> Science is better then this. We don't need to directly observe something, it's OK to be able to just indirectly observe.
Indirect observations involve forming a testable (and falsifiable) hypothesis. What you're doing above is more like an attempt at proof by contradiction...
But I can assume the contrary viewpoint and deduce as well. Suppose human consciousness is non-physical. From observation (as you said) we know it can be affected by physical things -- brain damage, drugs, etc. So it must have a physical/nonphysical interface, probably in our brains.
You might say Occam's razor rules non-physicality out, since such an interface is a bit much to assume. But given that we don't have a meaningful way forward assuming physical-only, perhaps admitting one further assumption can help our inquiry - perhaps physical-only is too simple an explanation. As Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
What do you mean we have no meaningful way forward? If anything, recent advances in deep learning (and even the older neural networks) show, that we have a pretty good mathematical explanation of what consciousness could be. O-o
Indirect observations involve forming a testable (and falsifiable) hypothesis. What you're doing above is more like an attempt at proof by contradiction...
But I can assume the contrary viewpoint and deduce as well. Suppose human consciousness is non-physical. From observation (as you said) we know it can be affected by physical things -- brain damage, drugs, etc. So it must have a physical/nonphysical interface, probably in our brains.
You might say Occam's razor rules non-physicality out, since such an interface is a bit much to assume. But given that we don't have a meaningful way forward assuming physical-only, perhaps admitting one further assumption can help our inquiry - perhaps physical-only is too simple an explanation. As Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."