Justification for Foundational Belief

[Angrboda]

I missed this point on my first pass, which was a bonehead move on my part, but I'll correct that error now. And this objection is more fundamental to the claim that consciousness exists is an objective fact. We don't have any objective evidence pertaining to consciousness. Consciousness, as a material, natural process, has never been observed, measured, quantified, mapped, diagrammed or otherwise demonstrated in any objective way. All that we know about consciousness, mostly, comes from its own self-reports, analogy and metaphor, and inferences based on correlation between subjective experience and objective brain events and conditions. Nobody has closed the loop between the two. We have no "third person account" of what consciousness actually is. We have no process level description of consciousness. What we have is a big black box, a black box which we believe, with some justification is inside the larger box known as the brain, but exactly what, where and how, we have surprisingly little knowledge of. So to assert that "consciousness exists" or "conscious thought exists" as an objective fact, either reflects a naive and ignorant view of cognitive science, or in a worst case scenario, a balls to the wall absurdity. At minimum, it is a weak bluff. I call your bluff. Show me, objectively, what consciousness is.

(**) Oh, and a clarification. I believe I stated that I would "readily argue that neither is objectively true" of the claims that "existence exists" and "conscious thought exists", or something similar. That was a misstatement on my part. What I should have stated is that there is no conclusive and reliable justification for believing that either are necessarily, objectively true. They may be true, and depending on definitions, it may be most reasonable to accept them as true without rigorous justification. However, that bar is far below the bar of knowing these propositions to be objectively true; that bar, the lower bar, reduces belief in existence and consciousness to little more than articles of faith. And that's neither knowledge, nor is it objective.