I was giving another example of circular special pleading. I know you're not pushing a YEC agenda (despite often advancing arguments that provide those perspectives some succour)
I not only don't provide succour to YECs, I thoroughly reject YEC. You're still trying to employ ad hominem arguments.
A mainstream view is that the brain is providing a representation of reality, one that helps us efficiently interact with it. I don't think that is at all at odds with what Hoffman is saying in that video.
You say "a" mainstream view. I don't think so: it's Hoffman's view, and it's hardly mainstream. Most mainstream scientists are materialists who think of the world in a WYSIWYG way.
Both (materialist & idealist) models are representing an illusion of reality in some respects. Beyond that, whether or not consciousness "exists" is determined by how one is defining consciousness. To say, "Consciousness exists, because I experience it!", is as meaningless as it is circular, because under any model the illusion of experience is at play. Does external reality 'exist' if I experience it? You see the problem...
Sophistry again. Just playing with words. Stick quotes around "exist" and voila, point to some ambiguity in the word that you don't actually explain. And how can one "define consciousness" (or indeed anything) without being conscious? According to you, the thing doing the defining is an illusion, so why should anyone give what you say any credence?
That's the irony; eliminative materialists rubbish consciousness using -- what? -- it can only be consciousness. Follow your logic, and no one can possibly claim to be right about anything. There can only be some people who agree about something and those who agree about something else. But whence comes the concept of agreement? It's a conscious construct, as is language in general, which you, like everyone else, uses: but you use it to deny the existence of the very thing you're employing to construct your sentences. It's the ultimate in self-refuting logic.
Reconciling the physics of the microscopic and macroscopic is an ongoing endeavour. We clearly mix in different circles because I hear scientists (who work in this field) speaking of the exciting challenges this incompleteness presents. Does Idealism have a way of reconciling the problem?
No need to reconcile the problem; idealism makes it disappear because it reverses the direction of causality. No longer does consciousness have to arise from that which doesn't possess consciousness. Instead, consciousness is fundamental and gives rise to the world of appearances.
We've spoken before about consistently taking the non-mainstream, anti-consensus position in so many areas. I understand the lure of the exotic. Whilst it can feel empowering to contradict the experts (who themselves are standing on the shoulders of giants), history would indicate that this is a poor way to back a winning horse: To find the expert academic consensus wildly erroneous in one field of study would be extremely unusual, to discover that to be the case in practically every field of science would be beyond incredible. Laughably so.
"Exotic" is an unsurprising word choice. It's just another thinly disguised way of seeking to rubbish ideas you disagree with. As is the use of the word "giants", implying that those revered by materialists possess the most likely version of truth. Would it be
extremely unusual to find experts "wildly erroneous"? I think not. There are plenty of examples of experts who got things wrong in the past, and there's no reason to believe that present experts are immune; if they
were, then there'd be no point in doing science, would there? We'd always get things right on the first outing and progress would be impossible.
Science is predicated on people eventually being proven wrong, though we're in a cultural phase where this has been forgotten, and are drowning in certainties that are blocking scientific progress. Fact is, quite a lot of the current models of reality adopted by science
are in some cases beyond laughable, such as the current cosmological model; the Darwinist model of macroevolution; and the materialist, self-refuting model of consciousness. Inconsistencies abound in science: are the rule rather than the exception.
I'm not talking about a neural correlates of awareness here, I'm referencing the photoreceptive cone cells and their (well understood) interaction with different (external?) wavelengths of light. How can that fold back into an "all is consciousness" model?
You can't escape your WYSIWYG view of the world. For you, the arrow of causation simply
must go from inanimate, unconscious (unless you're a panpsychist) particles to animate, conscious entities. That's what your senses are telling you, and you're accepting it literally, which is why you're trying to tell me that Hoffman's views are compatible with materalism -- move on, nothing to see here. I think people like Hoffman have such intriguing and well-founded hypotheses about reality that even people like you have to accommodate them in some way. Not wanting to deny them outright, you are attempting to fit them in with your predilections as if they cause no serious difficulty for them. Who do you think you're kidding?
Maybe. "The Hard Problem of Consciousness" appears to be based on a category error; it conflates (1) the explanation of consciousness with (2) the nature of consciousness. The fact that (1) eludes us actually says nothing at all about (2).
Category error, shmategory error. An explanation
is telling us something about what we think the nature of a certain aspect of reality is; even if the explanation is wrong, it's still how we think of its nature. Your statement is just more sophistry that I don't think even you are convinced of. Stop with the semantics, already. It's fooling no one.