selfAdjoint said:
Let me clarify. Science replaces "is" questions by behavior questions. What the electron "is" doesn't matter to physics, what the electron "does" matters.
This is what Rosenberg is saying. Science studies appearances, relations, bare differences.
So I don't believe that consciousness is a thing, that could have an independent or prior ontology.
I don't understand the word "so" here. In what way does your view of consciousness follow from the fact that physics does not study what "is"? You seem to be saying that physics cannot study consciousness, therefore consciousness cannot be explained by science, therefore consciousness must be epiphenomenal on something that can be explained by science. Perhaps that's a misunderstanding. But this sort of argument, even when well made, never works, because it is impossible to prove that something that can be explained by science is not epiphenomenal on something that cannot be explained by science.
This goes back to Rosenberg's point, that the things science can explain cannot be shown to be more than collections of bare differences. In the final analysis there is nothing supporting the scientific model of the universe but an explanatory gap. That doesn't make the model completely wrong, but it's a problem that cannot be ignored for ever.
My support for this view is the massive amount of evidence that our apparent world that we are conscious of does not correspond closely to the world as we think it does, the .4 second gap between the time our brain starts our arm moving and the time we become aware of the stimulus for that move, the optical illusions, etc. etc.;
There are a number of valid objections to this interpretation of Libet's results, many discussed at length in the literature. Certainly those results do not show that we do not know what consciousness feels like. Also, those results (and others like them) tell us nothing about the ontology of consciousness.
in fact all the evidence amassed by Dennet in Consciousness Expained.
That bloody book again. What evidence are you referring to? There's certainly none that shows that Dennett is right in what he asserts about consciousness, and most of his reasoning does not stand up to even a superficial dispassionate analysis. I don't want to argue about the book, but I think its inneffectiveness is shown by the lack of impact it's had in consciousness studies.
Consciousness is not the way you think, and as a complex, unreliable phenomenon is quite unsuitable as a basis for philosophy.
Surely the point of researching into consciousness, whether by science, philosophy or meditative practice, is to get our thinking about it on the right track? If we were to dismiss consciousness as a subject for study because it was not what some people think it is then we'd have to dismiss the entities we study scientifically on exactly the same grounds. There may be nothing at all that's what we think it is.
Is consciousness an unreliable phenomenon? I don't know what 'unreliable' would mean in this context. I'd argue that it follows from the fact that solipsism is unfalsifiable that consciousness is the most philosophically reliable phenomenon that there is.
It doesn't seem to me that I have to come up with my own detailed account of being conscious in order to be mightily skeptical of anyone who says it is primary.
In a way. But the two sides of the debate are not quite equivalent. Those who argue that Being is fundamental assert that no detailed account can be given of our consciousness. They say that what it really is cannot be explained. Because of this it would be unreasonable, or pointless at least, to expect them to ever give such an account. The onus is therefore on those who say that it can be explained to show that it can be.
(This looks like a cop-out, but it is not. In this other view, Buddhism etc., the reasons that consciousness cannot be explained can be explained. That is, there is nothing mysterious about why C cannot be explained, it just follows logically from the way the world is. In other words, the proposition that consciousness is inexplicable
in principle can be shown to be consistent with the proposition that consciousness is fundamental. It is only the thing in itself that cannot be fully explained).
Not everybody thinks that this assertion, that consciousness is inexplicable, is true. However nobody can show that it's false, so as a reason or excuse given by someone for not being explain consciousness despite their claiming to know that it is is fundamental it's perfect, and the assertion may be true as far as anybody can ever show.
On the other hand those who argue that consciousness is not-fundamental say that the fact of our being conscious
can be explained, even if we cannot do so yet. So it is they who must come up with an explanation of it, or show that it is, in principle at least, possible to explain it. However so far all attempts to do this have become quickly enmired in metaphysical paradoxes, barriers to knowledge, explanatory gaps, undecidable questions and so on, just as those who take the other view predict they will.
Because of this I feel that someone who wants to argue that consciousness is not-fundamental must, before they get into the scientific detail of the explanation, start by showing that at least it is possible in principle to reduce consciousness to either mind or matter. As it is nobody has succeeded in doing this yet, which we can know from the fact that still many experts feel that the 'hard' problem is unsolvable.
It seems to me that the fact that solipsism is unfalsifiable is incontrovertible proof that we can never show that consciousness reduces to brain, or even more generally to matter, but I've never seen anyone using this argument so maybe I'm missing something.
Sorry - written too much again.
I still think he's cute! 
