http://youtu.be/XOGWbzUM-y8

Thank you for repeating yours.

Thank you for repeating your attack.

Disagreement is fine. Irrational disagreement is irrational disagreement.

Your continued instance that anyone who disagrees with you is irrational is obnoxious.

No I have not and it is quite demonstrably you who wants to argue over the definition of words by posting definitions. You cannot reasonably define consciousness and if you look at the definition you posted this definition necessarily excludes species outside of humans. You cannot see consciousness, you cannot smell consciousness, you cannot hear, taste or touch consciousness and all anyone can do is point to the effects of consciousness. This you willfully ignore just to satisfy yourself you are right. Saying something is so doesn't make it so.

Once again, you have returned to arguing over the definition of words.

Existence - "the state or fact of existence"
Consciousness - " denoting or relating to a part of the human mind that is aware of a person's self, environment, and mental activity and that to a certain extent determines his choices of action"

Good luck!

You assumed this the statement does not assume this. In fact, what the statement does is assume the primacy of consciousness. Being conscious of existence comes before existence.

Thank you for the back-handed compliment.

Wow, sounds like I hit a hot button here. If you believe that you have very little control over your own existence and experiences, good for you. Personally I think you have taken on the role of victim and most likely take very little responsibility for your life and what happens in it ( ... It's my boss's, wife's, ex-wife's, government's, mom's, dad's, (etc.) fault that I ...).

I don't believe i said electrons would turn into a toad. If i inferred that, i apologize. Maybe this will clear it up for you: http://keelynet.com/biology/reality.htm

Not true, electrons behave as electrons. The observation changes the conditions and the electrons behave as a electron being observed. Basic Heisenberg uncertainly principle at work. It's not as if observing a electron will turn it into a toad. It might dump energy and release a photon. But it will follow physics.

So no "Lathe of Heaven"

"In order to know existence you have to be conscious of it."

This statement in itself assumes consciousness and existence are two separate things, thus disproving the primacy of consciousness.

Every reasonable man knows that we cannot objectively prove anything as we are, we can only disprove. You have not managed to disprove a thing, which is why you are falling back on the insistence I "prove something can exist outside existence". At least twice now I have suggested that it is possible that both existence and consciousness are inextricable and I have flat out asked you why it has to be one or the other. All you can do is keep repeating, as if it were a mantra, that nothing can exist outside of existence. In and of itself this statement is true, but when you add to this statement the therefore consciousness is the effect of existence you've wandered into the land of misplaced concreteness. Disprove that the primacy is consciousness. Simply stating that nothing can exist outside of existence does not disprove the primacy of consciousness. It ignores consciousness.

In order to know existence you have to be conscious of it. We can logically say that the falling apple knows the top of Newton's head in the relation that the top of Newton's head stopped the apple from falling further, but even this does not disprove the primacy of consciousness.

If we are going to be truly objective, we must necessarily confront our own subjectivity or become hopelessly the effect of it.

Prove something can exist outside of existence.

Unless the primacy is consciousness. If the primacy is consciousness then existence cannot exist outside consciousness. There is another option, that consciousness and existence are inextricable and there is no primacy of one or the other but the primacy is both. We have either defined existence through our consciousness or existence has defined our consciousness and yet, we find it much easier to define existence than we do consciousness. Take note how you have systematically avoided offering up any definition at all for consciousness. One can just as easily say that nothing can be conscious outside of consciousness but neither statement effectively defines that which we speak of. We can simply define existence as all that is but since all that is includes the unknown then the unknown exists, but we can no more measure the unknown than we can consciousness.

What you are doing is relying upon logic alone to deduce the primacy of existence. There is certainly no inductive logic being used. You cannot observe the primacy of existence merely deduce it through logic. Logic is a subset of reason. Logic is a fine tool as long as the data being used is correct. It is logically correct to state that nothing can exist outside of existence, but without proving that consciousness actually exists, the logic breaks down once a deduction is reduced to "therefore consciousness can't exist outside of consciousness."

Logic is merely the tool, and reason is the faculty by which we use that tool. Who is using the tool? What is consciousness other than some abstract idea that "can't exist outside of consciousness"?

Things can't exist outside of existence.
Consciousness is something.
Therefore
Consciousness can't exist outside of existence.

You can keep stating it until the cows come home, no matter how many times you state it the statement does not disprove the primacy of consciousness. A thought cannot exist until it exists but is thought alone consciousness? What is consciousness? Where does consciousness exist? Can you point to consciousness? What is the relation of spatial and temporal consciousness? Until these answers can be effectively answered in an objective manner there can be no concrete knowledge of the primacy of existence over consciousness, merely misplaced concreteness. Further, since we have no knowledge of consciousness as a measurable object, and if we are to include consciousness as the effect of existence then existence necessarily includes both the measurable and the immeasurable, the known and the unknown, the knowable and the unknowable. You can posit the primacy of existence over consciousness but it only brings up paradoxical conundrums. How can one know the unknowable?

I doubt that everything in existence is unknowable, and if we can clearly identify, and effectively measure consciousness then I will gladly agree with you on the primacy of existence, but first we must clearly identify and measure consciousness.

As I stated earlier, nothing can exist outside of existence.

Ayn Rand's grit and guts stems from her refusal to wear any other philosophy as a smoking jacket. Either your philosophy is your own or a smoking jacket you wear.

If is the operative. At this point there is no objective knowledge to declare one primary and the other secondary. We can only make our best arguments for what we believe to be true. We can only be as objective as the facts allow.

It is disingenuous to insist the issue is the primacy of existence vs. the primacy of consciousness and then turn around and claim that my argument speaking to that issue is conflated. My argument regarding the term spontaneous speaks to quantum vacuum fluctuations or virtual particles which are described as particle-antiparticle pairs that come into existence "spontaneously" or suddenly appear, if only briefly so, out of empty space. They appear to come from nothing. Since these virtual particles are short lived their existence is in agreement with Heisenberg's uncertainty relations but does not violate the first law of thermodynamics and seems to be an example of something that exists in every best effort of objective understanding and yet comes from nothing unless we move the goal posts and redefine what we understand to be empty space. This is an issue wholly related to this topic and not "tangential" and the best we can do at this point and remain somewhat objective about the existence of virtual particles is to propose ideas that do not violate other principles or laws we've come to accept. It can be proposed that the entire universe is a giant quantum vacuum fluctuation but in order to lend credence to this proposal there is or was a total energy of zero in order to make it possible. Nothing is being conflated here, what I am doing is pointing to particular phenomenon that can only be explained at this point as "spontaneous" and this language can be explained mathematically only when proposals are made based upon this ONE objective existence as we understand it.

The real question is how do you know that the primacy is existence and not consciousness. Primacy is the state of being first or foremost. How do you know that existence came first and consciousness second? What method of objectivity led you to this knowledge?

Thank goodness for the grit and guts of Ayn Rand's words, as opposed to the flaccid smoking jacket this thread is.

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I agree with the premise of the primacy of existence. Your second point is a tangential topic that I won't address in order to not conflate the argument.