Well, I appreciate that you consider this exchange to be at an end and no longer wish to discuss it but since I had some thoughts about your post on my drive home I hope you don't mind if I post them. If others wish to continue the discussion you are welcome, otherwise we can certainly drop it.
Well, I think you are approaching this question from the opposite end that I do.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, if you are interested in continuing the discussion, please correct me if I'm wrong. Your approach appears to be:
1) Pose a hypothesis 1: does B (brain) cause C (conscious experience)
2) Before looking for evidence, make the following argument: For B to cause C, the materials that make up B must already possess the properties of C.
3) Before looking for evidence, conclude that the materials that make up B, do not possess the properties of C, therefore B cannot cause C
3) If B cannot cause C, then the hypothesis is false.
4) if the hypothesis is false, no evidence could lead us to conclude it is likely true
5) therefore the belief that B causes C is not based on evidence and is therefore faith based.
I'm not trying to mock your argument here. This seems to be what you are laying out. If I've misinterpreted you in any way please let me know (or anyone else if Dominic is not interested)
My approach would be as follows:
1) Pose a hypothesis: B causes C
2) Evaluate the evidence in favour of the hypothesis. This involves:
- examining the correlation between B and C
- testing how close the correlation between B and C is
- testing to see if the correlation could be due to some other cause, let's call it M
- examine whether the evidence could support multiple hypotheses
- evaluate the quality of the evidence of the various hypotheses
3)If the correlations between B and C survived the above, then conclude that there was evidence in favour of the hypothesis,
4) if the evidence was consistent with other hypotheses continue to explore those as well
5) consider the evidence in favour of the hypothesis to be justification for investing resources in exploring how B causes C, at the same time continuing to evaluate evidence coming out of that process to see if it still suported the hypothesis.
6) consider what this research suggests about possible properties of the materials that make up B that might not have been previously identified. Ask ourselves whether this research points at the directly research on those materials should go.
Getting tired now, but hopefully the drift is there - I'm sure there are some holes in the above- it's a first draft so contructive criticism is welcome.
The point is that logical arguments depend on the premises being accurate. I get the hard problem as it is posed. The danger is in assuming that the fact that we seem to know a lot about the structure and dynamics of matter should lead us to believe there are no other properties of matter. Or assuming that we understand enough about structure and dynamics to state with confidence that particular arrangements of it can't produce what we've labelled conscious processes.
The other point is that if the research I described above has been done, even if not proof, it still may be accurate to say that there is evidence in favour of the hypothesis, while at the same time acknowledging that the hypothesis could still be wrong or incomplete, and continuing to explore other avenues until such a time as the evidence gets strong enough to consider the expenditure of those resources to be wasteful.
I only consider logical impossibilities absurd. Anything else is on the table. My problem with the hard problem, in terms of logic, is that it depends on the premises being true - and I'm not sure we understand the premises enough to consider it a valid logical impossibility.