I don't think they are referring to the phenomenon of consciousness, rather than the experience of consciousness itself.
Re:The Folly of Scientism
by thirdtruck on Sunday December 09, 2012 @01:44PM
(#4895531)
Where does that demarcation line fall? Is there anything to consciousness besides the experiential phenomenon?
To illustrate: there is no such thing as the movie "It's a Wonderful Life", just a series of individual frames that our eyes and brains perceive as a whole unit only because of perceptual and cognitive limitations (basically, compression). We know far less of anything beyond the present moment - speaking of individual experience - than most believe. I posit that "consciousness" exists as nothing more than a cognitive compression artifact.
Do you regard the subjective experience of being concious as a something that can be adequately described by detailing neurological processes? As in, I know you might argue that a specific combination of atoms will correspond to a specific mental state. That doesn't really tell you anything about the subjective experience of being in that mental state though.
Given the incredible variance in available descriptions of "the conscious experience", I would posit that "consciousness" itself exists only as a mental grouping and nothing distinct.
As an exercise: explain what exactly constitutes a "car", including the point where such an item officially "stops being a car" during the process of disassembly. Show your work.