How exactly does someone observe the "unobservable"? How could one come to confidently believe in a realm built up out of "unempirical" content?
If anyone can satisfactorily answer these questions, chances are they have done science, and discovered that the unempirical content everyone was talking about was scientifically describable after all, unique from other science only in its being particularly difficult to apprehend.
Until we get there, this unempirical component of consciousness being posited shares common heritage with the Luminiferous aether, the life-force, hollow earth theory, mythic gods of natural forces and any number of premature theories which hover in the closing gaps of indeterminacy before a science comes along to explain them.
I'm not saying that's right or wrong, I'm just pointing it out. A monism works beautifully, as long as its basic assumptions are true. Unfortunately, the converse is true - a monism cannot detect whether its axioms are true or not. The more it keeps digging, the more it appears to confirm itself.
It is quite possible that the fundamental assumptions of materialist science are true. It's just that, if they are not, chances are the system will never detect its own incompletitude.
Coming straight from a distinguished neuroscientist: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=396215
... this unempirical component of consciousness being posited shares common heritage with...
Past performance is no indicator of future results, and one theory's individual case of validity has no bearing on the validity of the next one to be tested. I do like how you tried to dismiss it by grouping it in with the other theories, but as we both just examined, that is faulty logic and merely supposition.
Why not? This is a very strong claim.
> It's clearly powered by a physical entity (the brain), but the "self" is also clearly not a physical entity.
A word is not a physical entity. Does that mean that we can't learn anything about words through science?
> and it will never be explained unless we manage to re-create a conscious entity ourselves.
Well, I can agree that this is probably the easiest way to explain it. Create a consciousness that you can pause and non-destructively examine (assuming that's possible).
I suspect you would argue that "this isn't really a word," just some physical shadow of the true word.
Unfortunately, while this does form a powerful basis for truth in the empirically observable, it completely shatters and is horribly faulted when one tries to explain the unempirical and unobservable with only what you have. It is an extremely powerful assumption (based on faith in a worldview) that the domain of the metaphysical is purely explained by the physical (the laws of physics and the material)... In your case, where does this concept of mind, self, and consciousness come from? It's clearly powered by a physical entity (the brain), but the "self" is also clearly not a physical entity.
There is absolutely no proof that the system of material thinking holds water in other domains such as the metaphysical, so most of what scientists think about the mind and self come out of some seriously convincing bullshitting. They really have no clue how it arises, and it will never be explained unless we manage to re-create a conscious entity ourselves.
With that in mind (pun not intended), take anything you read about how the "self" comes about with a serious dose of common sense. This is where it's up to you to make a decision, because the scientists (while sounding smart), really have no more clue than you do =)