I fear someday we may accidentally discover (and disappoint ourselves) that consciousness (AKA the mind) its just a self-modifying binary system and not as magical as we like to assume... probably still centuries away even if that's the case.
Here's one thing too complex for us to understand (a conscious brain).
Here's another thing with superficial similarities (highly complex neural nets of one kind or another).
Maybe this complex thing is the same as this other complex thing!
However - I'm still stuck at the stage where I feel that p-zombies, qualia, the chinese room etc are pointing at a genuine explanatory gap. I know the more rationally minded think this is hand-waving or closet-mysticism but considering nobody has satisfactorily defined consciousness in a way that doesn't simply hide the problem one layer deeper then I'm going to stick to my gut feeling that the other side of the debate is doing just as much hand-waving as me.
It's homculi all the way down.
I can't shake the feeling that a lot of the arguments about qualia are begging the question. 'Qualia' is a name for something on our map of a human mind. It doesn't necessarily describe something in the actual territory.
So neither side (false dichotomy acknowledged) can use question begging as an argument to dismiss the other.
What's left? Who has more to explain? Surely at this point Descartes kicks in. The one undeniable piece of knowledge we have - the one that everything else is built on (precariously).
Isn't the burden of proof on those that want to reduce consciousness to something else - when consciousness is all we can be certain of?
I'm not dogmatic on this. I am pulled strongly in both directions and I had a youthful infatuation with Hofstadter/Dennett et al.
On the other hand I know my desire to imbue the self with something transcendental is driven by romanticism.
So here we sit.
1: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Sensorimotor_theory_of_c...
Including humans.