Don't be taken in by philosophical grandstanding and proclamations!

"For now, I ignore niggling debates about the exact definition of consciousness, whether it is an epiphenomenon, helpless to influence the world, or whether my gut is conscious but not telling me so. These issues will eventually all need to be addressed, but worrying about them today will only impede progress. Don't be taken in by philosophical grandstanding and proclamations that the Hard Problem of consciousness will always remain with us. Philosophers deal in belief systems, simple logic, and opinions, not in natural laws and facts. They ask interesting questions and pose charming and challenging dilemmas, but they have a mediocre historical record of prognostication. Consider the chapter quote by the French philosopher August Comte, father of positivism*. A few decades after his confident pronouncement that we would never understand stellar matter, their chemical composition was deduced by spectral analysis of their light, which led directly to the discovery of the gas helium. Listen instead to Francis Crick, a scholar with a far better track record of prediction: "It is very rash to say that things are beyond the scope of science." There is no reason why we should not ultimately understand how the phenomenal mind fits into the physical world." *On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately reducible to simple visual observations are . . . necessarily denied to us. . . . We shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition. -August Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive (1830-1842)