It is a good one, and I’m glad people here pushed me to address it, as it is a case that has been on my back burner for some time.

What is the mass of a heartbeat, the temperature of bird flight? With consciousness too, we are dealing with complex system-level properties, which often don’t have transparent physical properties.

> 1) regarding property dualism, it seems to me that it is an empirical matter whether property dualism and substance dualism are actually different positions. I understand that property dualists assert that they are, but that’s based on the premise that it is possible for a physical system to have nonphysical properties, and I’m not sure that’s possible. <

What are the physical properties of consciousness? If you can’t furnish me with any, then you qualify as a property dualist by default.

1) regarding property dualism, it seems to me that it is an empirical matter whether property dualism and substance dualism are actually different positions. I understand that property dualists assert that they are, but that’s based on the premise that it is possible for a physical system to have nonphysical properties, and I’m not sure that’s possible. If it is, are there any examples? It seems to me that the burden of proof is on the property dualists to demonstrate that there are, or else I’m not convinced that they even have a separate position from substance dualists, i.e. ID is to creationism as property dualism is to substance dualism.

2) the whole Mary seeing red argument and other related arguments seem to assume premises that are incompatible with the physicalist position. Physicalists believe that when a person sees a color, it is a physical process in which a physical particle strikes the retina, setting off more physical processes that lead to an experience that is also a physical process. In other words, experiencing red is when red photons physically hit you, setting off a chain reaction of physical events. Similarly, experiencing being shot is when a bullet physically hits you, setting off a chain reaction of physical events through pain-responsive neurons and etc. Nobody would argue that if Mary was the world’s best trauma surgeon and knew everything there is to know about gunshot wounds, that that means that a bullet would magically appear, lodged in her arm, causing her pain. But if Mary is a neuroscientist who’s never been hit by a red photon, that’s exactly what dualists argue. From a physicalist perspective, being hit by a bullet and being hit by a photon are in the same class of phenomena, so I don’t understand how the Mary argument can claim to disprove physicalism.

I’m not an expert in these things, and I know they’re complicated. I’m open minded to the (likely) possibility that I’m wrong, but if I’m wrong, please explain it to me because no one else has so far.

A materialistic world-view is to me obvious, and doesn’t automatically contradict or disprove whatever nonsense or woo one may want to believe in. So I think people arguing the opposite are just working with connotations and definitions that differ from reality.

But that’s not to say I’m ok with the position that all of consciousness is just flesh and chemistry. _I_ exist, I am conscious, this is a real thing I experience (or else _I_ would not be experiencing it -I could THINK I was, but I wouldn’t be…if you see the difference, which you can’t – one can only be certain about their own consciousness). I can’t comprehend how this could be explained simply by particles moving around and bouncing into each other.
However that I can’t comprehend it doesn’t make it so. Nevertheless there are too, too many odd questions to answer, that we haven’t even yet begun to understand how to answer, or even ask, that I can’t be quite as optimistic as Steven seems to be regarding our understanding of consciousness and implication that we’re getting there, on the right track, etc.

I even sometimes feel that anyone who isn’t totally blown away by the questions of consciousness, and is happy to accept it as just some biological side-effect of complex computations, is maybe a P-Zombie, and simply has no experience of consciousness, or at least, not as I experience it.

> Regarding the question – why are we not zombies, why is there qualia, etc. I don’t think we need an answer to this. There does not necessarily have to be an evolutionary advantage (that’s hyperadaptationalism). It could just be that vertebrate central nervous systems evolved that way as a solution to having behavior react to and adapt to the environment. Maybe a life form could have evolved to have similarly complex behavior without consciousness, but who cares. That doesn’t mean that consciousness would not evolve. I tend to think that consicousness, however, is not separable from the complex behavior we associate with it. Animals evolved to respond positively and negatively to stimuli. Over time the analysis of that stimuli and the response to it became very complex, and we experience that partly as our consciousness. <

The term "complexity" is merely employed as a euphemism for magic. It explains nothing.

> Regarding the question – why are we not zombies, why is there qualia, etc. I don’t think we need an answer to this. There does not necessarily have to be an evolutionary advantage (that’s hyperadaptationalism).
It could just be that vertebrate central nervous systems evolved that way as a solution to having behavior react to and adapt to the environment. Maybe a life form could have evolved to have similarly complex behavior without consciousness, but who cares. That doesn’t mean that consciousness would not evolve. I tend to think that consicousness, however, is not separable from the complex behavior we associate with it. Animals evolved to respond positively and negatively to stimuli. Over time the analysis of that stimuli and the response to it became very complex, and we experience that partly as our consciousness. Further, we needed some way to attend to the important part of all the information potentially coming in. How do you attend to some information and ignore other information without having something like consciousness. <

The problem with materialists like yourself is that they presuppose dualism and refuse to acknowledge it as such. You're actually presupposing dualism because you're presupposing free will. This is made evident by your use of the term "attend."

On the materialist view, consciousness is simply an epiphenomenon. As such, it is casually inert and cannot confer any survival benefit. Therefore you cannot furnish us with any plausible explanation why “organic robots WITH consciousness” were naturally selected over “organic robots WITHOUT consciousness.”

I do have a day job, after all.

(I’m messing with you here)–
If there is no difference between life and non-life— then my consciousness will continue beyond my death– right? ”

(stop messing with me)-
I said that it is difficult to classify some things are alive or not alive. Are viruses alive? Prions?

If you cannot definitely classify some things that exist now as definitely alive or definitely not alive, then it should not be difficult to see how, at some time in the past, life could have arisen from non-life. At the interface there is not much difference between the two. Non-life could easily have graduated into life. How many different ways do I need to say it?
Yet you always seem to avoid arguing sensibly against this argument.