[wk_end]

Sagan’s Dragon doesn’t really apply here, though. Because, while we don’t have evidence for something non-physical behind mind, we do have a phenomenon - conscious subjective experience - occurring with no real physical explanation anywhere in sight. Or even conceivable, really. Chalking it up to a specific religious idea of a soul or anything is a bridge too far, of course, as is believing anything one thing with more fervor than just a hunch, but...

Well, the analogy falls apart because whether there’s a dragon in the garage really is something physically verifiable, and it’s hard to know if where the there that’s there comes from is. But it’s a little like if you occasionally heard loud stomping noises or roars coming from your garage, and things in there were turning up with big bites taken out of them or singed with fire. No matter how much you look you can’t find the cause. Is that a dragon? Dragons don’t exist...but who knows?

[joeberon]

Yeah I definitely agree with this. Many people can and do perceive the inexplainable issue directly. I had a discussion about that recently here on HN, about those who can perceive a "hard problem of consciousness" and those who cannot. Basically some people do not perceive any disparity between a totally physical model of the mind and our conscious subjective experience, while I and others personally do. It is a bit tiring to constantly be called delusional because I feel that disparity