[fasterik]

Just because there are two hypotheses doesn't mean that we should assign them equal probability. Why should we believe that we will need to modify the laws of physics to explain consciousness when they already do a remarkably good job of predicting and explaining everything else we know about chemistry and biology? If someone has an alternative theory of consciousness that goes beyond the standard model of particle physics, the burden of proof is on them to produce the equations that explain how this new substance or force interacts with the known fields of the standard model. Of course we should never put 0 probability on anything, but I know where I would put my money given the empirical track record of our current theories.

[aftoprokrustes]

I actually think it is a bit more subtle than that. I am here really focusing on consciousness as a subjective experience, which seems to be of an entirely different nature than physical processes. We have a lot of examples of emergent properties of complex systems, but as far as I can tell all of them stay in the same "realm": the emergent properties of an ant colony, for instance, are physical, resulting from physical interactions.

With the subjective experience as an emergent property, things such as a society, a country, an economy could become conscious, in the sense of having a _subjective_ experience of their own existence as entities separate from the rest of the world. If we accept the "consciousness as an emergent property", we _have_ to accept that possibility. Which, to me, is not less wild or unlikely than, say, the "theory" of a field of consciousness "received" or "captured" by physical systems with certain properties, the same way a radio can receive radio programs. There are additional reasons to want to consider alternative explanations, but going into them would rrquire much more space - if interested, I would point to the report of the Galileo Commission.

So it does not change anything to physics, really: materialism is pretty much the best methodology to unpack the laws of physics: whatever you observe, see if you can find more elementary physical processes that explain it.

I am just a bit irritated by bold statements which assume that we know for certain that consciousness is an emergent property of physical processes. We do not, and the reason why this is such an accepted fact is more sociological than scientific - Newton and others decided to focus solely on physical processes as a methodological tool, and over centuries, the undeniable success of the approach in making discoveries _and_ building practical tools gave it an ontological status it did not have initially (Newton was for instance a very convinced Christian). Which makes me keen to remind that, because in the current scientific culture it is shameful to even ask the question.

[fasterik]

I'm not inside the scientific community so I can't verify the degree to which it's a shameful question. My guess is that it has a lot more to do with simple heuristics than dogmatism. A researcher has finite time and resources. They need to decide what to work on based on the likelihood that they can make progress on certain well-defined problems. We already have a centuries-long track record of making progress by studying things in terms of physical and chemical processes. That doesn't mean this approach can solve every problem, but there's not much else we can do until a new Einstein comes along and proposes an alternative that's compelling enough. I believe there are a lot of young scientists who would be willing to jump on a new paradigm if it was obviously leading to novel insights and breakthroughs, but that hasn't happened. It's not because these ideas are being suppressed, it's because nobody has put them forward in a rigorous and convincing manner.