Here is what I think: I think the definition of consciousness I used here is the same that was used in the posted article. It is not "my definition". I also think that some people never thought about it and are so unfamiliar with the subject that they misinterpret and cannot imagine what the discussion is actually about.
It is not God of the gaps in one fundamental way. God of the gaps arguments attempt to justify something invisible by saying you cannot measure it. Consciousness is something visible - in fact it's the only thing that's visible - yet we cannot measure it, and likely never will be able to.
As Schrödinger put it: "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."
Or to take another grand physicist, Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness."
Now these are people who thought a lot about both physics and consciousness. I think that when we do justice to both sides - the conclusion that one cannot arise from the principles of the other is inescapable. However, when we only immerse ourselves in materialism or only in spiritual new-age philosophies, we miss this scale of the problem of this mind-body gap the article talks about.
No doubt Schrodinger and Planck were very smart physicists. That doesn't make either one an authority on consciousness. I would be willing to bet there are other revered physicists who held different opinions. Appeals to authority when the person isn't an expert in that field are terribly weak.
Even after reading all the comments in the thread, I will restate what I said: one must define what they mean by consciousness before discussing it. Even in the example here, you are quoting people talking about consciousness without defining what they mean by it.
It seems that you accept that most things that people would ascribe to consciousness, eg, the ability to perceive their environment, store and retrieve relevant information, to synthesize theories and plans, to incorporate those meta thoughts into higher order thoughts (ie, self-referential knowledge), etc, can be explained by materialistic considerations. But you have another thing that you also call consciousness that is definitionally mystical, something physical explanations can make zero inroads to explaining. Please give some concrete examples of what cannot ever be explained.
> Appeals to authority when the person isn't an expert in that field are terribly weak.
Hey, I agree. These were not as much appeals to authority as a reply to "your form of mysticism", just to get the focus off myself.
> Please give some concrete examples of what cannot ever be explained.
We can try it this way. We both look at a red apple. We both say it's "red". Can you device an experiment or some procedure to check wether we perceive red in the same way? Maybe what you see as "red" I see as "blue".
Please note that this is not about which pathways fire upon seeing a light of a certain wavelength. Just assume we are both healthy and same regions are activated when looking at red light. Is the experience of red light the same for both of us and how to prove it, or check it?
It is not God of the gaps in one fundamental way. God of the gaps arguments attempt to justify something invisible by saying you cannot measure it. Consciousness is something visible - in fact it's the only thing that's visible - yet we cannot measure it, and likely never will be able to.
As Schrödinger put it: "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."
Or to take another grand physicist, Max Planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness."
Now these are people who thought a lot about both physics and consciousness. I think that when we do justice to both sides - the conclusion that one cannot arise from the principles of the other is inescapable. However, when we only immerse ourselves in materialism or only in spiritual new-age philosophies, we miss this scale of the problem of this mind-body gap the article talks about.