We are only conscious of our mental activities. The intellect can be explained with a set of algorithms that partially inherent and partially learned. Simple conscious turning machine. We know that there are particles and everything most importantly consciousness arises from particles activities. There are tons of evidences in cognitive science about the fact that each mode of consciousness can be explained in term of neural activities in different part of brain, for example one part of our brain becomes active when we see red, etc. Therefore free will is the only problem. At the end free will can be only an illusion.
This is where we need to be more clear about terms, because I was using consciousness and intellect a bit sloppy. Yes, we can explain consciousness by science, but not the intellect. That is a spiritual or immaterial power and so is impossible, by definition, to explain materially. Those operative faculties that we can explain scientifically are merely organic and not powers of the intellect properly speaking. That is not to say that the intellect doesn’t use the organic faculties though. For example: there are cases of people that are in comas and no brain activity that leave the coma and have thoughts from the period of the coma. That could not be possible if the intellect is just material.
How do you know that truth is transcendental? We experience beauty, goodness, etc but cannot verbalize them. We only might not cognitively developed well to verbalize these concepts.
This depends upon how we understand truth and transcendental. When I say transcendental I am already applying the notion of Aristotelian categories, not how Kant understood transcendental. The transcendentals are those categories that are above all genus and apply to all genus and species. So they transcend the ten categories. This is a result of the transcendental applying to any being. So insofar as a thing is: it is true, it is good, and it is one (and so not some other thing). Truth is being as understood by the apprehended and good is being as apprehended by the will. So I can very exactly say what truth and goodness are.
Epiphenomena is a dualistic concept. Consciousness is an emergent phenomena according to the latest studies.
If we define consciousness as just the organic material operative powers, then yes it is an emergent phenomena. That’s not a problem. The intellect though is beyond mere consciousness.
You could say that a machine can replicate human thought. Here’s the thing though, I’m from the software field. Current models of ML (machine learning) are not thinking or learning in the way we think and learn. The field still doesn’t even have a clue how to replicate human thought. Instead it is trying to mimic thought. You could say that we just haven’t figured it out yet, but then I could equally say we might not be able to. It is on you to demonstrate that it is actually possible, because currently they don’t have an actual idea how to.
Materialism can explain the wetness of water in term of the attributes and motion of simple particles.
But it can’t explain why those simple particles behave as they do. Quantum Mechanics seemingly comes down to particles resolving into fields which are ordered in particular energy angles and levels. But the question still remains, what makes those field those fields? If everything comes down to energy, then what is energy? Pure energy doesn’t exist, it is always of something. Either at a quantum level as fields or at the micro/macro level as (physical) matter. Light itself isn’t pure energy but also a particle. So what gives rise of the most fundamental properties of energy and why can we say that this energy is now a field and this energy is stuff and this energy is light. Materialism can’t explain that because that difference is only possible to explain by bring in the immaterial concept of form.
