Bear with me for a paragraph or two while I explain a philosophical concept with very immediate relevence to all of us:
Imagine a universe parallel to this one. Exactly the same down to the last molecule, the last event, the last quark. In this universe, at this very moment, there's a parallel Jake Danger writing a parellel blog entry. There is absolutely no difference whatsoever between the two universes. Except one. Parallel Jake (and all the other parallel people) has no subjective consciousness - he's a zombie. Zombie Jake perfectly mimics my actions and can carry on a conversation just as I can. But there's nothing inside - no subjective experience. He has no more subjective conscious than an image in a mirror does.
Scientifically speaking, what is the difference between this parallel universe full of zombies and the universe we actually live in? The only answer can be - none whatsoever. No technique that has ever been devided by (or could ever be devised by) science could ever tell the difference between the two. It is this Zombie Universe that science describes, not the real universe we live in. Subjetive experience is the ghost in the machine, the reality that objectivity-based science ignores because it lacks the tools to investigate it. In a word, the scientific materialists who insist that physicality = existence are confusing the map with the terrain. And that is why materialism can never be a full explanation of the phenomenon of existence - it explains everything except...everything.
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