[paulrudy]

This point of view could be applied to any word, and the extreme result is that you'd negate meaningful or useful communication, or that someone would have to be the arbiter of what is a legitimate concept or not.

Between vocabulary, commonly understood meaning, possible meaning, and actual personal experience, there are many detours and jumps. "Dog" as a word, concept/meaning, and experience, has these issues. What's not a dog, which dog are you thinking about, and does this apply to "dog" or just those specific dogs you've experienced? Etc.

Words like "consciousness", for less concrete experiences than "dog", tend to have more fog in the gaps between word and shared meaning, and between those and individual experience.

It seems like you're trying to flatten a person's curiosity about the implications of a shared concept or experience into a "mundane" phantasm about a word whose referent is either nonsensical or nonexistent to you.

I think that the gaps between word, concept, and experience, while confusing and difficult, are worthy of more respect and wonder than to just flatten them as though their existence didn't imply something potentially important and essential is happening there. Language arose because we have actual experience to share, however tricky it can be to verbalize. It doesn't work perfectly, and leads to confusion, but here we are, reading and writing.

"Consciousness" may be a word for a slippery concept/experience, but that doesn't equate to questions about consciousness being inherently semantic.

[ninetyninenine]

>This point of view could be applied to any word, and the extreme result is that you'd negate meaningful or useful communication, or that someone would have to be the arbiter of what is a legitimate concept or not.

False. <- see? There's a word that doesn't apply. But you're not wrong. This POV does apply to MANY words. It just goes to show how MANY debates are traps. You think you're discussing something profound but it's just vocabulary.

>Between vocabulary, commonly understood meaning, possible meaning, and actual personal experience, there are many detours and jumps. "Dog" as a word, concept/meaning, and experience, has these issues. What's not a dog, which dog are you thinking about, and does this apply to "dog" or just those specific dogs you've experienced? Etc.

Right. So your example illustrates my point. Is it profound and meaningful to spend So much time discussing what is a dog and what isn't a dog? What is the definition of the word dog? No. It's not. Same. With. Consciousness. It's not profound to discuss vocabulary.

>It seems like you're trying to flatten a person's curiosity about the implications of a shared concept or experience into a "mundane" phantasm about a word whose referent is either nonsensical or nonexistent to you.

No I'm just stating reality as it is observed. The essence of a debate about consciousness is rationally and logically speaking entirely a vocabulary problem. This isn't even an attempt to "bend" anything to lean my way. The ultimate logical interpretation of any situation involving a debate on what is consciousness and what is not conscious is a vocabulary problem. Literally. Read the last sentence.

>I think that the gaps between word, concept, and experience, while confusing and difficult, are worthy of more respect and wonder than to just flatten them as though their existence didn't imply something potentially important and essential is happening there. Language arose because we have actual experience to share, however tricky it can be to verbalize. It doesn't work perfectly, and leads to confusion, but here we are, reading and writing.

Made up concepts also arise from words. Gods, goddesses, spirit, monster, hell, dryad, minitour, Cerberus. The existence of made up concepts logically speaking means that it's possible "consciousness" is a made up concept.

>"Consciousness" may be a word for a slippery concept/experience, but that doesn't equate to questions about consciousness being inherently semantic.

It does. Each question about consciousness is inherently relating the word to another semantic word. This is literally what's going on.

[mionhe]

>You think you're discussing something profound but it's just vocabulary.

Alternatively, you think they're discussing something mundane, but it's actually profound.

After all, you think you're discussing something profound, but it might just be vocabulary.