>It's not just optimistic - its qualitatively unjustified to think that neuroscience (in its current form, at least) is inevitably capable of cracking consciousness.
The fact that you had to add the parenthetical here to hedge your bet demonstrates that you don't even entirely believe your own claims.
That claim has a very robust history in philosophy of mind. Peter Hacker and M.R. Bennett, a philosopher and a neuroscientist respectively, cowrote Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience[0]. There was also a fascinating response and discussion in a further book with Daniel Dennett and John Searle called Neuroscience and Philosophy[1]. Both books are excellent and have fascinating arguments and counter-arguments; you get very clear pictures of fundamentally different pictures of the human mind and the role and idea of neuroscience.
Not an axiom, just a prior with enough evidence to smash the probability of ghosts quite near to zero. You're welcome to pretend that I said "zero" and continue shadow-boxing a straw-man, but if you want to fight my actual argument you need to contend with "near to zero."
The difference between Woo of the Gaps and Science of the Gaps is that science is on the advance and woo is on the retreat, it has been this way for centuries, and the pace always seems to be determined exactly by the rate at which science advances rather than any actual opposition from the Woo camp. Nothing is over until it's over, but how much do you actually want to bet on a glorious turnaround? You do you, but for me the answer is "not much."
The rate of an army's advance through a particular town is 0 until they get there, but if you were to see the front lines moving towards you and put forward this argument as a reason to stay, you would be in for a rude surprise.
What argument? I don't see an argument, I just see [deleted].
If you mean this...
This is why I think strict materialism on consciousness is misguided. People like to think "weve cracked everything scientifically, from quantum physics to neuroscience, so even if we don't have a good explanation for consciousness now, we'll get there." Except the reality is macroscopic neuroscientific findings are incredibly coarse and with many caveats and uncertainties, statements more like "this area of the brain is associated with X" than "this area of the brain causes X." It's not just optimistic - its qualitatively unjustified to think that neuroscience (in its current form, at least) is inevitably capable of cracking consciousness.
Many STEM people hate this because they want to axiomatically believe materialist science can reach everything, despite the evidence to the contrary. shrug
... that wasn't an argument, it was a loosely formed set of vague and unsubstantiated claims. The fact that you immediately deleted it and started insulting anyone who responded to you kind of proves my point. I'm sorry I wasted my time on you, won't happen again.
I was going to help support your argument, but I can’t because you started throwing a fit and deleted everything. My 18-month has calmer manners. You can actually delete your comment (instead of editing to [deleted]) and it kills the entire thread, you know.
The fact that you had to add the parenthetical here to hedge your bet demonstrates that you don't even entirely believe your own claims.