What's the point of philosophy any more?

[Edwardo Piet]

One problem is that there have been many times when people *thought* something to be impossible that later turned out to be possible.

Yes, but that's not a problem because they were wrong for a reason... and thinking that X is Y and then realizing it is X is different to thinking that X is not X when it must be.

The difference is they thought something was impossible... and they thought wrong. It doesn't matter what someone thinks when we're talking about X is X... people don't even have to exist for the opposite of that truth to be logically impossible.

I'm talking about the very basis of what even makes sense of logical possibility in the first place. Let us not be confused about the law of identity now...

For example, Euclidean geometry was considered to be 'intuitively obvious' and that no alternative was possible.

But when Euclidean geometry was considered to be intuitively obvious and that no alternative was possible, Euclidean geometry was considered to be intuitively obvious and that no alternative was possible, right? X was not X but was thought to be X... sure. But when X was thought to be X X was thought to be X and regardless of what anyone thought X was always X... right?

So, you may know that a square is a square and a square has four sides because those are matters of definition.

Well, to reach the truth we start with definitions but definitions are just a tool and by doing that we are pointing to a truth that is absolutely true regardless of definition. Or, more profoundly, we are pointing to THE truth, that ultimately everything stands on, not only regardless of our own definitions.... but regardless of even our own existence.

Sure, we use the word "square" to refer to "an object with 4 sides", but the word "square" and the words "object with 4 sides" don't have to exist for an object with 4 sides to be an object with 4 sides.... even we don't have to exist.

In fact, even if it were possible for existence itself to not exist (it isn't).... hypothetically speaking if a square did exist it still would be an object of 4 sides even in that case.

So, I disagree that it is so easy to demonstrate an impossibility. I also disagree that things like 'consciousness' are well enough defined for meaningful discussion to proceed.

Regardless of how different people define consciousness... subjective experience to a subject is an absolute certainty, and that just happens to be how many people define consciousness.

Someone may not correctly understand the nature of their own subjective experience, and there may be alternative definitions of consciousness that are easier to make sense of the nature of... but that doesn't change the fact that that's talking about something else. A subject knows they are conscious of their own subjective experience more than they know anything else (or equally to the law of identity... after all, being conscious of your own consciousness works via a similar principle... you don't have to know what X is to know that whatever X is it is X. And you don't have to know what your consciousness is to experience it)... regardless of how confused they are about the workings of it. And no arguments about something else more easily understood and testable and calling it "consciousness" can change that. Just as calling something splitable an atom doesn't change the fact that if there is indeed some infinitesimally small ultimately unsplitable building block of reality... it may not be called an atom anymore but if it does exist and is unsplitable then it does exist and is unsplitable.... and just because Lawrence Krauss has decided to call something "nothing" doesn't mean he's actually discovered nothing.