consciousness?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Ignoring that you just essentially conceded every point I made…

I affirmed that your points contained some truth, but attempted to show that they were inadequate resulting in an incomplete theory.

Your claim: "Clearly, reality consists of both observable third-person facts and first-person qualitative experiences."

A) a priori reasoning cannot establish the nature of consciousness (thus this conversation; more below);

B) we have no actual empirical evidence of consciousness itself (even physicalists are lacking here, at present);

C) if it is non-material (my term was actually, had "properties"), there can be no empirical evidence of consciousness;

D) empirical evidence is our only source of a posteriori knowledge;

C1) Since a priori and a posteriori are the only means by which we can acquire knowledge of the nature of consciousness, and both are excluded, we cannot have knowledge of the nature of consciousness (at present, based on what we know);

C2) If [C] and no empirical evidence of consciousness is possible in principle, and [A] holds (not knowable a priori), then knowledge of the nature of consciousness is not possible even in principle;

C3) If we (currently) do not have knowledge of the nature of consciousness [A, B, & D], then the assertion that "Clearly, reality consists of ... first-person qualitative experiences" is clearly absurd, as it is inherently a claim about the nature of consciousness.

Apo, if you cannot confirm the qualitative reality of your own life, no argument would be sufficient to demonstrate it to you. Nevertheless…

Premise A is true only with respect to the quantitative nature of consciousness. Premise A is not true with respect to the qualitative nature of consciousness. When I have a headache I feel real pain regardless of whether I believe it is caused by stimulation in my thalamus or a malicious spirit.

Premise B only applies to third-person types of knowledge, so any conclusions based on Premise B will only apply to third-person types of knowledge.

Conclusion C3 only applies to third-person knowledge about the nature of consciousness. Your argument says nothing about first-person experience. Every conscious person has first-person knowledge of what they are thinking and feeling. They may not know why they think what they think or how they feel what they feel, but they do know that they experience life through thinking and feeling.

In your previous posts there appears, to my impression anyway, an underlying assumption that I think needs to be made explicit and either confirmed with justification, or denied. That is the assumption that there are certain facts about conscious experience about which consciousness cannot be wrong.

Yes, that is true. Pain, for one.

Given that this is a statement about consciousness, it seems prima facie evident that the justification for this assumption can't come from the impressions of subjective experience, as the circularity there is obvious, rendering the justification null and void.

There is no circularity in a singularity. It’s not that we have knowledge of certain conscious experiences, but rather certain conscious experiences are in themselves knowledge. Felt experience is not an attribute of something, it is the something.

…So ultimately, even taking Descartes into account, there is no fact of consciousness about which that consciousness cannot be wrong.

That is an oversimplification that leads to false conclusions. Distinctions must be made between levels of conscious experience. Descartes was writing about consciousness as personal identity, the “I” of his existence. That is a very high level of consciousness, perhaps the highest. As such, he could be wrong about many things related to how personal identity is constructed. We can believe many and various things about ourselves that are wrong, but we cannot be wrong about believing that we have beliefs.

…you do not…have any reliable foundation for the claim that "first-person qualitative experiences" are a part of reality independent of being processes implemented in the brain. (And I realize in formulating this last sentence that I may have constructed a strawman. Feel free to let me know if that is the case.)

It is a strawman, because I am not attempting to say that first-person experiences are independent of the brain that has them. I am saying that they, mental and material, are distinct types of properties each of which has recognizable effects on reality. By analogy, balls roll regardless of what they are made of. Unfired clay can be molded regardless of the shape it currently has. But, in any particular instance, form and substance do not occur one apart from the other.