Hi Alex

I agree – more or less anyway – with the suggestion that we sometimes have difficulty describing what we think or feel.  But I don't see how that impinges on Hacker's argument.

He is taking exception, inter alia, to the claim that what is unique to conscious beings is that there is ‘something that it is like’ for them to be the beings that they are.  If this claim made sense – and I agree with Hacker that it’s a philosophical muddle – presumably it would make no difference whether said conscious beings were, or were not, able to articulate their thoughts and feelings well.  One could perhaps concede that the ‘something it is like’ feeling/experience is hard for some to articulate, but that wouldn’t change the nature of the basic philosophical claim being made.

Moreover, I don’t recall this being part of the arguments advanced by advocates of the thesis.

The ‘something it is like’ proposition is, to my mind, a complete furphy, an embarrassment. The sooner it’s consigned to the dustbin of philosophical history, the better for philosophy.

DA