It's not circular reasoning, it is called apodictic truth, i.e. a truth which it is not feasible to doubt. The fact that you're able to argue the case, defeats any argument you might wish to advance, because the fact that you can argue about it means that you exist. — Wayfarer

I am just going to swap some words around in that comment to say how flawed it sounds

"It's not circular reasoning, it is called absolute religious truth, i.e. a holy truth which it is not feasible to doubt. The fact that you're able to argue the case against god, defeats any argument you might wish to advance about god, because the fact that you can argue god existence means that he exists"

That is completely circular.

And for the record I don't doubt Apodictic truth exists, I just don't think the proof of consciousness via awareness alone forms part of it.

So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything."

I agree with Augustine. If I didn't exist, I could not doubt anything. So in the same way perhaps I am not doubting at all and it just feels like I am because it feels like I exist even though I don't because there is no I. This is the crux of my argument, that you can't prove you exist just by the fact that you are self-aware. Like Augustine you might say to that, "if you didn't exist how could you have the feeling of self-awareness?" Again, perhaps I am not doubting at all and it just feels like I am because it feels like I exist even though I don't because there is no I.

You can entertain the idea that you're a brain in a vat or that existence is a dream or hallucination, but you can't doubt that you're having that experience, even if the experience is a delusion. — Wayfarer

I already stated that I don't doubt that I have awareness of my experience. Did you miss that?

I am saying that I can't prove that my awareness exists just because it exists. That is circular reasoning.

in order to think, doubt, or say anything, there must be someone who thinks, doubts, and says — Wayfarer

But we already no that that is dictated by the unconscious and the conscious mind is just an observer.

Sorry I meant abstract information in the sense of inferring from incomplete data. Errr, like they are less likely to say something probably is the case if it has only 70% percent probability. I am not saying they are just skeptical, I am saying that they don't really have a child-like imagination anymore that enables them to think about how such an such abstract ideas could possibly be true. They could take a drug and be moved to high heaven with spirituality and come back and say "nothing of it, it was all in my mind and completely meaningless... who said they needed some powerlines fixed" and go back to whatever they were doing.

The ones I have ment have sorta seemed to be lifeless drones that have just ate up atheism and haven't given it a second look.

Kind of like scientific dogmatism, same with physicists and mathematicians.

I've always disagreed that the cogito implies anything ontologically other than the fact that phenomenal thought occurs, thus it must exist — Terrapin Station

Sorry, why must it exist? And where is your proof that phenomenal thought occurs? Is the proof in the awareness of the thoughts? Because that is what I am disputing.

I think you're crossing the line in your responses to the position of saying that nothing whatever can be known by anyone, in which case, discussion is pointless. — Wayfarer

Perhaps you are right. I am just trying to say that it feels like I exist because I feel I am self aware BUT trying to prove I exist just by the fact that I am aware is not rational.

I mean I don't doubt I am aware, which is what I think you are thinking I am doing.

The parable of the blind men and the elephant is another thing altogether. — Wayfarer

Not at all. I was using it as a metaphor for how no one can "feel" the truth of what consciousness/self-awareness is and how we are all groping about in the dark to try and make sense it. You can't dispute that. It is relevant because my position is positing that you need evidence of what the full picture of the elephant is in order to call it an elephant. Likewise, you need a full picture of consciousness in order to prove it exists in the way we think it does.

I am really at a loss to see how you couldn't see that? It really is an elemental analogy.

According to whom? — Wayfarer

I am not a dictator... According to the reasoning supplied in my OP... :-O

Descartes said "I think, therefore I am", not "I am, therefore I think", so this claim seems misplaced. — Michael

I know but I was saying "I think, therefore I am" is not quite correct because you don't have to think in order for you to be aware of your own existing. I think perhaps what he ment by "think" is awareness itself and not "hearing words in your head". Then my arguments lead on from that. So I don't feel it is misplaced for that reason.

1. If I'm aware then I exist
2. I'm aware
3. Therefore I exist — Michael

Yes but that is a faulty second premise and makes it unsound but still valid. I am trying to say that you can't prove that you aware by the fact that you feel you are.

none of them IMO are as self-evident as the fact that you do exist, that you are in the sense that you stand in a relationship to what is, to being. — Erik

That is what makes it so irksome. Because it seems to appeal to common sense so much to say you exist but the fact is, as you say, there is no you that exists... just an awareness which you can't place ownership over... and leading from this, how do you prove that you are aware? Just by being aware? That doesn't cut it. How do you even know what awareness is? How can I guarantee I am experiencing something right now? Or you for that matter?

Further, why can't we say that we're aware even if the process of how this comes about remains mysterious? I may have misunderstood your point, but that seems similar to suggesting that a person who's completely ignorant about how their bodily mechanisms function can't possibly breathe, digest food, etc. — Erik

That is a good point, but slightly misunderstood. I am trying to prove my bodily mechanisms exist. I can't prove they exist just by the fact that they function or even 'appear' to function... in the same way I can't prove my self-awareness validates the realness of my existing.

Sound common sense - the nemesis of serious philosophy - would seem to suggest that you can indeed lack awareness (e.g. dreamless sleep, anesthesia), at least temporarily, and still exist. — Erik

But you are not aware of it, so therefor "you" don't exist but the body you inhabit does. I would go further in saying if you are not aware of the body then you can't know it exists at all.

When you sleep, you simply cease to be. You can't claim you arrive when you aren't aware of it, that is illogical.

Think of the self as a knife and thought as the act of cutting something.

The cutting cannot happen if the knife didn't exist in the first place.

Similarly, thought is impossible without the existence of a mind. — TheMadFool

That is perfectly sound and valid but it has nothing to do with my OP. My OP assumes this already and is dealing with how one can prove he exists apriori by the fact that he thinks. We already know we think and we already know we are dependant on a brain but that doesn't help the fact that we can't prove we exist by the fact that we are self-aware in the same light as you can't proof brains or anything else in the physical world exists just because you have sensory information about them.

I agree, I have never met an outward and friendly engineer. They always seem stuffy, too centred on details and facts and not able to deal with abstract information or inferred humour.

Qualia are what one can describe as phenomenological experience. It is unique for every individual. Even identical twins will experience the color 'red' differently; but, never be able to know the difference between how another person experiences it apart from agreeing on the social convention that the word 'red' entails what they mean. This is different than the fact that 'red' is the color with the wavelength of 650 nm. — Question

That says absolutely nothing in regard to my original comment which was that the location of Qualia is needed for proof that someone is ACTUALLY FEELING emotions and not just saying they are... like the turing test or p-zombies.

In the brain, where else? — Question

You don't understand what I am saying. Try to think about this a bit deeper and more intuitively.

Your experience exists somewhere. It is arrising from you brain, that is granted and proven! Nevertheless you can have neurons fire and no one to experience it. Neurons firing is one thing but qualitative experience is another and exists in a location... here is where you need to go deeper because when I say location you are just immediately thinking "he must mean some physical approximation of a location" but that isn't necessarily so. For instance, when Neo is plugged in to the matrix, his consciousness is existing within a software OF that system. Likewise, what I propose might be a solution is that there a other dimensions in which consciousness could operate while being linked to matter.

That is drifting off tangent though, my only point is is that subjective experience is does not exist within the brain, if that were the case all you would do is open the brain up and you would see yourself existing in there. Experience is taking place in another realm completely, the realm of subjectivity WHICH CAN NOT BE LOCATED!

Where does this emergent property exist though? It is running on the brain, but it's existence is not to be found in there. Like a projector projecting on a screen, the content is not the 1s and 0s that trigger photons from the aperture but is the image on the screen and as of yet we can't seem to locate where this screen is yet we exist there all our lives.

Qualia is needed for proof of emotional reception... see this video i uploaded:

That problem can be solved ad hoc by a simulation of the entire workings of the human brain. This will be as close to real AI as one can get. — Question

Won't solve qualia though which is necessary for proving emotional reception.

I just hope we can emulate emotions in an AI machine... — Question

I thought that depended on solving the riddle of consciousness first.

You can always side major in cognitive science. I've long thought about that; but, that field is increasingly requiring some computational knowledge also if you don't want to flat out go for psychology. — Question

I was thinking of majoring in cog sci but am declining because it is too statistics based and mostly writing up lab reports on stats. Not rewarding at all and would get more psychology out of a philosophy degree tbh.

I think I'd rather be in something more social and compassionate. It just seems too lifeless... kinda like a monkey pushing buttons... something a robot can do... sorry, dont mean to say you are just a lifeless robot, but... yeah

If our preferences don't causally affect our choices, then what exactly causes us to choose one option rather than another? — darthbarracuda

Ok, thanks. understood. Why is Harris making this mistake though? What is leading him to accept compatibilism in some respects but openly deny it as well? Would not understanding it correctly cause him to endorse inconsistent arguments.

As far as I understand Harris position, he believes that the mind make decisions unconsciously without freewill and therefor no moral accountability can be placed on any subject as he is just a product of his experiences, genetics and unconscious programming. He feels choices are causally determined but not fated to happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKv2pWZkgrI

Seems like a totally legitimate standpoint to me, especially neurologically with a lot of evidential support in favor of it (see my post above). Where is the inconsistency here?

So it wasn't a big problem that continental stuff always seemed like a bunch of intentionally obfuscated gobbledygook to me. — Terrapin Station

And it isn't in reality? lol

In my experience, many professional philosophers, that most farcical of oxymorons, are gargantuan egotists. Be prepared to not have your emails read, to engage in passive aggressive conversations, and to put up with a host of downright bizarre eccentricities. — Thorongil

I feared this was so. Passive aggressive is somewhat easy to handle because it usually takes the form of a strawman or an inability to understand what the other party is putting forward.

What bizarre eccentricities are you talking about? Weird clothes and drug use?

Yes but learning that language is very difficult. You need to have certain type of mind, perhaps can easily remember insignificant details like doctors can AND a somewhat of a mathematical mind. I don't think I am geared for it, too meaningless.

I am perfectly willing to admit that reality might be greater than we think and that what we think reality is might be just a part of a greater reality. This is precisely what is proposed by some religions. — John

Not only religions but physics as well. Such as the hypothesised 11-dimensions of string theory/m-theory etc.

but we have no idea what it could be to wake from our reality to some other reality that wasn't either a displacement/ and or extension of our reality or something so incomprehensible that we could not even make sense of it let alone alone deem it to be a reality that would make our ordinary experience a dream. — John

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N,N-Dimethyltryptamine

metaphysical extremes are always excluded because a context without any content or vice versa is impossible — wuliheron

Metaphysical extremes are not always without content or context... they just have less and depending on how much validates its worth.

Dreams become reality and realities become dreams as our path shapes our feet and our feet the way. — wuliheron

That's just a fancy way of saying that there is no difference between the dreamworld and waking life. They are bound together and influence one another. However I was talking about REM sleep dreams and dreams in the sense of aspirations wouldn't make sense with what you said so you must be talking about a "dream world" as per say in order for your statement to make sense. It is not logical to say that the visions encountered in REM sleep ACTUALLY become part of your waking reality activities.

It also means Occam's Razor is paradoxical like everything else and, thanks to pattern matching or yin-yang dynamics ruling the universe the simplest explanation is either more useful or counterproductive because it is more often the most attractive — wuliheron

Funny you say that, I find that the simplest answer for something often still requires an IMMENSE amount of understanding in order to understand what it is even despite it's simplicity. For example, E=mc2 is very simple indeed but it requires us to first know what energy, mass and the speed of light is. So I agree that Occams razor can be more useful or counterprodudctive although I don't see what that has to do with your quoting me or dreams?

A simple analog systems logic that can describe both poetry in motion and crap rolling downhill becomes applicable to anything. — wuliheron

I very much doubt analog systems logic can describe poetry in motion? Doesn't it need highly complex and abstracted structures like the human brain to be able to perceive beauty, meaning and emotion?

All analog systems to do is fart out computations like a blind man.

What does it mean for something to have an objective existence? — John

Great question, you had me puzzled there to find an answer. Now that I think about it, there really is no way to find a distinction between the objective and the subjective BECAUSE we are confined to only one point of view. I can imagine what it might be like to be a hyperdimensional entity that is able to see where my self-awareness exists within a multifaceted objective world but nevertheless I am constrained to existing in a small compartment of a much larger reality.

Perhaps my inference of an objective world based on sensory impressions is undeniably false. Perhaps neutral monism or panpsychism has it correct in that everything is either one in the same or part of one consciousness in a subjective world ONLY... and that there are different slices of this subjectivity that are exclusive from one another (our single self-awareness included as one of these slices)... and even more, perhaps ONE single subjectivity unites them all together (God consciousness) that passively observes multiple subjectivities.

Then you contradicted yourself. You said doubt is like jello, there is always room for it... but apparently not for cogito ergo sum according to you.

And do you mean to say it is apriori because we arrive at by thinking about the fact that "I am thinking therefor I exist". Is it not possible to arrive at that conclusion without reason alone?

. If there is no objective world that you are perceiving, then your "subjectivity" is actually the objective world. — Harry Hindu

That isn't true, if it was true then any objective world could be called subjective. As you say, If there was no objective world that I was perceiving, then my "subjectivity" would now become an objective world. Therefore, how could I know that the objective world isn't just a completely subjective world?

Nor is it true that if subjectivity was there was it would imply I was a solipsist. I could be a panpsychist too as if everything was conscious then everything would be a subjective world.

It makes thinkers incorrectly believe that a mirage would be the object that one sees instead of the behaviour of light bent by air humidity, smog etc.. — jkop

Yes but you can't prove light or air humidity or smog has an objective existence, you can only prove you can perceive it subjectively. Even if you use instruments to detect it, they only convey information to you subjectively and it is YOU who infers that 'because my instruments tell me objective phenomena exists, then it therefor does'.

I understood that originally. Can you clarify what you said though? you just ignored it.

Even for cogito ergo sum?

If I can rephrase that to make sure I understand, i think you are missing a THE and an AN somewhere there:

The terms of reference of the subject doubted are always being taken for granted because they are parasitic on the subject being doubted?

How can skepticism be a mirage? Do you mean that there is nothing to warrant skepticism as it is empty or futile in this case?

The very possibility that you could be seeing something other than what you think you see presupposes that there is a truth about, that is a reality in regard to. what you are seeing. — John

Good point. Why should we not think there is some reality giving us sensory data? Any good reasons? No? Ok then...

dreams without reality are a contradiction explaining why its impossible to live without dreams — wuliheron

What about reality as a dream though, you didn't express that. Also, it isn't impossible to live without dreams... just ask anyone who is on benzos or smoking MJ constantly. REM sleep isn't essential, only beneficial.

I'd like to point out the the lack of free will doesn't necessitate determinism. Also, that the mind has both conscious and unconscious counterparts. Most if not all of our decisions are made by the unconscious and leave us with the feeling that we just made a choice. The truth is the choice was made WAY before the conscious mind became aware of it. (https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/)

Now seeing as you are only your conscious mind because it would be absurd to claim ownership over something of which you are not conscious of, lol... it means that our decisions are largely in the domain of the unconscious which is not you.