There are some things that we can NEVER understand through empirical science.

"First, I am NOT talking about the wavelengths, or the electric signals, or my brain. " But that depends on the nature of your brain and if it includes the "I" you speak of. As a strict materialist determinist, I'm going to have to reject this 'raw experience' as evidence of something which can't be understood. There have been great strides in the study of the mind/brain relationship which seem to indicate when they indicate at all, that yes *I* am indeed my brain. All you are doing it invoking the homunculus problem which is as futile as asking where a circle begins. It's nature precludes a beginning. There is no tiny little man in your brain behind your brain your brain IS the tiny little man. "Now, like I said, I can explain to you what I am seeing, but you can never actually access it. " Again you assume a fundamental mystery which is a form of an argument from ignorance. Like what you see as red I may see as blue but we've both been trained to call it green. The favor of your experience may be mutually exclusive but that does not mean that I cannot experience a precise analog of it. Further, with sufficient understanding it may be possible to transfer memories, given that they clearly have a physical element since physical damage can destroy or alter them. "But you can never directly access the experience. In fact, there is no empirical way for you to access my experience, or me yours. " ...yet "Even if we put you on a gurney, open their skull, and connect the most sophisticated machinery imaginable to your brain and track every neuron, synapse, and neurotransmitter in your brain, we still would not have access to your actual experience. " That is a matter of faith. One which I do not share. Statement of faith is not an argument. "We could still never even come close to understanding what it feels like to be you remembering your first rock concert.." Argument from personal incredulity. The duplicate problem not withstanding, IE what happens if I were to BECOME you... I think I very well could capture with perfect fidelity the character of an experience with sufficient technology and understanding. In precisely the same way text is copied and pasted. Granted human memory is orders of magnitude more complex but its there, and its very much a real thing. "Take religious ecstasy as another example. " Gladly, ESB time and again has been shown to induce religious experience. "We can, again, put them on a gurney and open them up and measure their brains while the experience is happening." Again, faith. To quote my favorite cyborg... "I find your lack of faith disturbing." You seem to think there is something about being a thinking ape that absolves you from adherence to the physical constants, if so, why bother using logic at all? "We could have such an experience of our own and then we would know what it feels like for ourselves to have such an experience, but this is not empirical evidence. " Well, if I can read your knowledge, that is a brain state, from the outside, then yes, I can, because that reading would be evidence. Do not take the limits of technology as you understand it today to be the limits it will always have. "I am saying that they can not be understood through science. " All understanding comes from experience and thoughts related to that experience, and an experiment is simply a manufactured experience, so to say that something cannot be understood 'through' science is like saying that nothing can be understood at all, which is a valid position of sorts, but if you really are a solipsist, aren't you just talking to yourself? I mean why bother debating in the first place if you reject all experience? Cogito Ergo Sum indeed, but What if I also think? What if I can define think, and what if I can put it into a rock, or a lump of conditioned sand. "I am not talking about an abstract description system. " Oh but you are, unless you feel that thinking of an apple means there is a literal apple in your head (or in your soul). Thought is abstraction by its nature, and experience is thought influenced by reality (exterior or not, real or not). "I am saying that raw experiences are absolutely inaccessible by empirical methods and, as such, can never be empirically understood. " And I'm saying you're not up on your brain/mind studies. Neurophilosophy, MIT press is a grand read, and a good place to start. P.S. I hereby formally recognize that "friar_zero " called it. :)