7. Thus, a mind alone cannot perceive itself.
— Brenner T
My mind is here perceiving itself right now. There... and again... Maybe you should clarify what you mean by "perceive. — T Clark
I don't quite know how to word this it's such a weird thought experiment. But I think what I meant to say was something like this:
So, I imagine you are, in some way, a conscious entity. There is
something it is like to be you. That's roughly how I will define consciousness. Now, imagine you could conceptually remove your brain from the universe, as well as all matter and space. If you were a physicalist then I imagine you would believe the bits of consciousness you had would also disappear along with matter and space, if you were an epiphenomenalist I imagine you would see the possibility of consciousness collapsing as there is no more integrated biological system for it to "see through" or be logically supervenient to, and if you were a Cartesian dualist I imagine you would now imagine a vacuum devoid of time and space but with your "distinct conscious substance" still in existence. We'll call this "a mind alone." For clarification, I'll call the "conscious substance" your mind (in opposition to your brain, which is a purely physical system). Now, with no brain for your mind to "interact through," no brain to produce thoughts and ideas, and no external perceptible world, I can't see a way your "mind alone can perceive (be conscious of) itself." Or worded a different way, I don't see how there could be somehting-it-is-like-to-be a "mind alone."
Don't know if that cleared up anything...
But in short my line of reasoning then is that if there is nothing it is like to be a "mind alone," then the idea of a primordial God that preceded his creation would infer that he was once a "mind alone," and if there was nothing it is like to be that God, then it seems equivalent to nothing existing at all.
If consciousness is the "what-it-is-like-to-be"ness of something, then if there is nothing-it-is-like-to-be, then it is functionally not conscious. And if all that exists is consciousness in that scenario, then it is equivalent to nothing existing at all. And thus saying "a conscious entity (God) existed before all of creation, matter, space, and time, seems equivalent to saying "nothing existed before all of creation, matter, space, and time."