In what sense is Descartes's dualism wrong?

[Skepdick]

That is not the real point, we don't need to question ghostly subjects. Just see how you experience the world and yourself alive. What we call our "head", "body", "neurons" are only symbols, representations IN our mind itself.

No, symbols are not in minds. Symbols externalise the contents of minds.

They can't have any reality in-itself since they are already figments and virtual projections IN us. It can't be otherwise. And these figments we then would like to put as basic stuff from which everything else comes from? One can't posit as essence of the world something which is already an illusion.

Symbols have a reality. These are symbols on your screen right now. They are real.

These real symbols on your screen don't have any inherent meaning.

There was the intended meaning (when I uttered them)
And there is the interpreted meaning (when you read them).

Ok, colloquially I would say that "mind" is that part and inner plane in us that thinks, reflects, has analytic and rational functions, represents and organizes concepts by models discerns, discriminates, is thinking intelligence, is intellect. It is not consciousness. Because consciousness is pure awareness, pure 'beingness', pure existence pure sentience, absolute silence, spaceless, immobile, featureless, the knower who knows oneself which does not need mental constructs to know itself.

OK... if the mind discerns, and consciousness is aware:
1. What discerns between mind and consciousness?
2. What is aware of that distinction?

These are only words which, if you dissect it intellectually in a spatio-temporal context might not be meaningful.

You are using those words. They sound meaningful to you. If they were not meaningful you wouldn't be using them.

But if one looks for a moment inside instead of always externalizing ones mind being caught in external phenomena, then the distinction makes sense.

I am of the precisely opposite opinion. Mind and consciousness are one and the same thing. The distinction exists only in as much as it's useful drawing it towards understanding oneself.

I understand myself, so I don't find the distinction useful. My identity is not fragmented. I am all of me.

One has to put the label "self-" only because we are using words. In this case "self-referencing" means just being, , not doing anything.

OK.... so why do you draw a distinction between being and consciousness?

This leads to a halt of the cognitive process, not to a circular process.

That's what I am telling you - they aren't circular. They are recursive!

It is a typical example where logic, which is a mind construct

So "consciousness" and "being" are not mind constructs then? This is so confusing!

and that wants to talk about something which goes beyond itself. Because it can't capture these things.

I am talking about myself. What about myself could possibly go beyond myself?

This does not mean however that we can't know it. It is a question of method. If you want to know what it is about you have to go inside without looking for models outside.

I am looking inside. That's what I am saying! Looking inside myself is recursive.

Looking inside the looker.

No, it is an experiential fact that they are distinct. The distinction is real as the distinction between the canvas and the painting colors or the cinema screen and the light of the film.

Cool. I can go with that: what cognitive process draws distinctions?

It is a question to see clearly what it is as it is without constructing on it concepts. Whereas, if one conflates the two then we will be confused by things like we would by equating milk with cheese, ice with liquid water or waves with the ocean. Of course they are intimately related, but you will fall in lots of fallacies and misrepresentations and misinterpretations if you will take them as synonymous.

What determines what is a fallacy and what is "not a fallacy" ?

I am appealing to the rule-following paradox.

Right. We might collapse the witness with consciousness, provided however that we do not conflate also the witness with the individual (I, ego, one's individual mind, one's body, brain, etc.).

Well. When I use the word "I" I am referring to the witness.

But then again, when I use the words mind, consciousness, I, witness - I am really referring to the same thing.

Me. What else could I be referring to?

Of course experiences change. I didn't write that experience does not change. What does not change is the witness in the background that is aware of that change. That does not change and that is consciousness. Therefore can not be mind, since mind changes.

So the witness is ALSO aware? Is it aware of consciousness?
Is consciousness aware of the witness?
Is the mind aware of the witness?

Who's aware of who in your zoo?

But the hard problem of consciousness is hard only for those who stick at the physicalist perspective. It is physicalism that wants to "explain" the thing instead of knowing it directly.

I don't want to explain consciousness - I want to define it. Focus

If you take the first-person approach everything becomes clear, almost self-evident and there is nothing to explain yourself.

And I agree with you. But as I already said, I am not looking for an explanation! I am looking for a definition.

It's not self-evident to me what the definition of "consciousness" is.

Furthermore: it is not self-evident to me what the definition of "definition" is!

What is "definition"?