Begging the question. If you assume that conscious experience is not reducible to material mechanisms, material mechanisms clearly won't be explanatory. But this is just an argument from incredulity.
Actually its not assuming as it is well accepted that conscious experience cannot be reducible to material mechanisms because its an entirely different type of phenomena being qualitative rather than quantitative. Hence the 'Hard problem of consciousness.
Even you acknowledged this. That is why conscious experience was deemed to be outside sciences ability to measure because its nature is not a quantitative measure.Any theory of consciousness that does not contain this qualitative nature is incomplete.
You've dismissed the evidence for material mechanisms as the origin of consciousness because you can't understand how that could be, and (ironically) this forces you to be credulous of an 'explanation' for which you have no evidence, no mechanism, that is unfalsifiable, and has a central contradiction - the problem of interaction.
I disagree that there is no evidence and that I'm being credulous. Interpretations of QM support the observer/subject/Mind as a fundamental part of reality.
So arguments that make the subjects consciousness and Mind as fundamental seems to be the best fit and most promising explanation for what we find with QM.
You're welcome to imagine whatever you like to explain whatever you like, but if you imagine something that is, by definition, beyond the purview of science & the physical world, that's not science's problem, it's your problem. The onus is on you to show why anyone should take it seriously and how it is a good explanation.
I disagree. I think its all our problems to work out what is going on. To do that we need science but also more than science. The problem is because science investigates the very nature of reality these questions come up and so are related. Like I said you can't separate the scientist from the measure so the subjective comes in whether we like it or not.
To then make claims that there is only 'matter' or 'matter' is the only concern or real measure we need is more about metaphysical claims then science. That is why I said earlier that reality is not just about 'matter' but also 'what Matters' to us.
We all know that scientific materialism cannot give a complete account of reality because we know from our 1st hand experience that there are phenomena that have an impact on us, civilizations and the world.
The idea that the only thing that matters is 'matter' is the result of the success of science in modern life. But to make ontological claims that 'matter' is all there is becomes a belief and not a scientific fact. All we have is our conscious experience and 'matter' is a concept of the Mind and not an actual true representation of what's out there at work.
We can, in principle, explain everything about love or beauty in terms of physical processes except what it is like to be a system running those processes - because subjective experience is intrinsically inaccessible.
And for any complete theory of consciousness we need to include and explain how, why we have subjective experience. Why joy or the color yellow come out of material and mechanical processes.
Therefore as you mention as these qualitative aspects are inaccessible to the science method we either have to say science is at a dead end as it cannot overcome the explanatory gap or we find a different way to account for consciousness that includes the qualitative aspects.
As I keep telling you, all we ever have are correlations - the Kantian
noumenon, the 'thing-in-itself', is unknowable - all we can do is 'say what we see', to paraphrase Catchphrase).
I disagree. We only ever have correlates and material answers when we assume everything is material and block out other ways of knowing reality. If we are open and neutral about what we find with conscious experience there may be other ways to see how it works in the world.
We know for example that Indigenous knowledge is different to scientific materialism and has been around for 10's of 1,000s of years. So its really about epistemology, how we should know reality and that happens before we measure anything. I think we can gain knowledge about the world direct from our conscious experiences. They carry a strong representation of reality is certain cases.
Love is a concept we use to describe a particular set of behaviors and their associated feelings. It's a mistake (a category error) to reify such abstractions. This is the problem you (and many others) also have with 'mind' and 'consciousness'.
Love cannot be defined by specific feelings and behaviors as it works differently for people. We can be hero's but we can also be fools for love.
We do naturally reify love because its a powerful emotion that has impacted in the world. Especially its opposite 'hate' where we have gone to war and killed. The idea that abstract transcendent ideas have no status in the world as far as reality is concerned is a materialist view and an assumption that is not based on science.
Again begging the question. If consciousness is emergent from physical activity, then that problem goes away.
No it doesn't go away. The unexplained problem still remains. The problem is a physical process has created some unexplained magical phenomena. A non-conscious entity has created a conscious one. That's what needs to be explained rather than thinking that correlates alone will by the answer.
Emergent behaviors are deterministically reducible to the interactions of the elements involved, but unpredictable, rather like mathematical chaos. Looking at the behaviors of susurrations of starlings or large shoals of fish, where tens or hundreds of thousands of very similar elements follow very simple rules, we should not be surprised that the activity of ~86 billion complex neurons of various kinds interacting in numerous ways, in hierarchies of networks, produces as yet inexplicable emergent behaviors and characteristics.
Isn't that begging the question in assuming that the brain creates consciousness. There is no direct connection but rather assumptions of association, you have to jump an explanatory gap which undermines any conclusions.
Besides how does a group of birds or fish create something beyond a material explanation. What is it they create that is like consciousness and if they do isn't that just more magical thinking where now groups of animals are creating something beyond a material explanation.
If you mean subjective experience is unexplained, I agree.
And for a theory of consciousness we need to explain how a subjective experience can come from non subjective brain wiring. That's the explanatory gap as there is a different type of phenomena happening in subjective consciousness that non conscious matter can possible contain
As before, the nature of subjective experience is inaccessible to objective inquiry,
Exactly and its subjective experience we want to explain and not the behavior associated with it. Its like the old behaviorist view that all behavior was correlated with the physical processes of the body and thus explained behavior. Then we discovered the real underlying cause was our mental states. In the end the physical correlations were secondary and the Mind was fundamental.
but don't forget that almost every characteristic of conscious experience can be changed by specific interference with specific areas of brain function. The implication is obvious.
No the implications are an assumption that consciousness beyond brain also has a physical substrate to operate in for humans like a receiver. Like messing around with a TV set can change the signal and distort it. There is no direct link between correlates and experience itself. Neurons don't contain joy or the color yellow. Just like a TV set doesn't contain colors or feelings
You haven't said what you mean by Neo-Darwinism,
I meant the Modern Synthesis
but contemporary evolutionary theory includes behaviour at individual, group, and ecology levels. As we discussed many moons ago, the factional differences are mainly in viewpoint and approach.
But as far as I understand they are secondary influences that basically stem from processes that can be reduced to natural forces like natural selection where natural selection alone is the driving force of evolution. Whereas creatures have the ability to get in the drivers seat and steer things around thus having an ability to override natural forces.
. Your too quick to dismiss.
