Can't ID be tested AT ALL?

Hi All -Just to position my response here: I am very critical of "Intelligent Design Theory" as science - I believe it is scientifically vacuous, and there is no possibility of testing or falsifying its claim. I am also versed in the cognitive sciences.However: Well, not so fast, crashfrog. Nobody knows what gives rise to consciousness. It would certainly appear that well-functioning human brains are necessary for human consciousness, but presently we have no scientific explanation for subjective mental experience. Consciousness research consists of trying to find neurological correlates of conscious experience, and there is movement on that front, but there is no guarantee that once we do pin down the neural structures and systems that are correlated with consciousness, we will be any closer to a material explanation of qualia.So consciousness remains a mystery. There are contemporary scientists and philosophers of mind on every side of the issue - for example:Dan Dennett believes any suitable information processing device can be conscious
John Searle believes consciousness is a biological function of brains only
David Chalmers believes consciousness transcends material causation
Roger Penrose believes quantum gravity will explain consciousness
Henry Stapp believes quantum physics in general explains consciousness
etc. etc.What does this have to do with ID and testability? IF dualism were found to be true, then many (including me) believe that would be a very strong indication that mind was not limited to living humans (and other animals). There is no scientific evidence for dualism, but neither is there compelling reason to dismiss it.In other words, the fact of our conscious awareness is the single aspect of the world that may speak against materialism, and if materialism is false, ID theory gains a modicum of credibility.Now, that said: There is absolutely no way to test ID theory, mainly because ID theory actually doesn't make any specific claim about anything in the world that is accessible to empirical investigation, directly or indirectly.Edited by aiguy, : typo

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi PaulK, There is no doubt that well-functioning brains are necessary for human consciousness - and one doesn't need to turn to split-brain experiments to see that (try a knock on the head). On the other hand, we have no good reason to believe that any particular physical mechanism (as we currently understand physics) is sufficient for conscious awareness. There is actually a bit of a resurgence in non-physicalist theories within philosophy of mind. Aside from Chalmers (whose arguments I'm partial to) people like Jaegwon Kim are starting to admit that supervenience is a meaningless cop-out and there really is an explanatory gap.But I'm afraid we're straying too far from the topic. Vis-a-vis ID, none of this helps. The experiments that have been done to show how conscious awareness can direct our voluntary actions have - rather remarkably - shown just the opposite (cf. Benjamin Libet). All of Dembski's speculations about how disembodied mind might be causal in the physical world are laughably incoherent. There is simply no science at all upon which to base a theory of "intelligent causation" that enacts contra-causal will in the physical world.ID's credibility (and even its meaning) relies upon people's intuitive and unscientific folk psychological concepts of dualism and libertarian free will. One would think that if ID was actually a scientific discipline, they might offer some consideration of current theories of mind and the related scientific research, and even try to contribute something. But no, they avoid all serious discussion of mentality, instead relying on lay folk's popular opinions about "mind over matter" and such.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi crashfrog, Wow - that's a very dogmatic statement. Honestly, there is no science that explains consciousness. We really have no idea why we are not "zombies" (in the way philosophers of mind use the term). If you believe that physicalist theories explain consciousness, perhaps you could cite the relevant papers, and give us a brief summary of how physical interactions in the brain give rise to conscious awareness? "Qualia" are the subjective components of our perceptions. One of the essential aspects of the mind/body problem is to explain why we have subjective experience of our perceptions, rather than simply behavioral responses. The evidence for something that transcends physicalism is that our conscious awareness doesn't seem to be part of the physical world. Rather than go too deeply into it in this thread, I would suggest you read some of the arguments that go against your views (my recommendation would be to start with Nagels' classic paper here http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html, then read a book by David Chalmers). The brief answer is that there seems to be no way to reduce phenomenology to objective descriptions of physical events. The longer answer has been debated for, oh, going on about three thousand years or so.Read what I said again, crashfrog - I'm very, very much against the notion that Intelligent Design can be viewed as a coherent scientific theory. I just like to remind materialists that the constraints of science apply to both sides of the argument, and there is certainly no settled science that shows how conscious awareness arises from brains. (Remember - the fact that neurological processes are necessary for consciousness doesn't mean that they are sufficient).

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Crashfrog,If you believe that physicalist theories explain consciousness, perhaps you could cite the relevant papers, and give us a brief summary of how physical interactions in the brain give rise to conscious awareness?

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy, No, not at all, because I am making no argument for dualism (or any explanation based on "non-natural" cause) at all. My point is simply that we have some reason to doubt that material reduction accounts for our subjective experience, and that we have no theory that explains it. All that means is that we currently have no scientific understanding of consciousness, nothing more or less.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy, This is just what I'm talking about. ID folks - and the backlash against science in general - accuse scientists of dogmatically adhering to materialism. This charge is sometimes warranted. The scientific response to a question for which there is currently no well-supported answer is "We do not know", and not "It must be explainable in terms of physics, because everything just must be."There are lots of people who have speculations about what might be going on inside our heads. For example, Roger Penrose (Nobel physicist) thinks that a very weird aspect of quantum physics (including a "universal platonic logic" that somehow exists in the universe) may be implicated in consciousness. Now, there is no sense in saying this is "physical" or "natural" or "non-physical" or "non-natural". It is something beyond our current understanding, and someday we may - or may not - have an empirically-based understanding of it. Sure, and I find these completely boring. My point is that we all ought to be willing to say "WE DO NOT KNOW" rather than cleaving to physicalist dogma on one hand, or mumbo-jumbo on the other. There is a fantastic amount of scientific knowledge that we've gained - justified true beliefs about the world that we all can experience and verify. This is a very special type of knowledge. But not everything has been explained, and for those things that haven't been, we must remain comfortable in our ignorance.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy - First, you've muddied the difference between methodological and epistemological naturalism. Yes, science holds that all phenomena are amenable to study via materialism, but that does not mean that currently unexplained phenomena will necessarily be explainable within what we view as "natural" or "physical" today. Obviously. Of course that is not true. Reductionism is in high disrepute, if you haven't heard, from scientists and philosophers of science alike (and I'm not talking about anti-science folks and IDers here). The truth is we simply cannot cash out most phenomena in the world in terms of physics, even in principle, and there are many reasons for this.Please don't get me wrong (again): I am a scientist, both professionally and in my personal frame of mind. I value scientific knowledge most highly, and I do not believe that religion or "spirituality" explains anything.I am also very aware that science does not explain everything either. I almost agree with you here, but not entirely, and you've said something different this time. If we do eventually know and understand consciousness, then it will be an empirically-grounded scientific understanding, yes (so much is just our definition of "know and understand"). But that is not the same as saying we are sure that physics will eventually explain it, nor that we know now that all mental phenomena will reduce to physics. I have no idea what you mean by "supernatural". What else is left is this: WE DO NOT KNOW. I have done nothing remotely like what you say. I reject dogma on all sides of the debate. Saying "WE DO NOT KNOW" is simply not the same as saying "GOD DID IT" or "AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER DID IT" - both of which constitute no explanation at all.I'm afraid that you, Percy, have made a "physics of the gaps" argument when you say that consciousness must be reducible to physics. There are a great many scientists who disagree with that - and again I'm taking about real, red-blooded, methodological naturalist, empiricist, verificationalist scientists. Once again: Methodologically, we assume naturalism (=physicalism) because that is the only aspect of the world we can investigate empirically and gain objective (or inter-subjective) verification for. Epistemologically, we concede that there may be real things that exist in the world that transcend what we currently understand as "physical".

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Crashfrog, Once again, I have never said anything about a "non-natural explanation". The point you seem to have trouble understanding is that we may be incapable of providing an explanation at all. I find your disdain for philosophy more than a little naive. If most of the scientists you know have never heard of Popper, you have found a particular ignorant group of scientists to work with. And if Popper is the most contemporary philospher of science you can name, you seem to ignorant in this area as well. Emergent phenomena (both ontological and epistemological), chaotic complexity, and our general inability to reduce complex dynamic interactions, for starters. Very little of what we know can actually be reduced to fundamental physics. You are mistaken - please show where I introduced "supernatural" into this discussion. Hmm, let's see. You have said: And Percy has said: (emphasis added)So I believe you are mistaken again. As I have already pointed out: There are many things science can't explain. Some of these things - such as our subjective awareness - appear to be utterly resistent to explanation within our scientific understanding, and to blithely state that consciousness arises from the brain or that it must and does emerges from physical activity in the brain is overstating our knowledge (the fact that you cannot understand the importance of distinguishing necessary and sufficient conditions in scientific explanations notwithstanding).

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy, I disagree. Think about "action at a distance". Newton accepted that gravity was a force that acted unmediated across space. Einstein believed that only local causality was possible, and that action at a distance was impossible. Then quantum physics reintroduced that concept in yet an even stranger way. QM changed a great deal about what we believe is "natural", including that the physical world is deterministic (which is a very big deal indeed). We cannot scientifically study things that have no effect on the natural world, right. I'm surprised at people's animosity toward philosophy. I can only believe you have not studied it. There of course would be no science at all without philosophy. Where do you think concepts like "methodological naturalism" come from? I think you have expressed merely a necessary truth (a truth by definition). Of course I agree. It is not merely complexity that makes this impossible. Not only can we not reduce our consciousness to physics, for example, but we can't even explain how it is that we reason. There are very difficult and currently unsolved problems in my own field, AI, and there are some very bright people who make very good arguments that thought is not algorithmic. We currently do not have very good reason to believe it is or it isn't. But you've said it again! You are not justified in saying this. You can only say that if we are to understand a phenomenon in terms of physical interactions, then the phenomena must in fact derive from those interactions. These are two different statements. The first - the one you made - is philosphical naturalism, and the second - what you should have said - is methodological naturalism. Only the latter is scientific. I have never said this. I have said it may, or it may not. At this point it isn't clear what you think. On one hand you say if consciousness transcends the physical, then "it cannot be studied by science", which is all well and good. On the other hand you say that consciousness does not, and can not, transcend the physical, which is simply a statement of materialist dogma. Roger Penrose (Nobel laureate, physics). John Eccles (Nobel laureate, physiology). Eugene Wigner (Nobel laureate, physics). David Bohm. Henry Stapp. Stuart Hameroff. Scott Hagen. Jack Tuszynski....And many highly respected (outside of this forum, anyway) philosophers believe this as well. Science can study anything that a scientist wishes to study. Whether or not that study will ever - can ever - result in an explanation is the point. If there are causes that transcend physical interactions as we understand them, then science - as we understand it - will not explain them. If WE DO NOT KNOW, then this always remains a possibility. And once again you say that I agree with. I would encourage you to review your statements and see that you really have vacillated between statements of epistemological and methodological naturalism. Saying that "consciousness arises from physical interactions because it must" is the former; saying that "if it doesn't then science can't study it" is the latter. These are two very different statements. Not to me. In any case, we do agree on what is amenable and not amenable to scientific investigation. You (and Crash) however lapse into materialist dogma when you say all things must be explainable within physicalism. Rather, you need to say "They may or may not be physical, but if they aren't, science can't study them" (until we change our physics so that we can actually have empirical investigations of them).

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Crashfrog, I have never made that assumption - if you think I have, please show me where. Sadly, yes. I have never said that knowledge of philosophy is relevant to the day-to-day prosecution of science. If you think I have, please show me where. I do find your demeaning attitude towards the discipline disconcerting, though, and I do think that philosophy is an important part of a liberal education. I think I've addressed both your arguments and your snide comments about philosophy, neglecting neither. I would say that heat is the most tractable emergent phenomena. There are really two types of emergent phenomena, sometimes called "strong" and "weak" (or ontological and epistemological) emergence. Consciousness is considered to be strongly emergent, since nobody has any idea how physical interactions can give rise to subjective experience. Weakly emergent phenomena include results of complexity theory, and properties of matter such as solidity and liquidity which emerge based on principles (e.g. symmetry) not entirely associated with constituent components (e.g. the molecules) themselves. Easy now. The point about chaotic complexity is that the results are epistemologically emergent, and the instances are not strictly reducible to component interactions. Self-importantly dub it? Uh, actually I didn't make up this term, and I really don't see how this speaks to my importance one way or the other. Let's relax a bit here, shall we? Nobody is doubting the amazing success of the reductionist paradigm, Crash. Rather, I am suggesting that there are limits to it, which in no way detracts from its successes. And nobody has suggested that holistic thinking has produced scientific knowledge, either - if you think I have, please show me where. No, you didn't, and no, I'm not. Please simply provide the quote from my post where I introduced "supernatural" into this discussion. Please, Crash, let's just relax a bit. If you read what I said, you'll see that the progress I've referred to has been in identifying the neurological correlates of consciousness. We have made no progress in framing an explanation of consciousness per se. In that case, we can demonstrate that the movement of your car arises from your ignition key (remove your key and see what happens), and that fire arises from only wood (remove the wood from a campfire and see what happens).So you see, this distinction between necessary and sufficient causes really is important after all. There are necessary causes that are not sufficient, and there are sufficient causes that are not necessary. First, you had said: "The necessary/sufficient dichotomy is not one that I find meaningful." Second, I have called you no names nor indicated that I think you are an idiot (if you think I have, please show us where). And finally, I am not a philosopher (I do commercial research in AI), so whatever you think of me ought not to reflect on your respect (or lack of same) for philosophers.Edited by aiguy, : removed unintended frowny face made by juxtaposing colon and left paren

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi melatonin -Yes, that's my read of Chalmers too. But his real contribution was to get people to admit that there is a "hard problem" of consciousness - an explanatory gap between what sorts of things we can explain physically and the experience of conscious awareness that we can verify inter-subjectively, but apparently not explain in objective terms.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy,I think you and Crash are in agreement, and that you both think we are justified in claiming that consciousness arises from nothing but physcis as we understand it.I disagree, and believe that consciousness has no explanation at all, and appears to be a very different sort of thing than everything else that science can explain (in that it is, after all, an inherently subjective phenomenon). Thus, I claim we do not have a justification to say it will necessarily be explicable scientifically at all.And when you say science can study consciousness - well, yes and no. Since all we can study are objectively observable things (neurology and behavior), it isn't actually consciousness that we are studying at all, but only the objectively accessible aspects of it.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Crashfrog, I believe the words "may be" are clearly indicative that I make no assumption one way or another. It is you who assume that our understanding of physics must necessarily ultimately provide some sort of explanation for consciousness. I remain uncommited, which is why I said "may be" rather than "are". The part about how this is supposed to affect scientists in their day-to-day work seems to be missing from this quote. Perhaps you were thinking of something else? I believe it is important to carefully articulate what distinguishes scientific knowledge from all other types. The ID movement capitalizes on ambiguities and misunderstanding of science. It is very difficult to capture the distinguishing features of science, and the ones who are most qualified to do so are trained philosophers. I liked that movie, but my memory is just fine. As I've pointed out, no fair reading of what I actually wrote matches your paraphrased interpretations. Sorry, but now perhaps I am forgetting. Which argument that you've made to me have I failed to respond to? As for the original question - are you referring to "Is ID Testable"? If that is what you mean, my answer is unequivocally "no". In my view, the alternative to knowing something is not knowing it, rather than pretending to know it in some simplistic, woolly(?) way. I'm not accusing you of this - I mean I agree that non-emprically-based explanations are no substitute for science. Can you point to where we've figured out abiogenesis, or how human memory works? I seem to have missed those papers. Now, please: I am NOT saying there is some reason to assume we will never answer these questions!!! The ONLY thing that I believe may turn out to be resistant to reductionist science is consciousness. Not the physical correlates of consciousness, and not the evaluation of human verbal reports of consciousness, but of consciousness itself - that inner light that we all experience, our subjective mental experience. I cannot imagine what sort of physical explanation can account for this at all. I said that scientists can undertake a study of whatever they choose - it's just that they may not be able to make any progress. That is the case with consciousness per se. There are some people (like Penrose) who have gone out on speculative limbs, and there are some (like Dennett) who solve the problem of consciousness by denying it exists. But there has been no progress at all in generating any sort of scientific explanation of why we have a subjective inner awareness. Some people agree, and some do not, and there is no settled science on the matter. What do you think these correlates are, and how do they give rise to consciousness? Are you certain that these neurological correlates are necessary, or could an appropriately configured computer also be conscious? Why couldn't we reason and behave in exactly the same we do, but be like unconsicous robots rather than conscious entities? I disagree. I can make my car move with no ignition key by crossing the wires, so apparently the ignition key was not actually necessary. I don't know what you mean by car-soul, so I don't think we can evaluate that suggestion. Maybe so, maybe not. Maybe consciousness could arise from computers, as Dennett believes. Maybe it requires actual biological brains, like Searle believes. Maybe there is a universal platonic logic that affects quantum superposition in microtubles like Penrose believes. Maybe there is a property of pre-consciousness in all matter, or maybe... Huh? Identifying necessary and sufficient conditions are essential to evaluating scientific explanations. If you concluded that fire arose only from wood in the same manner that you have decided consciousness arises only from brains, then you would simply be mistaken, having confused a sufficient cause with a necessary one. No, I'm really not at all, but yes, I will be glad to address whatever argument you've posed that I've missed. Please be so kind as to reiterate whatever point you've made that I've failed to respond to. There are no properties of the atom that we are aware of that we cannot investigate by objective experiment. The concept of an atom is well defined, and we can explain and predict all sorts of phenomena consistently. In contrast, the phenomena of consciousness is inherently inaccessible to all objective study. If this were not the case, we would be able to evaluate any particular thing and say if it was or was not conscious. As it is, we can't even do this will human beings reliably (cf Terri Schiavo). But when it comes to other things, we really have no way of telling scientifically at all.Is a dog conscious? A lizard? A fly? Is consciousness graded? If so, what does it mean to be "sort of" conscious?

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi crashfrog, Well, you said "Nonsense. The brain is the explanation." (emphasis in the original)
We do, however, know that human brains are sufficient for consciousness.
That seems like a fairly clear expression of certainty to me. But if now you say it's just a guess, then we agree. I only object to dogmatic certainty on the matter, not on somebody's guess. I strongly disagree - that would be a bit like saying policemen are the authorities on law. There is actually a great deal of subtlety in thinking about epistemology, logic, language, argumentation, etc., and scientists are not trained in those areas. (Also - you're a bit quick with this charge of "nonsense" - you might disagree with my view, but it certainly was not "nonsensical"). You do insist on putting words in my mouth, time and time again. Instead of making up my arguments for me and then deriding them, I suggest you actually read what I write. I have never said we should give up, of course. That's funny. I suppose I could explain memory by... neurotransmitters and activation thresholds. And how we learn language, and how we solve the frame problem, and... Why not just say that everything is explained by the fundamental physical forces, and be done with it? The thing that Mary learns is called the qualia of seeing color. It is what is missing, currently, from physicalist accounts of mind. You have argued that there is no meaning in the "necessary/sufficient dichotomy", and you have argued that we know that consciousness arises from the brain because if you remove the brain, consciousness ceases. However, the necessary/sufficient dichotomy is essential to science, and so you are mistaken. To illustrate, I pointed out that although if you took the key out of the ignition of a car it would stop, this did not mean that the key was a necessary component of car motion - and of course I'm right, cars are perfectly capable of moving without an ignition key. Of course brains are necessary for consciousness in human beings, yes, but we do not know if they are necessary for consciousness in general, because we do not know what causes consciousness. Gasoline is necessary for motion in gasoline-powered cars, but it is not necessary for motion in electric cars. Would you care to say why you think a computer could replace a brain and still be conscious, given that you have just explained consciousness as the result of neurotransmitters - which do not exist inside of computers? Are you making this up as you go along? Sorry, but it is not "my" necessary/sufficient dichotomy. Understanding the difference is essential to understanding scientific explanations, as I've tried to illustrate. Sorry, but I don't understand your question. Which multiple different things are equivalent here? Brains and computers? Neurons and transistors? Nobody knows what causes consciousness, and so nobody knows if computers can be conscious or not. See the thought experiment about Mary, above. That is a very ideosyncratic view. Most people agree that human beings experience consciousness, and that we can distinguish between conscious and unconscious states in people. If you ever have surgery, I would suggest you ask the anethesiologist to make sure you are unconscious, just to be on the safe side. This is getting tiresome. It is not "nonsense" of course. I have already pointed out that although by your logic you would conclude that ignition keys explain car motion (because if you remove them the car will stop) in fact they are neither necessary nor sufficient components of car motion (since we agreed we the cars could run without them, and they won't run with them if they are missing an engine). I have also pointed out that by your logic you would conclude that fire arose only from wood (because if you took the wood away the fire would go out), when in fact wood is only a sufficient substrate for fire, rather than a necessary one (because other things burn).If you make such elementary errors with such simple examples, one can only imagine what sort of nonsense you'd come up with if you actually tried to generate scientific explanations of things without regard to this distinction. Are you joking? I have never said I have concluded human intelligence is not the product of natural causes, so you are once again putting words in my mouth! I have never said that consciousness is not the result of purely natural causes either - not once! Do you not understand the difference between "maybe, maybe not" and "definitely no"? Do you not understand the difference between saying "nobody knows" and "I'm certain it is false"? What is wrong with you? Everybody can read these pages, and everybody can see that I have never said any such thing. Please stop building these straw men!Here is what I have said in this thread: I will gladly leave it to readers of this thread to decide if I have said "I conclude consciousness is not the result of natural causes", or if I have said "WE DO NOT KNOW". I have asked you several times for how you think consciousness arises in brains, and you have failed to answer: You simply make these assertions, but you ignore my requests for you to back them up.Since I have clearly stated many times now that the question of how consciousness arises is unanswered, and that it might or might not be answerable within our current understanding of physics, your charge of "appeal to ignorance" is utterly groundless. We cannot investigate what it is that Mary learned when she was released from her black-and-white room. We cannot investigate what it is like to be a bat. And you have failed again to respond to my questions, and so I will repeat them:Is a dog conscious? A lizard? A fly? Is consciousness graded? If so, what does it mean to be "sort of" conscious? How do you scientifically support your conclusions? Glad you're amused. But stop putting words in my mouth, will you? You seem like an angry fellow. Please don't take it out on me, OK?Edited by aiguy, : No reason given.Edited by aiguy, : No reason given.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy, Perhaps a different definition, yes. The point here is we do not know - can not know - what is or is not natural. Say I ask you, "Is it natural for something to happen for absolutely no reason whatsoever? Some inanimate thing to simply, spontaneously do something without something else causing that action?" If you were a Newtonian, he would say "No, that is impossible, and we have never detected it either. Every action is caused by an antecedent cause, so spontaneous action is supernatural". A quantum physicist would disagree.If you were Einstein, and I asked "Is it possible for something that happens in one corner of the universe to affect what happens in another corner of the universe instantaneously?", he would say that is not natural, and we have never detected that, and we cannot detect it because it is impossible. That would be supernatural. Bohr, however, disagreed.I suppose you could mean that in retrospect we know that these things were natural all along; well, sure. LOL! I guess you haven't been reading Crash's posts. Like Crash, I'm afraid, you have cast my arguments into straw men. Saying we do not know is simply different from saying that we do know, and I don't understand how you can misconstrue this. Agreed, of course. Again - we don't know what is natural or not until we discover it - by your definition. This is really a first for me, being cast in with creationists. Here is why you misunderstand me: You keep saying "matter and energy". Imagine we discover some other ontological class entirely, called gunderplitzen, that makes people conscious, survives the death of the body, and, oh, folds proteins too. Now, you have said "everything is matter and energy - there is nothing else!" and I have objected to this, because if we discover gunderplitzen (not mass/energy but something else entirely, maybe not conserved, etc) then you would be wrong. At that point we could turn around and say "Gunderplitzen is natural, because it effects things that we can experience and measure", but that doesn't mean you aren't wrong now when you say matter/energy accounts for everything. I don't know what you mean. So what? Here's the importance: Many people believe there is something causal in the world besides matter and energy. If scientists dogmatically claim "There can be no such thing", then these people will rightly claim "You scientists are just like religious people! You are dogmatic! You believe things on faith! My faith is just as good as yours, and I say God rules the world!!!" That is the problem.So instead of making these dogmatic statements, you need to be more careful. You need to say, "Sure, science is always open to all possibilities. Maybe there is non-physical (non-matter/energy) causality, and maybe there isn't. The day we can measure these causal effects of God, then science will adopt the God theory. Until then, keep your religion out of science, please". I have never argued for phenomena for which there is no evidence, and I have never said consciousness is not based on natural phenomena. I have said we do not know.The difference between you and Crash on one hand, and me on the other, is this: I am a scientist, and you believe in Scientism.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.