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Biggest conflict, what are your thoughts on this.

The hard problem of consciousness is an illusion

Conciousness/Religion/Vitalism is something that is personal which is why I believe it's so subjective.

Originally posted by inimalist
The hard problem of consciousness is an illusion

So if I understand this correctly, this is an endorsement for the materialist PoV, right?

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Perceptions are inherently illusive, yes. I agree wholeheartedly there. But consciousness is tricky, because it is what you experience. Even if it draws from neural perceptions of the world that are completely illusive, the act of "experience" is the one thing you can't delude via illusions because of its very nature.

In other words, it's not the machinations which make consciousness that defines the "hard" problem (which are, imo, entirely materialist and deterministic). It's the act of awareness itself, and it enters an abstract realm populated only by other ideas and conscious acts.

Beyond that, if all of our sensory perceptions is just that, illusion (which many would claim it is, with support for their argument), then how are we to justify materialist claims about our inherently illusory interpretations of everything in the universe?

The materialist view may in fact be correct, but both intuitively and scientifically I can't endorse it with anything resembling confidence.

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As for the initial topic, I may have just answered it above.

Materialism has more going for it in terms of quantifiable evidence, but is far from holding all the cards within the realm of reasonable debate.

I stand by dualism for the time being. Though (and this is merely speculation) it may just be that even consciousness and these "transcendent" phenomenon are simply subtler aspects of the material world, and that our definition of "material" and "determined" falls well short of its mark.