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IMO a lot of this comes from still holding onto the dualist idea of "I" as a separate non-physical entity, and then expecting some region of the brain to act as a link or communication channel to it.

> If I could experience other persons or beings in the first person, and the matter in each person explained why it is that I experience that specific person or entity, I might believe otherwise.

Materialism doesn't say that there's some "I" that could experience different persons. I think the best you could do, in theory, is transplant aspects like your personality/train of thought/memories into someone else's brain (by physically altering it to have those aspects).

Contrarily, the problem I have with non-materialist/physicalist explanations is that they don't really seem to explain anything.

If we assume dualism, that there is some non-material stuff -- call it soul or spirit or mind or psyche or whatever -- that gives rise to consciousness, I think it's fair to ask how it does that.

And if the answer is "we don't know" or "it just does", I really can't see what we've gained over materialism.

I'm open to there being something in reality that explains being someone or a specific person. Having a specific location in reality raises the question of how it came to be and what are the possibilities or limits - it's a piece of unexplained information that suggests more information and explanation is needed. Saying it is meaningless or assumed actually appears to not explain anything. But I would have to think about it more.

Materialism is indeed on shaky ground, but the ground shakes everywhere else, too.

The problem of consciousness has no real solution. A quick way to demonstrate this is via the simulation hypothesis. Consider the following for yourself in first person:

It's impossible to know for certain whether I am in a simulation until I wake up outside of it. Not having observed any evidence of being inside a simulation (probability=0) doesn't necessarily mean I'm certainly in base reality. It could be that the evidence just hasn't been observed yet. And even then, it's impossible to know whether that outer world is a simulation until I wake up in the outer-outer-world, and so on.

That is to say, if my definition of real equals my consciousness equals my existence, I'm really saying that consciousness/reality/existence is a self-defining thing.

Descartes' cogito had unexamined metaphysical convictions. "I think, therefore I am" is not compatible with consciousness because rationality has consciousness as a dependency. If I think back on my entire conscious experience as a timeline, I was conscious before I was rational. I had to derive rationality from experience, not the other way around.

Now I throw away those convictions. "I think" means the same thing as "I am", and "therefore" is a decorative force of habit rather than a reference to logic. In which case, "I think, therefore I am" is the same as: I observe that I observe.

Is the same as: I observe.

Is the same as: I am.

There is no certainty beyond this, only convictions. Even if I'm truly a human brain in a matter-based world, the world would still appear uncertain to this brain in this way.

"A scientist rejecting consciousness is not that different from a nun accepting god in this regard. Neither of them are fully honest with themselves and the world."

That's what I find myself thinking as I take a materialist stance and assume that this is base reality and other people are real in the same way that I am. This appears to fit all of my observations the best, so far, after all.

// end of monologue

And here's my pitch, from me to you:

Let's be provisional materialists together. You can't know if it's the ultimate truth but you can make the correct predictions more often and not be alone while doing it.

In this world "why" and "how" are synonyms. Asking why experience happens is equivalent to asking how experience happens.

You could probably look at them differently if you tried. I wouldn't make a strong argument as I wasn't leaning strongly on a precise distinction in the moment, but to at least connote more maturity and activity and knowledge building in how, while why appears more conceptual, distant, more philosophical, idea-driven, than scientific. It may be viewed as similar to asking why there is something rather than nothing. Why we experience some matter rather than other matter seems more appropriate 'considering first person experience as granted, but the presence of others as well that presumably could have been the case'. Why we experience a specific location and time in reality seems more appropriate than how: we have accepted it has occurred and reoccurred virtually countless times, but we are but one case. This is perhaps two reasons I can see for using a distinction, but that doesn't mean I would pursue it or stand by it in a serious inquiry or exposition.

> It may be viewed as similar to asking why there is something rather than nothing.

The answer to that is a description how something happened to exist. A possible difference is that "how" asks for a full description, while "why" asks for an abbreviated description only of the relevant part, the rest assumed to be irrelevant. Experience of time a good example, because it happens differently depending on nature of time, so you can't assume nature of time to be irrelevant to the question.

It's more appropriate to ask you 'why' you do what you do, than 'how'.

Describing a cause of my actions tell how I ended up doing it. It's synonymous.

It's unfortunate there are pseudo-intellectual trolls on hacker news.