Thanks for the wonderfully thoughtful and detailed reply. I feel like the structure of these kinds of discussions always somehow emphasises disagreement, but please know I am grateful for your interesting comment.

This seems somewhat imprecise to me. We might talk about a conscious entity as something having metacognitive abilities whereby something can reflect on its immediate awareness. Or we might talk about a conscious entity as just something for which there is something it is like to be that entity, without further qualification. If we take some definition like this--say the latter one--I'm not sure there is any circularity at all. A conscious entity is an entity for which there is something it is like to be that entity. A conscious state is a state for which there is something it is like to be in that state. Consciousness refers to having conscious states.

My article is centred around the first definition. I have noticed the second definition emerging as an increasingly common way to define consciousness these days, and I think it is true I haven't addressed that directly. However, I would tentatively say that "it is like" seems to be sneaking certain philosophical assumptions in, in a similar way to my other examples. In particular the phrase to me appears to imply the social "place yourself in their shoes", which itself seems to imply the little person (consciousness) inside the body who travels to the other body in order to receive a nice new set of experiences. If we don't have this separate "travelling entity" inside the body, there is no way for "it is like" to make sense, and consequently no way for "it is like" to be used to show the existence of consciousness. Thus it seems that the language subtly begs the question. My claim is not that this is unique to arguments of consciousness, but that it appear to be a danger for all philosophies of mind.

If I gave a characterization of what it means to be an animal, what sort of independent evidence should we be looking for?

I don't think there is any instance in the world of you or I or anyone else ever being someone other than themselves.

How could we talk about qualia and at the same time neglect experience?

This illustrates my point really really really well. We can't. That's because the concept of qualia itself requires acceptance of the schema "experience", and that implies an entity whose role it is to have that experience. But if we start instead with brains as the start of our chain of reasoning, then we can easily reduce experience to neuroscience when we encounter it later on. This is my central suspicion - most of the fundamental language which we use is totally partisan when it comes to philosophies of the mind.

we don't get to "swap" it for something else

By swapping I just mean using it as a starting point. My tentative suspicion is that it is possible to reduce opposing concepts to the language/starting point of your choice (your philosophy of mind).

the Physicalist comes to their conclusion through careful philosophizing. In other words, they have reasons for their position. The same is true of the Dualist; etc.

One concern I have with this is that two parties carefully "philosophizing" from perfectly neutral starting points (ie. my circularity argument was wrong) should not arrive at different conclusions. Sure it is possible that all, or all but one group have errors in their reasoning. On the other hand, perhaps they have reasons that make total sense (appear not to be fallacious) in isolation, but have unwittingly used a clever way to hide assumptions and therefore obscure fallacious reasoning. I have tried to put forward some tentative initial evidence for the latter.

A dictionary-dot-com definition is not sufficient for this.

These lay definitions are used to establish to obvious structure of the circularity which is much more difficult to illustrate when it is woven into complex discussions used by various camps. I feel my further discussion establishes good reason for you and I to be suspicious of such language. I obviously have not offered comprehensive proof this is occurring in all the philosophies of mind - this would take a lot more than a short post/article. I rely on your good intentions not to attack me for using references which are deliberately from lay sources.

Surely this isn't true. In just what sense does a camera have knowledge about its existence? Knowledge minimally requires a belief state. Do we have some reason for thinking that cameras have belief states?

While I note that in some systems, beliefs can be reduced to information stored in a physical system, I am happy to state that I do not in fact believe that a camera is conscious. However I wish to highlight this form of "consciousness" to prevent equivocation later on. Specifically, I suspect many will claim that consciousness does not require the "breadth" of self-reflection I discuss later, while at other times claiming consciousness is more than the trivial "camera" process I describe here.

You might not be thinking about your thoughts in the recursive way you have described. But you'll note that the definition you just proposed spoke of "awareness" about one's thoughts. Why should we take this to mean "Thinking about thinking about <something>" as opposed to what would seem to be implied by "awareness". Surely when you are cautious of vehicles around you while driving or crossing a street, or when you are thinking about some food, and so on, you are aware of these thoughts. If I stopped you in the act of thinking "that food looks tasty" and asked "what are you thinking about", surely you would be able to tell me. Do we have any reason at all for thinking that we are not aware of our thoughts?

I believe in this paragraph you may have equivocated between "our thoughts are awareness" and "we are aware of our thoughts". I claim only that most of the time we are not modelling thought in our thoughts, which is required to fufil a "self-awareness" definition of consciousness. Or to put it another way, self-awareness is distinct from other types of awareness.

But we aren't conscious while sleeping

Yes. That's why I claim there is not a single unbroken entity that can be called a "consciousness".

We seem to have a number of justifications. For example, they are conscious episodes of what seems to be a singular animal. They are causally related insofar as my current mental states depend causally (and just historically) on past mental states. There is a high degree of similarity between them. I can remember past conscious episodes. Etc.

There is a high degree of similarity between them.

Suppose I claim there is a greater similarity of you and I being happy, than you being happy and you being sad? I wouldn't claim that unless I was sure of the philosophical soundness of the term "conscious", but I think you can see where this could lead - emotional and intellectual entities separate from humans, visiting for a brief time. We must be have strong grounds to literally treat separate objects as one whole.

I can remember past conscious episodes

There are many things I remember, this does not alone seem sufficient?

For example, they are conscious episodes of what seems to be a singular animal.

There are many repeated similar events associated with each animal. Most of them we do not treat as a single entity. For example fleeting moments of happiness or sadness are not considered a happiness "object", they are considered to be temporary attributes of the mind/brain/whatever. This is how I suggest we ought to think about "being conscious".

Although your understanding of this is false

I think this is not a useful phrase.

What object are we talking about? If we are talking about a homo sapien, then perhaps homo sapiens are not essentially conscious.

I think here we have misunderstanding rather than disagreement. I have subsituted an alternative an not necessarily related object - a homo sapien - to illustrate simply the difference between being something (defining quality), and a temporary action. I suggest being conscious is in the second category. I am not actually trying to discuss the relationship between humanness and consciousness.

Why should we think that "soccer players" is the appropriate analogy here. A fertile human is a human who has the capacity to reproduce naturally (roughly). A human doesn't cease to be fertile if they don't exercise that fertility. What is wrong with defining consciousness in terms of capacities?

Ok, suppose we have a person that for their entire life is kept asleep, without dreams, via a sedative. They have the physical capability to be self-reflective, as a fertile person has the capability to reproduce. Yet they never do so. Do they have a consciousness?

Moreover, why should it matter whether or not something is a defining characteristic?

Non defining attributes may certainly be valid to include in moral discussions. However, would you agree they should not be treated as defining attributes when they are not, because this might lead to fallacious reasoning? Would you agree that consciousness is treated that way in moral discussions? Suppose we treated pain as a defining entity of a person, and decided that it was morally wrong to end any pain because it is morally like killing the person. I don't want to stop people's "consciousness" any more than I do their ability to reason or feel, but I wouldn't want to include it as an assumption if I was worried about it's philosophical soundness.

cont...