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

[Chas]

You keep saying that qualia are beyond the reach of science, but that is an unsupported assertion. You don't know that to be true.

No I don't. But there's nothing right now that makes it seem that science, a tool of physical inquiry, can directly study qualia, which cannot currently be interacted with on any level but direct experience.

It seems to be beyond our current science, but a clever experimenter might figure out how to test it tomorrow or future technologies might make it straightforward.

It could be that a clever experiementer will discover that even QM particles don't exist at all except as ideas. But there's no reason right now to believe that scientists are able to interact with anything other than physical correlates of mind-- and so long as that stays the same, there are serious philosophical issues with the science of mind.

And I don't know what you mean by 'philosophically sufficient'.
Philosophy doesn't give us answers, it helps us ask questions and clarify our thinking.

By philosophically sufficient, I mean that the word "mind" represents what I use it for-- my experience of qualia. I've seen plenty of people argue that mind and brain function are necessarily identical, and that brain-monitoring devices are in fact monitoring mind.

This definition is useful if you want a medical test to use on coma patients. It's not philsophically sufficient as a measure of the actual existence of qualia. Hooking a piece of space fungus up to a brain-wave machine and pronouncing a lack of qualia, for example, would be a poor process.

Well, I have not once said brain and mind are the same.

But I see no philosophical difficulty as I am able to leave the question open and accept that we either will or will not find an answer.

But not finding an answer after a finite time - no matter how long - does not mean we will never find an answer.

Philosophy does not give us answers, it only helps us ask better questions.