***** Ultimately I think that Harnad has a deep philosophical worry, and it is one that we should all share. It seems astounding that objective neuronal processes should cause our subjective feelings. But in coping with this sense of mystery we should remind ourselves that it is just a plain fact that neuronal processes do cause feelings, and we need to try to understand how. We should share his sense of mystery, but not let it discourage us from doing the real work.
He is convinced that the mystery of consciousness is unique. But it is well to remind ourselves that this is not the first time we have confronted such mysteries. From the point of view of Newtonian mechanics, electromagnetism seems metaphysically mysterious. How could magnetism ever be explained by Newton's laws? And from the point of view of nineteenth-century science, life seemed a mystery. How could mechanical processes explain life? As we attained a much richer scientific understanding, these mysteries were overcome. It is hard to recover today the passions with which mechanism and vitalism were once debated. I am urging that the right attitude to the problem of consciousness is to overcome the mystery by increasing our knowledge, in the same way that we overcame earlier mysteries.
Our most fundamental disagreement is harder to state. I believe his sense of "how/why" demands more than science and philosophy can offer. In the end when we investigate nature we find: This is what happens. This is how it works. If you want to know how/why a body falls, the standard answer is to appeal to gravity. But if you want to know how/why gravity works, I am told that the question is still not answered. But suppose it were, suppose we had a unified theory of everything that explained gravity, electromagnetism, and everything else. That would still leave us with the question, Why are the data accounted for by this theory and not some other? In the end, how/why questions stop with theories that state how nature works and the mechanisms according to which it works. (NYRB, June 23, 2005, Letter "What is Consciousness")*****
In other words, no matter how much we come to understand _anything_, those who want mystery can always say, "But why is it this way?" What needs understanding, I believe, are the social/historical reasons for this obsession with asking "Why?" Searle's reference to Vitalism is well taken. It seems to me, for example, that the question "What is Being" is analogous to the conviction of late 19th-c vitalists that there must be a "secret" to "life."
Yoshie hits on a key point here: "Religions that matter in society, for better or worse, and merit the attention of the irreligious in politics are collective endeavors." I much prefer St. Thomas (or Carl Estabrook or Chip Berlet) to 20th/21st century free-floating and individualized spirituality.
Carrol