Trying to simplify my Consciousness hypothesis

[emjay]

When a person gets to put words into the mouth of their opposition, they usually end up "winning" the "argument".  

Yeah, it definitely felt strawmanny in the First Dialogue; granted it's arguing with (presumably Locke' s) direct realism, which is not my position anyway, but even within that it seems like it could be potentially strawmanning that position as well... though I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed tbh in extracting the argument... because it's not enough for me to read it and understand it, I have to be able to summarise and explain it in an exam... but it's so big, and it's in the form of a dialogue, so I have no idea where to start really At the moment I'm just trying to put it into single letter format... ie H=Heat and plug those into simple logic statements. Do you have any recommendations of what I should do? I know I can read other people's summaries but that just doesn't feel right... I need to be able to do it myself... and from the source, not elsewhere.

Anyway, the way it seems it could be strawmanning even direct realism is in saying material substance = unperceiving substance. Unperceiving substance cannot be the subject of pain. Greatest heat is indistinguishable from intense pain. Therefore intense heat/pain are one sensation... intense heat is a particular form of pain. Therefore intense heat cannot be in material substance. But where it seems to be, though I can't put my finger on it, potentially strawmanning is in equating being the subject of pain - which by definition an unperceiving thing is not - and saying material substance therefore cannot be the subject of pain = pain cannot be in the material substance. Ie a thing's ability to cause pain is very different from it being the subject of pain. So is that a 'composition fallacy'?

But anyway in any case, it is a very well written narrative and feels just like a Benny-bollocking to read But it all rests on that first dialogue, so hopefully I can figure out how to extract the whole argument and see it entirely for what it is.