't it?
It's mechanical and stilted. Smarterchild, that old chat AI, is like the most thin bubble. A few words, and you realize it's just a machine. Pop.
Cleverbot is a bit better, the bubble of consciousness illusion is thicker. You might be fooled for a bit. Even it might be fooled, from its own perspective. But with prodding... Pop.
Introduce: The Human Machine. Me or you.
How mechanical are we? Of course it seems complex, just complex enough to fool us into thinking we're free-willed or something, or that we're not a machine. But we can't see the code that we're running on. The system architecture is too complex to fully comprehend.
Yet, it is still a machine. That means our consciousness is just another bubble, and if poked enough, it could pop, revealing that we are just mechanical beings, and that the real pilot is our genetic code. Not the brain.
Pop.
random electrical signals that were evolved to make sense of specific stimuli some of the time. No need to use jargon words.
nothing more nothing else.