Consciousness & Space-Time

[Angrboda]

I pointed out that the evidence for this infallible dimension of consciousness could not come from consciousness' own opinion of itself, but he ignored that objection and suggested that consciousness could not be mistake about, say, the brute fact that it is "experiencing" pain.

First, you have merely stated that infallible evidence cannot come from consciousness itself. That itself is a judgement of consciousness that could be fallible. Your statement cannot be proven one way or the other, it's an assertion, nothing more.

No Chad, it's the observation that appealing to consciousness itself as the evidence for its infallibility is circular and thus begs the question. It's simple logic, which you want to suspend because it's inconvenient to you.

Second, the "brute fact" of sensation is different from opinions formed about why we have sensations, etc. You have moved the goal post to an area you feel safe defending. Sensation is a form of primal knowledge.

A what? Now you're just inventing terms to cover over the fact that, in your view, it's sufficient to say, "Golly, it seems true to me, therefore it must be true." We've discussed this before. If it's knowledge, then jstrodel's direct experience of God is "primal knowledge", and therefore my experience of my god is "primal knowledge" and therefore true, and so we have knowledge of multiple things that can't all be simultaneously true. That doesn't sound like knowledge to me. So you say, well I'm not talking about that aspect of consciousness, but only this aspect over here. And I have to ask which aspect of consciousness you are appealing to in order to determine which aspect of consciousness is infallible? At which point you begin begging the question.

Simply because you want to believe something because doing so is indispensable to your theology does not make it "primal knowledge," it just makes you guilty of wishful thinking.

The contra-factual is that sensations are not knowledge. If that is the case them you have no content with which to build knowledge and thus no knowledge could be had, including the belief that sensations are not primal knowledge. However, since knowledge is possible, then the idea that sensations are primal knowledge is an indispensable axiom.

Sensation isn't knowledge. You are simply repeating a variant of the argument from reason, that if human reason is fallible, then no knowledge is possible. (See, for example, Wikipedia: Argument From Reason, Acts 17: Argument From Reason, or A Brief Philosophical History of CS Lewis’ Anti-Naturalistic Argument from Reason) This is a common tactic of creationists and presuppositionalists, and the only reason it is put forward is to argue for some supernatural beastie. In the case of presuppositionalists, it's god; in your case, it's supernatural consciousness.

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...Being born thick wasn't my choice, geez.

Don't be concerned, its not your fault. A true sign of intelligence and mastery of a subject is the ability to explain things clearly to laymen.

Why don't we also include that a true sign of intelligence and mastery is not to use fallacious reasoning such as denying the antecedent (apophenia wasn't able to explain things clearly to a layman, therefore apophenia has no intelligence or mastery of the subject). Really, Chad, if you're simply going to ad hominem and impugn my intelligence, try not to make simple logic errors in the process.