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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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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.