“Physical stuff” can’t do this and that - a false Dichotomy

I would frame what I think David Chalmers was saying thus:

We have reached a point in time when we understand enough about the physical world to realise that it can't in itself explain what consciousness can do - thus Materialism is implausible.

All the other alternatives are routinely dismissed because they clash with Materialism, but we have run out of options. Therefore we need to 'normalise' our various measures of plausibility, and realise that all those options are on the table.

Given that, I want to choose Dualism. I choose it because it is closest to common sense, and because it allows us to interpret a vast amount of data that is otherwise hard/impossible to explain - such as DC's own Hard Problem!

I also think that until science actually studies non-material options in depth, we don't have enough information to choose between the alternatives once Materialism has been excluded. E.g. anything that can be explained by Dualism can also be explained by Idealism.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, often science doesn't need the BEST theory so much as it needs the theory that works best in the sense of Occam's Razor.

Science works best by slowly evolving.

David

I agree, and would add that Dualism appears to be the best philosophy of mind at least considering the criterion of Occam's principle of parsimony of explanations, where the other philosophical candidates have to be twisted and have many additional explanatory hypotheses added (many more than with Dualism) to explain the large amount of stubbornly existing but inconvenient to some other philosophies paranormal data. This data demonstrating the separability of mind and soul from the physical brain and body. This is in a way strongly suggesting that there is an immaterial mind or soul that can separate from the brain and body to then make verifiable (veridical) observations of the physical world and also spiritual worlds, and then reentangle with and reinhabit the physical brain which appears to be its normal way of manifesting in the physical.

In short, a large body of paranormal evidence indicates that Dualism seems very much to be the De Facto way the world actually works in human embodiment- the actually lived-in world of sentient intelligent humans mostly living in-body, except where a real separation between body and brain, and the Mind or soul, is occasionally revealed by paranormal phenomena like NDEs that are by far best explained by Dualism.

This argument naturally extends to another even vaster area of evidence for Dualism in human existence and life - the practically necessary, absolutely essential De Facto Dualistic operation of the world of human high technology, where the economy and social organization intimately depends on there being at the human size and dimensional scale an exact and always repeatable separation between the mental and the physical, especially where this applies to the mechanics and physical science of our technological machinery, which totally depends on the operation of the laws of physics and mechanics to be followed exactly. And of course this is also the De Facto practically essential Dualistic way everyday interactions of people with each other and the physical world are conducted.
 
It is all of this that has to be overcome philosophically in order to nominate one of the other philosophy of mind candidates for the winner. Of course this argument may be sneered at by the philosophers, since it isn't purely philosophical and theoretical, but instead delves into the realm of physical evidence, which seems to be generally held in low regard by the philosophers. 

But in my opinion, evidence always trumps theory. Dualism is the De Facto way the world works, and must at least be plausibly incorporated into any supposedly universal philosophy of mind, where perhaps for instance something Mind-like is the ultimate single substance of reality, even though the world actually works 99.9% according to Dualism.