@Olivier5,
Quote:Those HUGE reasons could very well be HUGE ILLUSIONS...
yes. i accept the possibility. haha so what.
Quote:Descartes would be an obvious start, but in a more modern style you could do worse than read or hear what John Searle has to say about consciousness.
just watched john searle talk at this link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/john_searle_our_shared_condition_consciousness.html
he has a decent understanding of the phenomenon of consciousness, but assumes its reality openly and thinks he is defending this position well. he says that 'consciousness is subjective, but we can make objective claims about it. therefore, we can be objective about consciousness'.
but he has already conceded it is a subjective phenomenon. to accept subjectivity as reality is not logical, the word reality generally implies objectivity. being objective ABOUT subjectivity does not create primary objectivity.
if subjectivity is the only primary reality, then solipsism is the best way to go? your own conscious mind is the only existence, that is pure subjectivity.
he makes the basic assertion that 'consciousness is definitely real', and anyone who thinks it is an illusion is deluded. but his only argument for this case is the subjective experience of consciousness, and defining it as absolutely real.
when he claims that a conscious choice to raise an arm is explained biologically by neurons firing from the brain to the arm muscles, he fails to explain why or how the neurons fire. the conscious thought magically made them, but how? could he control the conscious thought arising? whatever he does consciously comes from memorized actions, the neurobiological pathways have fired before in the past and are able to do so again through muscle memory. the correlation of this observable biological phenomenon to conscious thought is always an assumption.
with regard to descartes, his theories about the duality of body and mind are very outdated and all current science and even everything john searle was saying implies a DEFINITE connection between body and mind, between biology and consciousness.
this is from wiki on descartes:
Quote:Descartes concludes that he can be certain that he exists because he thinks. But in what form? He perceives his body through the use of the senses; however, these have previously been unreliable. So Descartes determines that the only indubitable knowledge is that he is a thinking thing. Thinking is what he does, and his power must come from his essence. Descartes defines "thought" (cogitatio) as "what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it". Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which the person is immediately conscious.[33]
this is obviously reducing all of reality to 'thought' alone. it is solipsism at best. all activity of which a person is immediately conscious is thought. and therefore, all that activity is definitely real and exists? certainly not.
if you are going to question existence, then QUESTION IT. don't sit and say 'oh no i can't question it because i exist'. that is an assumption. question even the impulse in you which says you definitely exist. not question mentally by making up verbal questions. just actually consider the possibility, that it is just 'nothingness' which is aware of everything. that nothingness is capable of appearing as something (human consciousness), and believing itself to be the something, as opposed to nothingness. if this is true, then the somethingness must be temporary. and human consciousness is certainly temporary. so that supports the idea that it may be nothingness actually. the only proof against 'nothingness' is 'somethingness'. but both nothingness and somethingness appear to us as 'deep sleep' and 'consciousness'.
if we take the subjective 'reality' of 'consciousness' as truth, then the subjective 'reality' of 'deep sleep' must also be true, because they are both one continuous alternating process. but there is no subjective reality to deep sleep , there is absolutely no experience in it, it IS the absolute nothingness which everybody thinks is paradoxical and impossible.
you can argue that subjective experience of deep sleep is not needed and doesn't matter, because upon waking, and with memory, we can deduce that we were certainly existent but asleep. but that is an assumption. the subjective consciousness never knows the 'experience' of deep sleep as a real experience, it can only conceptualise a lack of experience.
therefore, to take waking consciousness as ultimate reality is very naive.
