Consciousness Trilemma

[The Grand Nudger]

You are matching local and general truth values into the same context for comparison.

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If there are no discrete systems...then there cannot be a discrete system that maps to our conscious experience.  

Ultimately, I do not know what is true-- only what seems true to me.  If this is sufficient, then my consciousness may be taken at face value; if not, then by what standard will you judge, one way or another, assertions?

What seems true to you is very often wrong.  Eliminitive materialists judge the assertion of your experiences accuracy by relation to whether or not there is anything in your brain that is, or could...do what you say "you" are doing.  

No, I think this is special pleading, now.  

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It's just an explicit admission that our language and concepts regarding what solid was or referred to were in error.  We couldn't pass through an object, we threw shit at it and that stuff couldn't pass through - so we called it solid.  We assumed that there was no space to pass through..and this assumption necessarily poisoned our understanding of what it meant to be solid....as it's poisoning your understanding of both solidity and materialism in general..... right now.  

Similarly, we assume that there is some I in there because our experience seems to strongly suggest that there is.  Is there?  Do you think that there's an I in our brain?  Because..if you don't...you're not disagreeing.  

The table is not literally solid, because it consists mainly of empty space.  It is solid in the sense that it seems so, and that our definition of solidity rests only on seeming so.  This should sound familiar, because it's similar to the way in which consciousness is "literally" a certain way because it seems to be so.

Our idea of what solid was was in error, but that doesn't make any object any less of what it is...I still can't walk through a wall.  Similarly, if you'll allow for us to be conscious in the same way that a table is solid..an eliminitive materialist, like dennet, will say;

"OFC consciousness exists, it's just not what you think it is"

-and proceed to offer an eliminitive materialists explanation of that thing...such as multiple drafts.  

Do you have a substantive objection or a laundry list of semantic objections?  

I would argue that there is likely NOTHING that is as it seems, and that therefore all our experiences should be thrown out on the basis that they are illusory.  Then what?  I think you're trying to have your cake and it eat, too, by conserving those views which you find pragmatic or comforting, and expecting those which do not accord well with your philosophical beliefs to be abandoned.

I don't know how many times I have to explain that I'm not an eliminitive materialist, lol.  I'm just trying, and failing, to help you understand their position.   The only way to disagree with eliminitive materialism is to say that there -is- some discrete mental state of self, some discrete mental state of qualia.  A materialist can;t do that without finding that state or at least explaining how it would be possible.  You can..but then the question is simply asked again - does whatever that thing is and how it works map to our experience?  How does it, whatever it is, whatever it;s made of, wherever it resides, -do- that?

Delaying the necessary reduction. 

And again, we loop back to my pet idea of truth-in-context: the truth of statements seems to depend not so much on actual objective truth, but on the way in which we decide to frame our perspective and define out terms.  I advise adopting a more flexible approach to truth.  For example, in the context established by a material monist view, we can say that certain ideas of mind are untrue.  On the other hand, in the context established by our subjective experiences, given that the self and the perceptions it experiences are brute facts, I would argue that such a monism cannot possibly express or explain those experiences.

-and there's the trouble.  We're constantly looping back round to your own ideas while pretending that we are addressing or even disagreeing with -their- ideas.  We aren't. Maybe your own ideas are just flat out wrong? No amount of referring to them will tell us anything about eliminitive materialism's position. Just as no amount of referring to your misaprehensions of solidity will tell us about the structure of material objects. To an eliminitive materialist, no amount of referring to what is not there or cannot be will explain our consciousness.