On naturalism and consciousness

[bennyboy]

But our neurons do it all the time... I don't understand why one should go out of his way and try to special plead metaphysics into existence. So far, the materialistic mindset is the one that gave us all of our understanding of the world. Why should we not even try to explain consciousness with it?

You can try to explain anything with anything. But trying to explain consciousness with a model which is almost deliberately designed to ignore consciousness doesn't seem like an approach likely to yield meaningful results.

Also: "materialistic mindset." It's not exactly an oxymoron, but I see some irony in using mindsets as the basis for explaining that the mind is purely physical function.

I get the feeling that you are also arguing from incredulity: you can't see how "particles can be about something", therefore it's impossible.

When you are incredulous because someone thing assumes something with what you consider inadequate evidence, it's not a logical fallacy. It's just critical thinking.

If you think a mechanical explanation is sufficient to explain consciousness, then you have to actually make that explanation. You don't get to just wave at the brain and say, "Well, obviously, it's happening in there somewhere." Maybe it is, or maybe correlation isn't causation.