Another sign of the breakdown of scientism?

An excellent and lucid new article on essentially the philosophical and scientific basis for Chalmers' well-known "Hard Problem" of consciousness, and on why science will never explain consciousness, just came out in (believe it or not) the influential scientific magazine Psychology Today. Perhaps a sign of the times that scientism may be on its way out.

At https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...sciousness :

"(With human beings).....something odd happens. Arrange physical particles to form a rock or a clock, and all you get is a rock or a clock—an object with physical properties like shape, weight, and movement. But arrange the particles to form a human being, and you don’t just get an organism with a brain. You get one with a mind: a first-person perspective on the world, an internal space ablaze with colors, sounds, sensations, and emotions.

Philosophers call this internal world “phenomenal consciousness”—the inner qualities we experience when we enjoy the taste of coffee, watch sunlight glisten on a lake, or think about the Roman Empire. Scientists and philosophers have spent a lot of time and effort trying to figure out how an arrangement of unconscious particles could produce a conscious mind.

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....it’s important to realize that phenomenal consciousness is different from functional consciousness. The term “functional consciousness” refers to an organism’s ability to behave (that is, function) in certain ways—in particular, to respond appropriately to its environment or its own internal states.

It’s relatively easy to explain how an arrangement of particles could be functionally conscious. That’s because a “function” can be defined in wholly physical terms. It’s just about particles moving in particular ways in response to stimuli. It involves nothing more experiential than, say, an automatic door. For this reason, the term “functional consciousness” is a bit of a misnomer.

But, if a physical explanation of functional consciousness seems entirely possible, a physical explanation of phenomenal consciousness will be far more difficult. There is good reason to think it’s impossible.

Why would that be? Because it seems as though any physical system—any toing and froing of elementary particles—could go on perfectly well “in the dark,” without there being any conscious experience associated with it. After all, if an automatic door, a plant, or a computer can respond to its environment without experiencing anything, then why not a brain?

....there are influential theories regarding the physical properties that correlate with consciousness. One theory identifies conscious processes as the ones that occur in a “global workspace” exchanging signals with regions throughout the brain. Another has it that consciousness occurs in systems that meet a mathematical measure of “integrated information."

However, theories about the physical correlates of consciousness do nothing to explain why these systems don’t just operate “in the dark.” The theories stop at the empirical observation that for some unknown reason certain physical systems and phenomenal consciousness go together.”

So the prevailing current theories of consciousness like "global workspace" theory and IIT are really "bait and switch" techniques and accomplish nothing, since they offer explanations (of a sort) for consciousness but are only sophisticated materialist explanations for the functional consciousness defined previously, not for "what it is like to be" or phenomenal  consciousness.

A (true) physical explanation of phenomenal consciousness would require the same kind of conceptual connection between phenomenal consciousness and some physical activity. There would have to be some kind of particle movement that clearly could not happen without conscious experience. But no such conceptual connection exists.

That’s why, for example, a colorblind person can’t learn what it’s like to see color just by studying a textbook on the mechanisms of visual perception. And it’s why you can’t be certain from the physiology and behavior of other people whether colors look the same to them as to you.

There’s an essential logical link missing between the kinds of processes investigated by physical science and the conscious experience that sometimes accompanies them. And this makes a physical explanation of consciousness impossible.

That's a stark pronouncement, and a challenge to the last-ditch reductive materialists.

Researchers are now being forced to explore surprising new avenues. These range from the theory that phenomenal consciousness is some kind of illusion to the theory that it is a fundamental part of reality in its own right, one that physics leaves out."

Needless to say, the illusion theory is self contradictory and dead in the water, since something conscious is needed to experience that very proposed illusion. Leaving philosophies such as Panpsychism and maybe even Idealism, both anathema to materialist Scientism. Unfortunately Interactive Dualism isn't on the table yet and may never get there.

Great piece, though the Psychology Today blogs have a variety of opinions, Steven Taylor has written entries as well on Psi and Survival.

I do agree Scientism - really the irrational wedding of the Physicalist faith to Science - is breaking down, but I don't think this particular blog entry is that far from what other blogs on Psychology Today have published.