Because the metaphysical is definitionally outside the realm of science and rationality, and every bit of scientific and technological progress humankind has made has come from discarding superstition and approaching the world as a physical system.
If the brain isn't just a physical system, then we may as well give up. There's certainly no point discussing it, as any assertions will be untestable and one persons elaborate and well thought out theory will be just as valid and predictive as the next persons "consciousness is created by invisible purple unicorns" theory.
So if we are going to discuss it, we should start from the assumption that there is no magic or witchcraft or religion involved.
> If the brain isn't just a physical system, then we may as well give up
Forgive my obtuseness, but if it turns out that the brain is more than just a physical system, what are we giving up? On science as a whole?
Isn’t science predicated on reliably predicting reality? Do we know how to describe reality accurately?
I asked below as well, but how does the observer effect work as a physical system? I get we don’t know so you can’t really answer, but if we can’t accurately describe reality then our science is woefully incomplete! Given that incompleteness I really don’t understand how we can rule out “invisible purple unicorns”?
The issue is that we have yet to prove or find evidence for the existence of anything but the physical. When we do find a new phenomenom in one of these ways, it becomes a part of physics. What would it mean to concretely discover a non-physical phenomenon? It would have to genuinely be magic of some sort, and defy rationality and description, to not simply be a new part of physics. (And if it defies rationality and description, it doesn't advance us scientifically, except to let us know we must abandon science in that domain.)
> I asked below as well, but how does the observer effect work as a physical system?
Just to be sure - the observer effect doesn't refer to a human observer, but rather to any measurement of a quantum system.
It is unsatisfying that quantum mechanics posits that particle states are fundamentally probabilistic. It's possible that in some sense there is an underlying order such as string theory that is impossible to test or verify. In that case, it would make sense to consider string theory as metaphysics. A fun exercise, but not scientific and not useful for understanding the world. By definition it would not be helpful in predicting or modeling the world, otherwise that would serve as a way of testing the theory.
> It is unsatisfying that quantum mechanics posits that particle states are fundamentally probabilistic.
You can alleviate this mostly by accepting the MWI.
Under the MWI, all the possibilities do occur, and the probability manifests because when you split into an infinitude of yous, each of them is just one you, and has no way of predicting which you it will be on the other side.
So the MWI makes the wave equation deterministic when viewed from the outside. The trouble is that we are inside it.
It turns out that God does throw dice - it's just that all the combinations come up at the same time.
Hi Henchman21, there are indeed well designed experiments in the realm of the paranormal, but main stream scientists are either dismissive, meaning they assuming that trickery is ALWAYS involved hence unworthy of deep investigation, or if they show interest in the subject publicly it involves career suicide because it's taboo.
On rare occasions they do investigate it but it's often a ruse just so that they are not accused of not being 'open minded'.
That's fine. Just understand that modern science will likely explain this by a malfunction of your senses - because no evidence of paranormal activity has ever been shown.
If you want to argue outside of science you should state it up front - especially on a site like this.
Genuinely I don't understand this.