Irreducible subjectivity and consciousness

Thank you immensely for joining the debate! Your response was fairly close to what could be expected, Descartes and Husserl would be most proud! On with the debate! As I noticed in the comments, many people are not quite sure exactly is meant by 'Irreducible Subjectivity of Consciousness', so a slight bit of clarification is in order. Consciousness is the "I" that each of us thinks of ourselves as. Irreducible Subjectivity has implications two-fold: (i) If consciousness is Subjective that means that it is ONLY your own - 'privileged access' - that is, your experiences are always your own, no one else can EVER feel exactly what you feel; (ii) Irreducibility of consciousness means that consciousness cannot be reduced to another sort of phenomena, properties, states, levels, what-have-you; consciousness is a thing-in-itself. PRO suggests that consciousness IS irreducibly subjective for the following reasons: there is no way of verifying external experience, that is, the 'Real World' is actually unknowable since our sensory-capabilities are highly fallible - thus I cannot know either what other people's consciousness' could be, what constitutes them, or even if they exist - leaving one's own consciousness highly subjective and reducible to nothing. This view, set out by PRO, is perhaps best called the 'classical' view of the mind, and I have several objections. I concede the point that our senses can indeed be deceived - I can hallucinate or be tricked; however I feel that this proposition does not necessarily entail inescapable skepticism which would also result in irreducible subjectivity for the following reason: RELIABILITY of experience. Although I can be tricked - most of the time my sensory perceptions are lucid and reliable. Although this does not immediately give us knowledge that an external world exists, it lays the foundations for knowing as-such. If our sensory experiences are even slightly reliable we can begin to verify science; we can verify scientific claims through simple, reliable, observation. Thus, although our perceptions themselves are fallible, the body of science we lay the foundations for through observation allow us to form objectivity. At this point it should be conditionally accepted that Objectivity is possible which allows to advance. Science, once established, does not need continual human verification to create Objectivity; Gravity continues to remain constant even without humans experiencing it, light travels continuously at the speed-of-light, and particles continue to behave in predictable ways - Objectivity has been established through only a small window -a snippet- of reliable sense-datum. If we accept (at least temporarily) the points I have made I will also concede it does not yet remove the irreducible subjectivity of consciousness. So why do I suggest that I can remove it? Simple: functional equivalency. The "I" that I am is my consciousness - but its existence, or nature is not that mysterious, consciousness is a phenomena, an outcome, a result of what goes on in the brain; that is, the operations of the brain create the mind, create consciousness. To claim that consciousness is NOT an outcome or phenomena resulting from brain activity (as PRO could indeed do) creates a dilemma for the claimee. The claimee creates a problem of interaction; that is, how does a consciousness (the "I") connect to the body? If consciousness is NOT part of the body then it should be impossible to get drunk or get Alzheimer's disease since they are bodily things affecting consciousness! Thus one should likely concede that consciousness emerges from brain activity. If consciousness emerges from the brain then studying the brain gives us access to what creates your experiences (the neuronal interaction), which allows us insight into your experiences - which through extension removes Irreducible-Subjectivity, since I can explain what creates consciousness and what occurs within it. ---------