Say, let’s admit consciousness is the result of a physical process.
Then say this process only goes “forward” when our time coordinate increases. Just like an egg gets cooked when it’s temperature coordinate increases, but it doesn’t get more or less cooked when it’s temperature coordinate decreases.
This would mean that going back in time doesn’t result in any perceptible change, since your consciousness hasn’t evolved from it’s “former” state.
Thus making it possible for us to be travelling through plenty of dimensions in varied directions, only ever experiencing the brief times when you happen to be moving in increasing time. Or whatever combination of movement along varied dimensions makes it possible for you to be conscious.
TLDR: i need to take shorter showers
This is not unique to the science of consciousness. Extreme scepticism can kill any science from the get-go. Sure, we can’t prove that other beings are conscious. But we also can’t prove that the external world exists, either. Does that mean we’re doing to stop doing physics? No, because some forms of extreme scepticism are simply unreasonable. If we wait around for solutions to these radical sceptical scenarios then we’re never going to get anywhere.
I think it is unique. Consciousness of anyone but yourself is immediately an unknowable thing. There are no related effects we can measure. There is nothing we can predict based on it. You can do pseudo science with it and that could have great value, but it will always fall apart under proper scientific method. Other sciences require assumptions, like that logic holds, math is consistent, the world exists etc. and so they are tested under that caveat implicitly. You can also make an assumption that consciousness exists in some cases - but it doesn’t lead anywhere. Like arguing whether a computer can be conscious leads back exactly and only to your original assumptions and so they add no value.
Are you suggesting that consciousness is the only science that has to contend with extreme skeptical scenarios?
It’s the only one that I can think of that might actually matter from an ethical point of view as ai approaches the appearance what could be considered consciousness. What else are you thinking about that relates?
There are certainly more ethical implications to the science of consciousness than there are to other sciences, but I feel like that’s a different discussion
Yes, but that’s the only reason it really matters at all. It’s inherently unprovable and unknowable so there nothing to do any science on. It’s philosophy or meta physics, which is great, but cannot be definitive.