First you declare 'Consciousness is illusion'. Then you say "Conscious thoughts are illusion". Do you not know the difference between 'conscious subject' and 'thoughts of a conscious subject'?
To declare that 'consciousness' is an illusion, a conscious subject is required. To declare that thoughts are illusions, a conscious subject is required. Dennet is under delusion himself. He confounds the subject with the object. Conscious subject cognises a thought. Even if the thought is illusion, the conscious subject is not. The very nature of the subject is consciousness -- ability to discern.
The very nature of 'you' is awareness. If you declare 'consciousness is illusion', you are simply proving that you are making a discernment (wrongly though) and this ability of discernment proves that you are a conscious subject, which cannot ever be denied. The conscious subject cannot be denied or brushed away as an illusion by the conscious subject himself/herself.
Dennet is mistaken that thought is consciousness. The ability to see and know a thought arising is consciousness and that is no illusion.
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Are you equating the conscious subject with the conscious thought? This is redundant since
all thoughts are conscious, and the subject must always be conscious to conceive thought. Consciousness is the state of awareness of thought. Essentially they are both the same. Both are zero dimensional illusions, and conceptual states of being. Let me try to give you my understanding of the mind(soul)/body duality.
I define consciousness as the process of the brain creating multiple feedback loops, to create a model of yourself in space and time, with regards to others in space and time, in order to satisfy certain goals. I believe that there are three stages in the development of consciousness. Even you would agree that newborns do not have the same consciousness as an adult? I also believe that consciousness is NOT completely deterministic, because of the illusion of free will. Of course you would have to define what free-will is in a biological system. The brain also has no CPU, Pentium chips, sub-routines, operating systems, and no software, therefore it is not a digital computer. It is just a very sophisticated neural network, and a biophysical learning machine. The brain is the "wet-ware" that runs the software called the mind. Eventually we will be able to map all the neural connections in the brain. It is called a "Collectome", similar to the Genome.
Level one stage of consciousness is modelled from the development of the reptilian part of our brain(Alligators, crocodiles, etc.), during our infant and toddler stage of development. This is the part of the brain that gives us our sense of balance, hunger, thirst, territory, instincts, position in space, primal needs, and fear. Level 2 stage of consciousness("monkey brain stage") is modelled from the development of the central parts of the brain during our early adolescence. This is the part of the brain that gives us an understanding of social hierarchy, politeness, social etiquette, reading body language, emotions, sex drive, and determining friend from foe. Level 3 stage of consciousness is modelled from the development of the prefrontal cortex(front part of the brain), during adulthood. This is the part that differentiates us from the rest of the animals. Only humans have level 3 consciousness. Other than just our higher cognizant abilities, we can understand the concept of what tomorrow means. We daydream, plan, and can save-off immediate rewards until some other time in the future. No other animal can do this, consciously.
Many physicists and neuroscientists feel that consciousness can be quantified, and measured. Temperature seems to be the fundamental unit that can be used to count the number of neural feedback loops.
