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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Conveniently enough, I just wrote another response to the thread, since there was more I wanted to say on the topic, and it addresses this.
It's not a matter of not having the tools to test theories of consciousness - it's more fundamental than that. We are consciousness. When we theorize on consciousness, we are engaging in consciousness. It's inescapable - it's the very thing that makes it possible to theorize. And it's entirely experiential - you necessarily experience your own consciousness and cannot possibly observe anyone else's. We are each and all, and necessarily, behind a veil of perception. It's literally impossible for it to be otherwise - to somehow step outside of consciousness and observe it, since the only thing that can meaningfully observe it is that same consciousness.
Yes - we can concevably at least make some good guesses regarding the physical processes that correspond with our experiences of consciousness, but that's necessarily the extent of it. Again, it's not simply that we don't have the tools to do more than that, but that it's inherently impossible for it to be otherwise.
I think this puts consciousness on too high of a mystic pedestal. It may be impossible for an individual to experience reality outside of their own consciousness, but that does not preclude studying how it works. What makes you think that it is impossible to observe someone else's consciousness? and more importantly, what evidence do you have to substantiate that claim?
After all, we research many aspects of reality obliquely. Our understanding of subatomic particles comes mostly from smashing larger particles into each other and seeing what pops out - not by observing subatomic interactions directly. We can do effective research by inference.
Personally I don't believe that there is anything in our existence that is beyond our understanding, given enough time and study.
I think that one of the most common ways by which the devotees of reductive physicalism try to make it appear to be a valid position is by positing a false dichotomy by which they then sneeringly characterize anything that's not simply physical as "mystic."
The fact that it's an emergent phenomenon with no physical manifestation.
I think we'll be able to (and in fact we already can to some notable degree) track neuronal activity in a brain and map it and interpret it, so we can make reasonably solid guesses regarding its nature - general type, intensity, efficiency and so on - but we can never actually observe its content, since its content is a gestalt formed within and only accessible to the mind that's experiencing it.
There's nothing at all "mystic" about that - it's simple logic and reason.
And, by the bye, it's also much of why actual philosophers rejected reductive physicalism almost a century ago.