The Philosophy of Mind: Zombies, "radical emergence" and evidence of non-experiential

[Edwardo Piet]

My bold. I seriously doubt that it's even answerable... making it even more absurd to believe that it's already answered and that is why I am debating this. Confused people thinking they've solved unsolvable problems is the only real problem here.

The line that seems to come up is this:

1)  Nobody can answer the question of psychogony (the existence of mind).
2)  Science has proven itself good at answering many questions.
3)  Therefore science is our best recourse for studying anything.
4)  Science studies only material structures, their properties, and the force that acts upon them.
5)  Therefore, mind should be taken as material, because anything that isn't obviously addressed by science is a waste of time.

Great post and I agree... but allow me to add to their mistakes:

1) They believe that mind and matter are opposites by definition... and because they are materialists and believe everything is matter they make the mistake of thinking that that must mean that mind is an "illusion" or that it seems to seem to exist but it doesn't really seem to exist. As if seeming wasn't the most real and knowable thing in the world... and as if all empirical knowledge didn't depend on it...

2) They make this mistake because they fail to recognize that the mental and the physical as opposed to each other is only one way to make such distinctions on the matter (funny how I said "matter" instead of "topic" there lol)... you can just as easily say physical as opposed to non-physical or mental as opposed to non-mental. The difference is, those are true dichotomies but "mental as opposed to physical" is not a true dichotomy... and yet they act as if it is.............[Oh look I did Khem's trademarked stoned person excessive periods trail at the end of my making a point... the difference is I'm not stoned and my point really is a good point rather than being another profoundly underwhelming red herring or otherwise trivial truth or scientific fact that unfortunately for him doesn't address what I said]

3) They conflate "not real" in the sense of "imaginary" with "not real" in the sense of "absent." This is my guess as to why Dennett thinks that consciousness and qualia and seeming can't be real. It's why he thinks there is "no such thing as real seeming". Because, he conflates "not real" in the sense of "imaginary" with "not real" in the sense of absent. Consciousness is not real in the sense of imaginary because consciousness is literally mental representation and the mind... it's what's going on within us... as opposed to what's out there. But that doesn't mean it's not real in the sense of absent! Obviously we have an imagination and it's very real... as unreal in the sense of imaginary that it indeed is.

N.B. So my take on Dennett is that the reason why he falsely concludes that the most knowable thing in the universe (consciousness) isn't real... is because he is committing a logical fallacy of equivocation.

P.S. I like talking to you because you actually often make sense (and the importance of actually making sense is precisely why semantics is very important... and why anyone saying "That's just semantics." in a debate is one of my biggest pet peeves).