Comment by tancop

1 hour ago

It does have bearing if your definition of consciousness rests on free will and you think that's incompatible with determinism. Now I don't think a lot of people seriously believe that [1] but it's not some logical nonsense.

[1] Off topic: I think most people are really compatibilist but a lot of them (like me) also believe in non determinism. Not believing in free will is really rare.

I have never come across this position argued seriously. I would also consider it absurd, as then the question whether we have consciousness depends on unknown properties of fundamental physics (which is not incompatible with determinism, see e.g. Bohms theory). It would therefore be unknown whether humans are conscious. That is at the very least a notion of consciousness that is utterly distinct from any established meaning of the word.