Because consciousness itself cannot be explained except through experience ie consciousness (ie first person experience) - not through material phenomena
It’s like explaining music vs hearing music
We can explain music intellectually and physically and mathematically
But hearing it in our awareness is a categorically different activity and it’s experience that has no direct correlation to the physical correlates of its being
The common thought experiment is the color blind researcher experiencing color for the first time(Mary the Colour Scientist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument)
Re:What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
by GoblinSlayer on Thursday September 04, 2025 @05:04AM
(#45125179)
Experience doesn't look necessary: we consider tesseract explained even though we can't experience it.
a materialist isn't saying that only material exists: no materialist denies that interesting stuff (behaviors, properties) emerges from material. in fact, "material" is a bit dated, since "stuff-type material" is an emergent property of quantum fields.
why is experience not just the behavior of a neural computer which has certain capabilities (such as remembering its history/identity, some amount of introspection, and of course embodiment and perception)? non-computer-programming philosophers may think there's something hard there, but they only way they can express it boils down to "I think my experience is special".