consciousness-7
Explanation
This multi-panel comic tackles the philosophy of consciousness through a dialogue between a human and what appears to be an alien or robot (a grey figure). The grey figure argues: "I don't think humans are really conscious. It's all just language use, muscle-moving, and meaning." The human protests, saying they feel like they are really a person, and asks if the grey figure can even distinguish between two identical people with the same personality. The grey figure responds that it notices no difference, and that "feelings" are "base-level electrochemistry that happens to be available to you." When the human argues that feelings may still be real, the grey figure challenges them to "define 'feelings,' 'real,' and 'condition.'" The human finally yells "Stop it!"
The comic is a humorous take on the "hard problem of consciousness" in philosophy of mind. The grey figure represents a philosophical position similar to eliminative materialism or philosophical zombiism -- the view that subjective conscious experience either does not exist or is not what we think it is. The human represents the intuitive, first-person conviction that consciousness is real and self-evident.
The humor comes from the frustration of the exchange. The human keeps appealing to their felt experience ("I feel like I'm a person"), and the grey figure keeps deflecting with reductive explanations and demands for precise definitions. This mirrors real philosophical debates about consciousness, where one side insists that subjective experience is undeniable and the other side insists it can be explained away or is incoherent. The final "Stop it!" captures the exasperation that many people feel when confronted with arguments that their inner life might not be what they think it is. The title "consciousness-7" suggests Weinersmith has returned to this theme many times, which is itself a meta-joke about how irresolvable the debate is.