If I might thow a monkey wrench into the mix. With all the talk about zombies and what not, I think the issue falls back on the question of whether qualia have any reason to exist at all. This reminds me of this argument:
1. Knowledge depends on significant correspondence between awareness (qualitative phenomenal experience) and cognition (physical brain processes).
2. Natural selection explains the correspondence between awareness and cognition.
3. Evolutionary processes cannot select for features that do not affect behavior.
4. If awareness supervenes on cognition, then awareness is causally inert and cannot influence behavior.
5. Thus, natural selection cannot explain the correspondence between awareness and cognition.
6. And thus, knowledge does not depend on any significant correspondence between awareness and cognition.
Given that human consciousness is a result of evolutionary processes then you have two possibilities, neither of which square with materialism. First, if awareness is causally relevant and does affect behavior that means phenomenal properties influence physical processes from the top-down. That means phenomenal properties cannot be reduced to physical properties and the physical universe is not causally closed. On the other hand, if evolutionary processes can select features that do not affect behavior, then it displays teleological behavior that is inconsistent with an undirected naturalistic process.
1. Knowledge depends on significant correspondence between awareness (qualitative phenomenal experience) and cognition (physical brain processes).
2. Natural selection explains the correspondence between awareness and cognition.
3. Evolutionary processes cannot select for features that do not affect behavior.
4. If awareness supervenes on cognition, then awareness is causally inert and cannot influence behavior.
5. Thus, natural selection cannot explain the correspondence between awareness and cognition.
6. And thus, knowledge does not depend on any significant correspondence between awareness and cognition.
Given that human consciousness is a result of evolutionary processes then you have two possibilities, neither of which square with materialism. First, if awareness is causally relevant and does affect behavior that means phenomenal properties influence physical processes from the top-down. That means phenomenal properties cannot be reduced to physical properties and the physical universe is not causally closed. On the other hand, if evolutionary processes can select features that do not affect behavior, then it displays teleological behavior that is inconsistent with an undirected naturalistic process.
