[f_klem]

Dreyfus builds his arguments based on Heidegger's work. You expressed it correctly: for Heidegger, in order to experience the world, we need a body that is always present in the world. It is like (but not the same) a continuum from the world, through our body, to our experience, and back. As far as I as understand it, Heidegger does not states explicitly that there is a mind or consciousness, and I think it is irrelevant in the discussion.

> but that's also just a theory. I don't believe that experience is literally impossible to engineer, as consciousness has emerged from non-conscious being through evolution, so clearly there must be some kind of mechanism for it -- and if there is, then I believe it can be replicated, we just don't really understand it well enough yet to do so

Something can be understood but no replicated. The structure and inner workings of the Sun or a complete galaxy can be understood, but not replicated. In order to replicate things, knowledge is not enough, one also needs the material capacity to do it. So we might understand at some point how experience emerges from complex systems, but nonetheless we also may be unable to replicate it.

I do believe that experience comes from this 'emergence'... but specifically from the combination of factors that make complex mammals and human beings the way they are. But it is a belief: I simply cannot base a whole field of study on it on the base that is a proved fact.