section_path: Philosophy of mind/Coherence of the concept
section_name: Coherence of the concept
paragraph_text: Coherence of the concept
  
  Philosophers differ from non-philosophers in their intuitions about what consciousness is. While most people have a strong intuition for the existence of what they refer to as consciousness, skeptics argue that this intuition is too narrow, either because the concept of consciousness is embedded in our intuitions, or because we all are illusions. Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousness depends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of entities, or identities, acting in the world. Thus, by speaking of "consciousness" we end up leading ourselves by thinking that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic understandings.