Another way to put it: if you ask "how can we build a bridge", I am not going to respond by saying "the physical world is an illusion, so building bridges is useless". On the other hand, if you ask "how can we build a conscious entity", I will say the question is meaningless. If you ask instead "how can we build an entity that can have a discussion on Hacker News", we have something to talk about.

I don't think the world is an illusion - but rather our perception of the world is.

We only see a very limited spectrum of light, but we don't realize the massive gaps we cannot see. All of our senses are a tiny pinhole into the world, and we base our reality on them. Our sense of smell is a fraction of other mammals, we really don't notice that a dog could be smelling 20 things in a room that we don't notice.

Not that we really have any other option, but I am just trying to explain the 'illusion' of it.

What I mean by "consciousness is an illusion" is that consciousness does not exist. It is a non issue. Again in this thread as in any other discussion on consciousness, nobody has given a definition of consciousness. There is nothing meaningful to talk about.

On the other hand, the physical world exists, or at least out perception of it exists. You might say that you also perceive consciousness, but honestly, what is it you perceive? I don't think it is the same as perceptions of physical things.

Here's a non philosophically trained attempt to at least establish a distinction between mind and matter:

What is it that people say distinguishes conscious things from non conscious things? Consciousness is affected by what other things are, vs only being affected by how other things interact with it. For example, given the right momentum, area, and angle of impact, one lump of matter has exactly the same effect on my red bouncy ball as any other lump of matter. The kind of object the lump of matter is makes no difference. On the other hand, the kind of object has a very definite effect on consciousness, more so than the material make up. This paragraph can be embedded in any kind of medium that you can read, and the medium makes no significant difference in the effect of the paragraph on your consciousness.

Does that kind of distinction seem coherent to you?

What do you mean by consciousness does not exist? How do you define consciusness? you have to have a definition so you can deny it.

Well the whole discussion is rather useless then, isn't it? Perhaps we should discuss the Spaghetti Monster instead?

Do you have to define red to discuss it?

It migth help.

Definitely, but the point I'm getting at is that there are loads of things we discuss without having to define them. Especially the basic terms of whatever you happen to be defining. I.e. do I need to define the words I use in this question for you to understand what I am asking?

If youre going to discuss something it helps to have a common ground to begin with, as i dont pretend to know what consciousness is or if it even exists, i asked Tichy to tell me his definition so i can understand what hes denying. Not to the point of defining all the words, just the basic concepts were trying to understand.

Then I am sorry, I didn't think you meant the question serious. My criticism of the whole consciousness debate is that nobody knows what they are talking about, so I am the last person who could give you that definition (since my point is that there is no meaningful definition of it).

People have this notion that there should be this something called consciousness, but they can not say what it is supposed to be. This becomes especially clear in Searle's Chinese Room where Searle describes how an intelligent process is supposedly not conscious, but he still dodges the question what he means by consciousness. To me the chinese room shows that there is no such thing (ie the notion seems to be that a human speaking chinese does so by employing his "consciousness", whereas the chinese room example basically proves that consciousness is not required).

Conceptually, its an illusion in the sense that theres "something" doin interpretation between the "real" things and our brain; in the zen koan of the tree that fells, it migth not be doing any sound because theres no brain processing the wave and telling someone that a tree falled.