Consciousness is not a 'feeling', it's simply an awareness. And I don't disagree that a physical body can experience consciousness subjectively. In fact I agree that consciousness can only be experienced subjectively even if it is transcendent. But if consciousness and its physical counterpart are one in the same, as you say, then why have two separate concepts? More importantly, how did consciousness as a separate entity even come into existence if it is just really 'brain waves' for instance?
But despite the materiality being the same, the character of those concepts are different. A concave mirror has a different characteristic from a convex mirror. A black object has a different characteristic from a white object. Your position is that a conscious object has the same characteristic as a physical object - in this case a brain. The analogy doesn't quite work.
My body is a material object. I don't require it to be outside of itself for me to qualify it as an object. Of course, as we have agreed, the assertion that it is an object is a subjective assertion, but I can definitely say that it would qualify as an object even if it is also the subject.
The experience of consciousness is subjective, yes. Imagine a wind blowing through your hair. That wind is outside of you, but you experience it subjectively. Now, other than the obvious fact that one could qualify wind as material and consciousness as nothingness, does not dispute that something external can be experienced subjectively. I don't disagree at all with the assertion that the experience is subjective.
That doesn't quite follow. First, even science, to some degree can be wrong. So using the word 'objective' is a bit of a misnomer. But, yes, it would be quite difficult to objectively show something that does not exist objectively. The God conundrum is just one of those propositions.
Descartes Cogito has already been shown to be flawed by many continental philosophers of the 19th and 20th century. There is a fundamental assumption he makes in "I think therefore I am. " That fundamental flaw is the assumption that the party that is thinking is the same party that exists. In other words, the "I" actually exists before it thinks, and therefore thinking cannot be used to justify its existence.
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The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard provided a critical response to the cogito.[3] Kierkegaard argues that the cogito already pre-supposes the existence of "I", and therefore concluding with existence is logically trivial. Kierkegaard's argument can be made clearer if one extracts the premise "I think" into two further premises:
"x" thinks
I am that "x"
Therefore I think
Therefore I am
Where "x" is used as a placeholder in order to disambiguate the "I" from the thinking thing.[4]I am that "x"
Therefore I think
Therefore I am
Here, the cogito has already assumed the "I"'s existence as that which thinks. For Kierkegaard, Descartes is merely "developing the content of a concept", namely that the "I", which already exists, thinks.[5]
Kierkegaard argues that the value of the cogito is not its logical argument, but its psychological appeal: a thought must have something that exists to think it. It is psychologically difficult to think "I do not exist". But as Kierkegaard argues, the proper logical flow of argument is that existence is already assumed or pre-supposed in order for thinking to occur, not that existence is concluded from that thinking.[6]
Cogito ergo sum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In other words, you don't need to think in order to exist. You exist.
Similarly, you don't need to think to show that you are conscious as consciousness comes before thought. You are conscious. 'I see a book', 'I see a tree', 'I see a whatever'.. but I'm not thinking of those things in order to be aware of their existence.
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