When I talk with people about this, there are some people like yourself just don't get what the big fuss is. For me, I see the challenge as being trying to direct their eyes (metaphorically) to see for the first time that there's something that's a key part of the world that they'd previously missed, that has no explanation on the materialist view.

> they will accept what they call "micro evolution", but somehow thing that "macro evolution" is impossible > ... > It seems like people imagine toy physicalist model of a brain and can't see how blueness can ever appear. Human imagination, by and large, can't really think well about big numbers

This isn't a problem of scale. There is nothing on the physicalist's story, either at the smallest end or the biggest that carries a whiff of being anything relevant. What is it you had in mind as being the seed from which big things may grow at scale? That is, the 'micro evolution' of this discussion.

> The examples I brought up you are willing to concede might be fully explained on materialist grounds, but hold out that experiences themselves are categorically different.

The things I have in mind as needing explaining aren't fully or even partially explainable on materialist grounds. What I was pointing out is that whether you're a materialist, idealist, or dualist, you're going to agree to the claim that there is a correlation between the mental and the physical. E.g., we present an image of just the right sort, and now someone thinks they're seeing curved lines when in fact the lines are straight. That is all I said -- just a correlation, nothing more.

> Why can't the feeling of fear simply be neural state of where, say, heart rate is elevated, adrenaline levels are high, accompanied by activation of piloerection muscles? What evidence is there that it requires anything more than this to be experienced as fear?

This sounds similar to identity theory, a view with a strong pedigree, and a view that I think is one of the materialist's best options here. The problem I have is that it completely misses the actual thing I care about. You can talk about heart rates, adrenaline levels, activation of piloerection muscles, etc, but none of these things contain in them even the seed of the thing I really care about: an explanation for the phenomenology. What is this phenomenology? I know I can experience blueness under such and such a condition, but what is this 'blueness' thing itself? In all your talk about these things, there is no mention of the most important part, the phenomenology/experience. It's completely missing!

> The resulting state is perceived as a pleasing shade of blue

This is what I want to know more about -- 'perceived'. We both agree about the correlation facts: which physical changes result in which experiences/perceptions/phenomenology. But what I want to know about is how does physical stuff have any kind of perception at all?

Phenomenology like smells, tastes, feeling happy, pain -- these things are not found in purely physical descriptions of the world, not at the smallest level nor at the largest. They are nowhere. All your talk is talk about muscles, neurons, hearts, etc, and I don't see even the shadow of phenomenology there. I want to know about 'blueness' itself, and all you've given me is neurons and cones and so forth -- just the story about the correlation.