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

Wow. Where to begin. My opp has built quite a few straw men. I'll start with those. He accused me of "invoking the homunculus problem." For those of you who don't know what that is, the homunculus idea is that there is an agent that is not ourselves that is in our brain making us do the things we do, or some such nonsense. I am not claiming this, nor did I imply that I believed this anywhere in my previous post. My opponent is shamelessly mischaracterizing my position so that it is easier for him to tear it down. Next, he says I am using the argument from ignorance fallacy. This would hold some water 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. But there have been no such advances or theories. There are links between the brain and behavior, but not between the brain and experience. I'll get back to this point. Next my opp goes on to say that my position is based on faith and faith alone. I'll get back to this one as well. My opp's first honest objection is the following: What if he were to BECOME me? Then he would capture with perfect fidelity the character of my experience. My rebuttal is simple. The idea of becoming me is absurd. It is logically impossible. You would not have to just be a clone of me. You would have to ACTUALLY BE ME. You and I would have to be absolutely identical. But this is impossible simply because you and I could never occupy the same position in time and space. I can not even imagine a universe where I can become someone else without annihilating the original (in which case, "you" would still just be "me" and we'd just be back to my original claim that you're/my internal raw experience is absolutely inaccessible through empirical methods). I'm not going to address the rest of my opp's points because I think they are mostly unintelligible or further mischaracterizations of my position. 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. To reiterate what I am saying. a)I am saying that raw experiences like color, pain, smells, and the like are NOT equivalent to brain states. b)And if they are not brain states, then they are NOT physical. c)If they are not physical, then they can not be empirically measured. d)If they can not be measured empirically, then they can not be known via science. If I can convince you of (a), the rest trivially follows. A quick word about (b) though in case you are wondering about that step. If experiences ARE physical, what other form could they take other than brain-states? Stomach-states? Skin-states? Something in the air? If experiences are physical, they must be brain-states (or nervous-system-states if you want). Anything else is just highly implausible. (Remember, I don't need to prove my case, just convince you that my case is more likely true than any alternative...if you would rather believe that our thoughts come from some physical entity besides the brain well...there ya go). I will now give some arguments for (a) above: 1) Imagine you wake up one morning and find that every color is reversed. Everything that used to look red, now looks green; blues look yellow and so forth. You go to the doctor and they find that nothing about your eyes or brain or entire nervous system has physically changed. If you can imagine this happening, then it is logically possible. We're not talking about a circle with angles or becoming another person. So, assuming you can imagine the scenario I just described above, it is logically possible. Now, since it is possible to imagine that raw experiences are not related to brain states (as in the scenario above), therefore raw experiences and brain states are different from one another because if they were the same, you could not imagine one without the other. (For example, if I told you to imagine a shape with four equal sides and four right angles but that wasn't a square, you couldn't do it, because they are identical.) But, if they are different, then raw experiences are not physical unless you want to say that they are identical to spleen states, or liver states, or some-other-part-of-the-body-states, which is clearly absurd. Not convinced? Argument 2) Mary is a scientist studying vision and color. She has corresponded with thousands of people gathering enormous amounts of data on how color works. She knows literally everything there is to know about how color is experienced by other people, from how color affects peoples' behavior to the specific pattern of neuron firings that happen in a persons brain when they experience a specific color. However, she has spent her entire life confined to a room with stark white walls and black and white furnishings. She can only correspond with the rest of the world through a computer terminal that only displays black and white. Now Mary is allowed to leave her room and go outside for the first time and experience color directly. My question to you is this: Does Mary learn anything new when she leaves the room? If she does, then experience is NOT the same as brain-states and is non-physical. Just for fun, here's a 3rd argument: Imagine a zombie clone of you. This zombie looks, talks, and behaves just like you except there is nothing going on in its head. They don't experience colors or thoughts or pain (although they still shout "OWWW!" when you drop a brick on its toe). Again, if you can imagine it, then it is logically possible. If it is logically possible, then experience is not the same as brain states because if it were the same, you would not be able to imagine one without the other (see above). If they are not the same, then they are different. But if experience is different than brain-states, then experience is not physical (unless you believe they come from your colon, or your eye-balls, or from a man with a big white beard in the sky). 4) This is not really an argument but an appeal to common sense. Ask yourself if your experiences feel like brain states. How can a brain state appear blue in your mind? How can a brain state explain the way you feel when you hear your favorite song, or the way you feel when you contemplate the hugeness of the universe? Yes, we can easily show that certain patterns in the brain correspond to those feelings, or even cause them. But are they really THE SAME thing? I'm not appealing to logic here. I'm appealing to something MORE certain, for what could be more certain to us than what we are feeling right now? Take a couple of minutes and introspect. Wait. Don't introspect. That's still taking a 3rd person approach to your own experience. Just take a couple of minutes and experience your experience. Observe your mind. Is it really your BRAIN that you are observing??? To me, the idea seems absurd. My brain is made of meat. What I am experiencing is not meat. ----------- I have given four arguments defending my case that raw experiences are not the same thing as brain states. If any of them has convinced you (I personally favor argument #2), then you must vote for me unless my opponent is able to successfully challenge each argument. My opponent has one more turn. I'm done. Do me a favor. After you read my opponent's rebuttal, go back and just read these arguments again before submitting your vote. And remember, I don't have to prove my case. I only have to convince you that it is more likely that I am right than I am wrong. 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. I look forward to reading my opp's rebuttals.