It's not surprising that the only neuroscientist in the article is arguing for a materialist approach.
No one is capable of offering any physical sort of coherent explanation for the experience of consciousness.
There is no process in the brain that, if discovered, would lead to an "aha!" moment about the source of qualia. We could understand the physical law governing every single atom in the brain and simulate it with the best achievable accuracy and still not understand anything more about the emergence of qualia than we do now.
Similarly, there is no coherent metaphysical or mystical explanation for consciousness. Such an explanation would have to invoke some interaction between a non physical world and the physical world, which is an absurd notion for multiple reasons.
I believe consciousness for humans is the equivalent of differential equations for amoeba. It is beyond our comprehension.
Maybe the correct response is just to dismiss zombie theories as incoherent. But people are already doing that - I doubt collecting more physical evidence and improving our understanding of cognition will strengthen the case against P-zombies, even though it'd be useful knowledge for other reasons.
That is true.
>"And really needs to be dismissed"
I would agree with you if it weren't for these darn images and sounds and thoughts that flood my mind every time I wake up from the un-consciousness of sleep.
It seems to me that you're recognizing the impossibility of scientific study of qualia itself (rather than correlates of it) but you are then taking the radical step of dismissing it simply because it cannot be studied scientifically. That's where we differ.
Do you not dream when you sleep (I mean, when you enter REM state)?
I know there are people who don't - but most of us I believe do dream (and some of us can become "conscious" of being in the dream state, while continuing to dream - aka, so-called "lucid dreaming").
I'm not a researcher or anything in regards to consciousness - but I wonder if there is anything that study of people who dream vs those who don't can tell us about it?
Only in the same ways that e.g. emotions exist 'outside of the physical world' and we are doing some work with those (e.g. we know more about the effects of hormones on them now).
I completely disagree that this is unstudiable or 'behind the veil'. We can create beings with consciousness (babies) using a purely physical process, of course there is some way to learn more.
Personally, I assume the main problem is (as it so often happens) that 'consciousness' is too loosely defined and explaining it will be easier with more strict definitions and a deeper understanding of the brain and body.