That seems to summarize your whole thesis, which from your point of view I accept is small t true. So you think consciousness is something in your head generated by your brain.
Here you conflate consciousness and reason, whereas reason always appears in consciousness which continues when reasoning ceases as in meditation. Now I am describing an experience. This is not speculation. You can experience it yourself. If you did your conception of consciousness might change.
This is a kind of parody of Platonism from the outside. How do you know it isn’t mere speculation about what an experience you haven’t had, like trying to imagine a country you have never visited?
True; religious and mystical thought without experience is a waste of time.
That through which one enjoys sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and measurement is consciousness. Outside of consciousness nothing is seen heard touched smelled tasted or measured. And yet consciousness cannot be seen heard touched, smelled, tasted or measured. It’s true there’s still no universally, accepted definition or optimal method for empirically, measuring consciousness.
Curiously, consciousness itself plays a vital causal role in quantum mechanics experiments where it is required to bring about the so-called collapse of the wave function.This collapse is supposed to occur upon any act of measurement, and in one interpretation the only way to distinguish measurement from non-measurement is via the presence of consciousness.
Nothing is demonstrated outside of consciousness. When consciousness cannot be verbally reported demonstration relies on observing behavioral and neurological markers, indicative of an individuals awareness and responsiveness. There are a number of scientific instruments for doing this if we wish to go into that.
All phenomena appear in it.
It cannot be proven that consciousness exists yet we know about consciousness more directly than we know about anything else, so “proof” is inappropriate.
Yes consciousness is unseen. At one time in the mid 20th century, studying consciousness was considered taboo in scientific circles, but this is no longer the case. In recent decades, consciousness has emerged as a legitimate and important area of scientific study. Neuroscience in particular plays a central role in this interdisciplinary field, which draws from philosophy, theoretical approaches, computational, models, experimental methods, and clinical perspectives.
How do you empirically get beyond speculation about consciousness when considering preliterate humans? I mean paleontology can look at skeletal changes, and changes in cultural artifacts. Evolutionary psychologists cancompare human traits and behavior with other species look at cross-cultural research, genetic evidence, archaeological, and anthropological data, brain imaging in neurobiology psychological experiments and pathological studies and such. What does it tell them about consciousness?
As Chalmers pointed out, one could determine all the facts about biological function and human behavior and brain mechanisms by which it is caused but nothing in this vast cause story would lead one who had not experienced directly to believe that there should be any consciousness. How would the process of natural selection distinguish between a conscious person and their zombie twin?Eolution selects properties according to their functional role. What would the evidence consciousness changes with evolution look like? We know that there are differences between us and other animal species in terms of intelligence and behavior but how do we know or do we know that consciousness itself is fundamentally different for them?
Not necessarily. For example, according to Chalmers panpsychism, consciousness could be a fundamental property of the universe present in basic physical entities not just humans. That would provide a solution to the hard problem of consciousness by positing that the intrinsic nature of matter itself possesses phenomenal properties. This would avoid the gap between physical and mental realms seen by other views. This panpsychic theory would blend aspects of materialism and dualism. It aims to preserve the strength of physicalism while incorporating irreducible consciousness as a core feature of reality.
Then there is monistic idealism which defines consciousness as the primary reality, as the ground of all being. The objects of a consensus empirical reality are all epiphenomena that arise from the modifications of consciousness. There is no self-nature in either the subject or the object of a conscious experience apart from consciousness. According to the cosmologies of Aurobindo and Ken Wilber, descent or involution of consciousness must occur before ascent or evolution can take place. Transcendent consciousness, throws itself downward and outward into manifest levels that are grosser and grosser. As consciousness descends, it also forgets itself. Each descending level corresponds to one of increasing forgetfulness and decreasing freedom. The previous subtler level is forgotten, delegated to the unconscious. At the lowest level, all is unconscious, all is potential. This is the material level. This is called involution because all the higher levels are potential in matter ready to unfold.
Once involution is complete, evolution begins. Life doesn’t emerge from matter from material properties and interactions along a higher level, can never emerge from the interactions and causation of a lower one. Rather life emergence at a certain level of complexity of matter because it was already there potentially. Mind emerges likewise from a certain complexity of life because it was already present potentially. I find this theory sublime.
Then there is Roger Penrose’s theory that consciousness is not a computational process, but arises from quantum mechanics within brain microtubules. The theory of orchestrated objective reduction suggests that non-computational quantum gravity events called objective reduction occur in the microtubules and are orchestrated into conscious experience. This is based on the premise that human understanding, particularly in mathematics, goes beyond algorithmic limits defined by Godel’s incompleteness theorems requiring a new understanding of physics to explain consciousness.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The state of the philosophy and science of consciousness which emerged in the late 20th century is a wide open field. And it’s one of considerable urgency and potential particularly because of recent advances in AI.