[smosher]

There are biological causes, but that doesn't explain much of anything at all. You could even look at it purely mathematically, but math alone will never manifest anything.

What you are talking about are data points relevant to different fields of study. Are you asking me to believe that's all there is just because that is all science has seen?

That would be foolish. As I've mentioned, it doesn't feel like a scientific subject. Science is a philosophical subject, not the other way around.

[ksmiley]

> Are you asking me to believe that's all there is just because that is all science has seen?

No, I object to the use of past tense there. I believe that "all there is" that is observable could eventually be explained by science. Of course, science in its current state is insufficient to explain all there is, as evidenced by all the things we can't explain. But nothing will remain inexplicable forever.

> Science is a philosophical subject, not the other way around.

That's reasonable. Really I'm just using science here as shorthand for "obtaining knowledge". If philosophers can come up with a good explanation of qualia and consciousness etc, without the use of test tubes or brain surgery, that will be fine with me.

[smosher]

I believe that "all there is" that is observable could eventually be explained by science.

I have no reason to believe it. That is why I used the past tense, in fact. People often say "oh it's just X" where X has a lot of gaps and there is a tacit assumption they can and will be filled in some way that satisfies the question. I object to that. Often, what we calls physics today we often call fiction tomorrow. It even happens to Einstein and Hawking.

If philosophers can come up with a good explanation of qualia and consciousness etc

You have missed my point. It's not the explanation that I'm looking at. I'm looking at the subjective meaning a person finds in things. This is not a scientific question. If all there was to life is all things scientific I wouldn't care to be (or about being) alive.

But there is an understanding there that we can't model in physics or biology and may never. We can't model it in psychology to my satisfaction, a field meant to be on that very level. But in a subjective way, we do model it. We poke at it and get the answers we're talking about. It's so isolated to the inside that we find a lot more nuance in it than we have words to describe.