Consciousness & Space-Time

[Neo-Scholastic]

… 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.

Appealing to consciousness as a reliable guide to ALL its thoughts and beliefs about consciousness is indeed circular. Everyone knows we can believe things that are not true. That was never my postion.

Your question to me was if there were some things about which consciousness cannot be wrong. I replied that indeed some conscious knowledge cannot possibly be wrong. You know when you are in pain. Pain is not an illusion. It is undeniably real to the person experiencing it. Do you actually believe that you can be in pain without knowing it? Anyone can see the absurdity of that belief.

You asserted that: [all] beliefs about consciousness are fallible. Universal fallibility is a belief about consciousness: therefore beliefs about universal fallibility are fallible. That means your statement is an opinion, not a proven fact.

…in your view, it's sufficient to say, "Golly, it seems true to me, therefore it must be true."

When is comes to raw sensations yes. Views and ideas derived from those raw sensations are another matter. So you are mischaracterizing my ideas.

…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…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.

You cannot beg the question with an axiom. Rational thinking starts with what is known and proceeds toward what is not yet known. You must begin with something known to be true, or better yet, something that must be true. Please tell be what you know that must be true. Otherwise, you ideas are not truly grounded in 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.

Supernatural is simply what we call something that has no yet been incorporated into a natural model of reality. Earlier models give way to those that better account for all the features of reality that need to be explained. My only contention is that any approach to consciousness that ignores the subjective aspect of reality is woefully incomplete.

I didn't mean that you are not intelligent. I believe you are. You should be capable of presenting your ideas more clearly without the condescending and world weary tone.