Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Universal Intelligence"?

[Chas]

OK, fine. I will restate that there is absolutely no evidence for anything but mind being dependent on anything but brain.

How could there be?

What are the criteria for establishing whether a physical entity has any qualia associated with it? Nothing. There's no scientific measure or procedure by which we determine anything, even a person, actually experiences qualia. There are only the physical corollaries which we choose to accept as evidence in lieu of actual observation.

Some choose to take this lack of evidence as evidence of a 1:1 brain correlation. However, I think the obvious truth of the existence of mind (I at least know that my own qualia are real), and the obvious truth of our complete inability to gain access to it physically, is pretty compelling evidence that mind is not itself physical.

Don't believe me? Let's turn it around. I can say that every single physical object which is known to have been discovered or interacted with in any way, including the brain, was at that time the object of the perception of a mind. There is no physical entity or property which we know about which we did not first experience before adding it to our list of known things. Using the "lack of evidence" argument, can I then conclude that there is no evidence that anything exists outside at least one mind's perception of it?

No. I don't accept that kind of reasoning on either side of the coin, and neither should anyone else. Our lack of access TO truth should never be taken as evidence FOR truth.

Did I say that mind is physical? No.

I see mind as a pattern of activity on a physical substrate, although that's a simplification. Mind emerges from the complexity.

If there is no evidence and your ideas are not testable, then it is not science.

That's fine, but that means you can't gain any knowledge about it.

You can conjecture and philosophize all you want, but scientists will continue to seek ways to explain it.