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

"My opp has built quite a few straw men." Did not. :) "He accused me of "invoking the homunculus problem." ..." You are. Ask yourself, is your arm you? No then whats it attached to? Your (part part part) brain. Is your brain you? You claim not, but I'm sure you grant that brain parts are required for moving your arm, and that those parts can be damaged while 'you' remain, how far back must we go to find the seat of the will? You appear to claim its a soul at the end of the chain, which exists behind your brain, in exactly the same manner as the tiny man. If your "raw experience" occurs in the brain, then its a simple (not easy) matter of physical reactions, all of which that can be empirically studied and potentially duplicated. If not then they must exist outside the brain and body, as per a soul, or, the exact logical equivalent of the tiny man in the homunculus problem. "...if there had been ANY advances or even theories in science which would even begin to explain the link between the brain and raw experiences..." Are you kidding? Put _esb experience brain_ in Google. I'm sorry you find this unpleasant, but experience occurs in the brain. In order to defend the existence of these 'raw experiences', you must first show that there is something outside the brain that is capable of experiencing, or put another way you must prove the soul. I don't think you've done that. "But this is impossible simply because you and I could never occupy the same position in time and space. " Does that mean you as you were 5 minutes ago or 5 years ago is not you any more? Careful how you answer, if yes then the concept of the individual dissolves as you grant that the number of individuals you represent is equal to the number of discrete units of time one can imagine. And since time is an analog that number is infinite. Planck time not withstanding. If no then you grant that there is a set of constraints other than location (both temporal and physical) that define an individual, and if those conditions are met in an outside organism, would that be you? All you're doing is as I said before bringing up the duplicates problem. Which will devolve your argument into a series of child like subjectives. "Yes but thats still not REALLY me." "I'm not going to address the rest of my opp's points because I think they are mostly unintelligible..." "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke " Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer Same thing here, just because you don't get it doesn't mean its wrong or cannot be gotten. "Keep in mind, I do not have to PROVE my position beyond a shadow of a doubt. All I have to do is convince you readers that my position is more likely than my opponent's position." No, the voters are supposed to vote on who debates better, not who they agree with, this is not a poll. They should vote on who has proven their point with greater skill and accuracy. And in order to show yours with any accuracy at all, because of the harsh limits you've presented yourself in choosing such a metaphysical stance, you're going to have to prove some things that are frankly unprovable because they are simply incorrect. You've effectively made the positive claim that there is a soul, and the burden of proof is therefor yours. If you abandon it you abandon the debate. "1) Imagine you wake up one morning... and find that every color is reversed....You go to the doctor and they find that nothing about your eyes or brain or entire nervous system has physically changed." This is an example of what would happen in a hypothetical universe of your creation in which the soul does exist. Or the doctors is incompetent, or, the current level of technology cannot detect the subtle change in neural architecture or what have you that is there. Not proof of any kind. Your claim is like saying "Imagine you found a perfect circle with 4 corners." Being able to type that does not make it any more possible. "If you can imagine this happening, then it is logically possible." Thats strikingly similar to the ontological defense of god's existence, so I'll use the same rebuttal. Simply put, a thing does not exist unless it can be observed, or it is provable in logic. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. This and your related statements are in themselves related to the argument from ignorance. If you're going to reject logic and shrug off the burden of proof then this is not a debate. "What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof". - Christopher Hitchens Which would put us in a state of balance, which I would then destroy were I to present even the slightest shred of evidence for the seat of consciousness resting firmly in the brain. Which I already have. So, if you abandon logic, I win, if you accept it, I win. "If she does, then experience is NOT the same as brain-states and is non-physical." False dichotomy. Abstract knowledge and experiential memory are different types of brain states. Obviously there is a qualitative difference between the understanding of something and the memory of experiencing something, but this is in no way evidence to support the claim that experiential memory is non-physical. It is simply a different. Lecture time: As a side note this type of experience effect via memory can be exemplified by deja vu. When a memory is stored, various tags are stored along with it, which allow the brain to recall it. One of these tags is a rough time stamp. This can be observed with a simple thought experiment. Recall something from your early childhood, ok, now recall something from yesterday. How do you suppose your brain found those memories? And how does it know this memory is old while this memory is young? It must be tagged in some way. Now, the brain does not have a clock exactly but it is aware of the flow of time, and so it tags the memory chemically, with a "before now, by this much" type of tag. But since this is a chemical process with millions of variables including toxicity, diet, radiation, temperature, pressure, etc etc, sometimes there are slight errors, and the "by this much" value is distorted. Like misplacing a decimal point or adding a zero, a small change has a radical meaning. So what happens is, the memory is recorded as normal but with the time stamp making it 'feel' much older than it actually is, and since we reprocess working memories many times, after the first formation with the flawed tag, the new tag gets loaded into the conscious mind before time itself has elapsed to match the tag. The greater the variance the more distant the memory feels. "My god I was here hundreds of years before!" "Have I met you before?" Lecture over: The bottom line is, just because it feels mystical doesn't mean it is. "Ask yourself if your experiences feel like brain states." The argument from personal incredulity. Covered above. "I'm appealing to something MORE certain, for what could be more certain to us than what we are feeling right now?" I don't know, feelings are pretty complicated and far from certain in my experience. "My opp's condescending tone aside, don't judge based on which of us you believe has read more mind/brain books. Judge us based on our arguments." For once we totally agree. In fact a chapter of my book is all about my loathing of people listening to who seems smarter without actually critically evaluating their positions. I call this the lab coat effect. I know I have glasses, but to offset that realize that I am also from Kentucky and probably sound like a total hick to you. That should nicely offset any unjustified "smart guy" flavor. Good debate man, it took real sand to go after such a massive topic. I really think the character limit needs to be doubled.