Do you think consciousness is a purely natural process, in the sense of having a purely material basis?
Gee, didn't we do this dance once before?
As opposed to what, a purely unnatural process???
Considering QM can we even say the 'purely material' has a purely material basis?
If I say 'yes' or 'no,' is that anything other than an opinion? What possible fact can I point to that demonstrates conclusively one way or the other?
In reality this question is due to an artificial split of the mapping of reality that doesn't exist in reality. There is no 'purely material' or 'purely immaterial' any more than there is 'dogness' vs 'beingness.'
The Universe is one big thing, and you can reduce it to any component parts you want but that is just your conceptual handles. You can't take the consciousness out of the Universe any more than you can take the material out of the Universe.
It's kind of like saying, what is your shape when you remove all the water from your body? None, because without the water there is no shape, just dust.
As I've seen you say before, 'the ghost in the machine, the ghost in the machine.' But there is no ghost and there is no machine, there is just existence.
IT is all of IT. And if that ain't natural, then what is?
And IT – “just existence” -- would then just be a “natural machine,” of which we would simply be so many cogs. There is “just existence” – but there is also consciousness observing it: Yours or mine. If your consciousness were indistinguishable from “just existence” (whatever that is), then by what principle do you become self-aware, or aware of that which is beyond you?
You speak of an “artificial split of the mapping of reality.” I think you attribute this notion to me. So I’ll play along: I strongly doubt there is a way for “dogness” to grasp “beingness.” This isn’t an artificial split – this is a question of trying to capture a particular empirical observation in words. (Of course, the words and what they refer to are not the same thing, so in this sense the exercise is derivative, "artificial.")
Obviously both humans and dogs are bodily creatures. We are both mammals, etc. But though there is much we do not know about animal consciousness – and human consciousness, for that matter – I suspect you would never find a dog doing a systematic analysis of his own consciousness. Which, believe it or not, some human beings have done, and do – more to the point, are able to do. (A rather common ability, I suspect.)
Why don’t you try that (if you haven't already)? Then maybe you’d see that sometimes one needs “conceptual handles,” especially in those cases where there is nothing analogous to what one discovers about pure conscious awareness, any place else in the world outside of one’s own consciousness. People who have had this insight generally assume their “discovery” is a property pertaining to other human consciousnesses as well as their own.
What I’m speaking of here – a meditative, structured analysis of consciousness – does not appear to me as something identical to brain function per se. This is a something that can intend brain function itself as a subject for investigation, as if consciousness understands itself as being somehow a principle in its own right, one sufficiently “separated” from brain so as to be able to conduct such an inquiry in the first place.
There is something more than “brain function” to this; for brain seems to be all about computational functions. In simple, direct awareness (if the goal of a particular form of meditation is achieved), we discover there’s more to consciousness than simple computational ability, that it can range everywhere while not itself being spatially extended in any way (i.e., is “intangible,” since you dislike the use of the word “immaterial”), not instrumental to the achievement of any particular pragmatic purpose.
You can laugh at “the ghost in the machine,” the force vital, the soul, psyche, whatever you want to call it -- or rather, don't want to call it. Call it nothing if you like, or a fantasy. But that doesn’t make it “go away.” IMHO FWIW