Consciousness Trilemma

[Angrboda]

More philosobabble that doesn't mean anything.  Ontologically subjective?  Wtf does that even mean?

You don't know what ontologically subjective means? How is that my problem?

Ontological subjectivity

Searle has argued[48] that critics like Daniel Dennett, who (he claims) insist that discussing subjectivity is unscientific because science presupposes objectivity, are making a category error. Perhaps the goal of science is to establish and validate statements which are epistemically objective, (i.e., whose truth can be discovered and evaluated by any interested party), but are not necessarily ontologically objective.

Searle calls any value judgment epistemically subjective. Thus, "McKinley is prettier than Everest" is "epistemically subjective", whereas "McKinley is higher than Everest" is "epistemically objective." In other words, the latter statement is evaluable (in fact, falsifiable) by an understood ('background') criterion for mountain height, like 'the summit is so many meters above sea level'. No such criteria exist for prettiness.

Beyond this distinction, Searle thinks there are certain phenomena (including all conscious experiences) that are ontologically subjective, i.e. can only exist as subjective experience. For example, although it might be subjective or objective in the epistemic sense, a doctor's note that a patient suffers from back pain is an ontologically objective claim: it counts as a medical diagnosis only because the existence of back pain is "an objective fact of medical science".[49] But the pain itself is ontologically subjective: it is only experienced by the person having it.

Searle goes on to affirm that "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality".[50] His view that the epistemic and ontological senses of objective/subjective are cleanly separable is crucial to his self-proclaimed biological naturalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle

So it's a nonsensical neologism coined by John Searle.  Try thinking about shit for a change instead of blindly regurgitating bullshit.  It isn't a sensible definition because it endorses the conclusion that ontologically subjective phenomena are not also ontologically objective.  In other words, it's nothing more than the mysterians' claim that consciousness has no third hand objective description.  That's begging the question on Searle's part and being stupid about philosophy on your part.

Well, ignoring the straw man for the moment, you've yet to give any reason why this might be so.  When you step beyond your empty predicates, it turns out you're not saying anything at all about consciousness and its character.

I don't have to say anything about consciousness to know that I am experiencing something. I have direct first person awareness of my own subjective experience. I can be completely wrong about what I am experiencing but I can't be wrong about the fact that I am experiencing.

And the reason you can't be wrong is what?  Stop bleating and start backing up some of these statements.  

Completely ignoring all my arguments about how it makes zero sense to say that consciousness itself is an illusion regardless of the fact that what we are conscious of may not be what we think we are conscious of. Once again, the fact that we are conscious is not an illusion even if what we are conscious of is not what we think we are conscious of.

Being conscious of something else is still really being conscious of something. Even being conscious of an illusion is really being conscious ofa n illusion.

And the misrepresentations just keep on coming.  You have presented no argument.  You've claimed consciousness itself, not the thing in its intentionality, cannot be an illusion.  But your entire argument is nothing more than bare assertion and an appeal to incredulity.  You can't imagine how consciousness itself could be an illusion.  I get that.  That fact in and of itself is not an argument.  

Searle did no such thing, he merely unveiled his prejudice against third hand knowledge of subjective experiencing.

He is the one making a distinction between first and third hand knowledge whereas Dennett acts as if first hand experience isn't real and that all that matters is third person knowledge.

When the testimony of the witness is impeachable, we must rely on other facts for the truth.  That isn't acting as if first hand experience isn't real, it's acting as if first hand experience is illusory.  The point that Dennett makes in the video is telling in that regard.  Consciousness must take both time and space inside the brain to develop.  It makes no sense to talk of a 'now' in which you are experiencing something.  There is no imaginary finish line in the brain where things pass from being perceived to being phenomenologically experienced.  Consciousness is spread out in space and time in the brain.  That spreading out matters.  Therefore any naive supposition that consciousness is 'experiencing' the moment must be an illusion.  You can bleat all you want about how it's not an illusion, but unless you're advocating something other than a material basis for consciousness, you are wrong.

Far from the subject being too subtle for me: no wonder you don't understand the category error in question if you ask me what ontologically subjective "even means". That's the category error I'm addressing and you are insiting Searle is wrong when you don't even know what it means? Talk about the argument from ignorance, Jor. It's got your name on it right now.

Don't ask me what something "even means" and yet at the same time tell me it's not a category error. Is it not an error to you because you don't understand it?

Basing your position on absurd neologisms isn't helping your case any.  Searle has buried his real objection in nonsensical terminology, and you fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

This is unsubstantiated nonsense.  We've already discussed ways in which it appears that cannot be the way in which it is.

You're asking for a third-person substantiation of first-person expereince. So it's your position that's nonsense. This is the category error I'm talking about.

The reality of subjective experience doesn't need to be and cannot be substantiated objectively. That's the whole point. You're not going to substantiate it by addressing something else and giving it the same label.

Cannot be substantiated objectively?  Your claim is nothing but a claim.  Like I said, unsubstantiated.

No we haven't discussed ways in which the reality that we expereince things is an illusion. We have only discussed ways in which the reality of what things we experience can be an illusion in the sense that we can be experiencing other things. You prove my point here:

It would mean that the model by which the brain represents its own process to itself is accurate.  Since it isn't and cannot be, then the 'what' of conscious experience is an illusion.  It's that simple.

This is what I have been saying all along. The WHAT is an illusion but not the THAT.

You're playing word games.  The what referred back to "the model by which the brain represents its own process to itself."  That is the that of consciousness.

You're seriously misrepresenting what Dennett was saying.  I watched until the 30 minute mark, and he hadn't yet finished the point he started making at 13:13.  You took an isolated segment out of a longer explanation and declared your misquote as his meaning.  You're being unfair to Dennett and terribly dishonest.  If that is what you think he said, in context, I can only conclude that you're incompetent to interpret anything Dennett says.

This is very pathetic of you. Once again you just tell me I need to watch more and I don't understand rather than bother to explain anything like I have. I've watched that whole talk and you merely assert that I do not understand it.

You misquoted him as supporting Quining the problem when that clearly wasn't what he was supporting.  Your continued dishonesty is what's pathetic.

Either you intentionally misquoted him, or you simply misunderstood him.  Either way, that's on you, asshole.

That isn't even close to conflating the two, as he's talking about different levels of description of the experience.  The red stripe does not in fact exist in the world at large.

Wrong he said it doesn't exist in your brain either. Obviously the illusion of the red stripe exists in the form of neurons.

I was mistaken,  Your confusion began earlier than the 13:13 mark which you directed me towards.

This is all in the context of responding to the anti-reductionist argument based upon Liebniz' law.  There is nothing in the brain that is literally a red stripe.  He makes clear the literal nature of the comparison by talking about striations in the brain, etc.  He isn't saying that the red stripe does not exist as a representation of a red stripe in the brain, but that it does not literally occur there.  I think you've misunderstood the point he was trying to make there and its limited applicability.  The line on the slide says, "If A is a red stripe, and nothing in the brain is a red stripe, then nothing in the brain is identical to A."  That's as far as that particular point goes.  You've mushed together quining and a limited response to the Liebniz'ian argument until they're the same thing in your mind.  He goes on to state the materialist's response that, "it only seems to you that there is a red stripe that you are experiencing."  No conflation, just your misunderstanding a classic argument in the literature for something that Dennett was advancing.

You don't even know what "ontological subjectivity" means and yet you still claim Dennett isn't making an error you don't even understand.

That's because ontologically subjective doesn't mean anything.  It's a stand-in for Searle's assertions about consciousness.

If you can't grasp modal logic and the absoluteness of the logical absolutes being true in all universes, and you can't grasp the fact that the real/illusory distinction between real appearances and illusory appearances can't be applied to subjective appearance itself...

There's that assertion again that experience can't be illusory.  Shame you've got nothing to back it with.