"I think consciousness is just emergent from complexity, so what I have to say is valid, but people who suspect that's not the full story, well that's pointless to debate, they should use my framework for discussion"
sheesh. weak.
sheesh. weak.
You can believe whatever you want, use whatever framework you want (religion, spirituality, science etc). I'm just pointing out that it is pointless to debate between the two because they fundamentally disagree about how to inquire about the world and answer questions like this. Everyone in this debate is talking past each other without acknowledging that they are starting from two very different positions and sets of definitions.
you are making a mistake like physicists who believed "God does not play dice with the world" at the dawn of quantum mechanics or "time is a constant, not the speed of light" at the dawn of relativity.
You have no idea where consciousness comes from, stop assuming you do, it's poor science.
(For the record, I'm sure the integral of my history of atheism is strictly greater than yours, mentioning since that seems to be the subtext of your argument.)
I am saying it is pointless to appeal to such things. If we always appealed to skepticism science would never advance because everything would be too unknowable. We get to define what words like consciousness means, so we can intentionally define to be within the realm of scientific inquiry. Most people probably define consciousness outside of scientific realm of inquiry (notions of a soul etc) and that is fine, but at least in the first definition there can be scientific debate.
Does that mean that I regard running as outside the realm of scientific inquiry?
Humans are not perfect, so sometimes we are collectively mistaken about a proof's correctness. The fundamental nature of the process is still one of establishing inviolably proven facts and building on top of them.
Science, on the other hand, is a never-ending iterative approximation process with occasional massive discontinuities when accepted theories are overturned.
It relies on observed report and falsification of our current best guesses. No scientific "law" can ever be proven true, just labeled "not known to be wrong so far".
Math is much closer to philosophy than science. It just happens to be pragmatically useful to the sciences: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectivene...