I don't understand what you're saying here... either that or you haven't understood what i'm saying.
You can't control what's in your genes, at least not yet, but you can control everything else.
No it doesn't. I think there is a confusion over the word "independent". As a consciousness, i choose that is to say my thoughts are not determined by a boss system. I may be part of a larger system that operates in a non-hierarchical way, or i may be at the top of that system. but my choices (the ability to make them) is not in doubt. that's what it means to be conscious, to chose and to perceive. It seems to me that perception is largely a function of choice, or really they are two words for one indivisible thing.
Perception isn't a matter of choice but of biology. You see what your eyes see, your brain interprets those signals. What you decide to think about those signals is up to you, of course, but the images you receive are objective, you see what is, limited only by the mechanisms in your biology.
What i meant by that is that there must be a reason why you want to argue against the knowledge that (assuming you're conscious) you must have. I think its likely that the reason you're trying to argue against the certainty of certainties is because you find it uncomfortable that in comparison to that certainty your held beliefs seem flimsy. If there is no such thing as certainty, then it justifies believing in "it sort of kind of feels like it" kind of things.
You disagreed with me when I said that I cared about what was actually true, not what felt good to believe was true. I don't care about comfort at all. What is, is. How it makes me feel is irrelevant. As an example, I have honestly run into people who absolutely reject the idea that the Holocaust ever happened because the mere thought of it makes them feel so awful that they cannot handle it and they'd rather pretend that it could never have happened at all. I think they said the same thing about 9/11. That's really kind of foolish. Your feelings on a subject have no bearing whatsoever on the reality of the subject. There are people who accept or reject reality because of how reality makes them feel and those people have issues. Reality exists entirely independently of your feelings about it.
ie. you are only comically arguing against your consciousness in order to bolster beliefs you hold in some other arena. I'm guessing something along the lines of naturalism, materialism, newtonian physics, cause and effect etc. you like those things perhaps because it gives you a sense of comfort in "knowing" that the world is nice ordered and clean.
It's not.
I'm not arguing against consciousness at all, I have no idea where you got that from. At best, I'm saying that consciousness has no effect on objective reality, you are simply observing what is, you are not affecting what is.
Absolutely correct. If only you (not personally but people in general) could see how this applies to their own set of beliefs we'd be laughing.
But of course, that's not the case. Rational people act to remove their own biases from the study of reality as much as possible, or at the very least, to recognize those biases and keep them from unduly impacting conclusions drawn about reality. What I think about the world doesn't matter and it doesn't influence what the world actually is.
For a start i would say that you've perhaps misunderstood what i mean by conscious. I would argue that you (I) am conscious whilst i dream. What is this binary system? what are the two alternatives and what do they mean?
That there are two alternatives and one of them must be true. If one is false, the other, by definition, must be true. Most systems are not so well defined. In most systems with multiple options, the true answer must be independently verified as being true, not simply assumed to be true.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that you've just set up a system whereby the only way not to be conscious is to be dead, which seems a bit extreme to me.
I cannot prove to you that i am conscious, just as i cannot prove that you are conscious. Because we cannot break the first person perspective barrier. from my FPP i KNOW that i'm conscious, just as you do (if you are).
But you've largely just said that so long as you are alive and your brain is functioning, you are conscious, therefore, by your own seeming definition, you can prove you are conscious just by remaining alive. I don't see your definition making things any easier, sorry.
