To be clear, I only disagree with a few things here. Most of what is going on is a large misunderstanding.
What is your derivation of this conception of the Hard Problem of consciousness as it does not strike me as at all intuitive or common. Typically the thinkers who believe in the Hard Problem of consciousness hold that it is either very difficult or impossible to explain the root cause of conscious activity. Merely stating that no physicalist theory has provided a successful explanation of consciousness does not make the problem seem hard, at best it shows that the current physicalist research is in a rudimentary stage. In fact, many materialists would not disagree with the thesis you've framed, however, they'd attribute this fact to a lack of current accomplishment rather than the nearly insurmountable nature of the 'Hard problem'.
Irrelevant. (semantics)
No, actually the latter requires more evidence. All the former requires is more sophisticated technology that could trace all mental activity to neural activity. The latter requires showing that such technology is in principle impossible and the same is to be said for virtually all other efforts that purport to show that all mental activity is reducible to the physical. At the very least, it is conceivable how the physicalist hypothesis could be vindicated, yet no nealry as of a support for the dualist position is even conceivable.
I've already said my position is not dualist as you conceive it. It could be, but it is not a specific enough claim to fall into such a precise category.
Secondly, you are missing a very basic point here. The first claim is that Physicalism is wrong, that every theory that falls under Physicalism is wrong. The second claim is that out of the small amount of theories so far, none have managed to completely explain consciousness as we understand them.
It is clear the latter is a much smaller claim. It needs far less evidence that the former.
Could you cite a professional philosophical passage that led you to define the Hard Problem in such manner or at least provide a rationale for your interpretation?
I'm not going to debate semantics. If you must know, I got the impression from near all philosophy I have read on the manner. I thought your definition was called something like "the impossible problem".
It's irrelevant to the debate here.
That leads to only as much baggage as the claim that there are no alien creatures residing on other planets who reproduce sexually. We cannot be certain that this claim is true, but we do have a compelling reason to believe that it is true as our current knowledge of the universe offers us no reason to suppose that sexually reproductive creatures exist outside of planet earth. Nothing short of a revolutionary breakthrough in astronomy will be necessary to shatter this hypothesis at the foundation. I contend that the same holds for the dualist hypothesis, a revolution in neuroscience of Einsteinian magnitude shall be necessary to subvert the view of the physicalist orthodoxy.
Here's the parallel:
You are suggesting it takes more evidence to show that sexual life has not been found off this planet.
I am suggesting it takes more evidence to show that sexual life is nowhere to be found in the entire galaxy.
The former is a parallel of my position, the latter of what you seem to think my position is.
Do we need to reject all evolutionary explanations of how all species emerged on the basis of the fact that evolution has not yet explained how all of life has come to be? After all, it is too much effort to prove all evolutionary explanations unsuccessful?
This is not a successful parallel. Evolution has much evidence to support the parts of it that are complete. Physicalist explanations of consciousness have no evidence whatsoever.
Idealism is the thesis that only mental entities exist or that they are somehow more real than the physical, solipsism is the doctrine that only I exist. I don't see the relevance of either one.
The point is, you assume my position is dualist. Since my position is that your position has no evidence, mine could turn out to be any position. From solipsism to reductionism, provided further evidence comes to light.
That is precisely what the dualist must accomplish in order to refute physicalism or to to show that all attempts to show that consciousness is caused by neural activity cannot be successful.
That is a much larger task than the Physicalist, as I have already said.
That is by your definition of dualism. I've already stated that reductionism is dualist by my definition.
It's not relevant to my position.
This is a non-sequitur, replace reductionism with non-reductionism and the conclusion above would follow from the premise you've started with in your last point. A non-reductionist has to attain more evidence than the reductionist because he is required to show that even if at some point researchers are to know everything about the brain's causal power, they will not be able to show how the brain causes mental activity. This is an additional step to the task of understanding the full causal power of the brain.
Irrelevant. Hopefully you understand my position enough now to see that.
Yet they have been replaced by other laws of nature and science invariably emerged with empirically documentable explanation of how the world works. I suspect that the same will happen in neuroscience. In other words, when neuroscience sophisticates, it will be possible to see exactly how physical entities cause the rise of consciousness. An alternative explanation amounts to causation altogether independent from the physical world. Thus far such explanations have been unsuccessful in both biology and physics, I suspect they won't be successful in neuroscience either.
The bolded is in full support of my position.
An alternate explanation is not limited to something separate from the physical. I've already suggested Idealism as one. I can suggest denial of consciousness as another.
That is not necessary to do just as it is not necessary for evolutionists to prove that there are no creators or for astronomers to prove that there are no sexually reproducing aliens just as truly as it is unnecessary for zoologists to prove that there are no angels, demons, fairies or dragons. In other words, we have no reason to attempt to refute a hypothesis that has no basis in rigorous research. Precisely that is the salient problem of dualism, it has failed to vindicate the existence of a single mental entity that exists outside of a neural network and is not caused by it.
Here's what I meant:
Proving that consciousness is correlated with the brain, or that consciousness is produced by the brain, does not prove that consciousness is limited to the brain.
Just like proving that stars give off light does not prove that there is no light elsewhere.
That is not a good reason to reject a theory, it is only a reason to conclude that it is incomplete. However, the proper response to this outcome is to pursue physicalism further in order to render the current theory complete in the future. In other words, if your claim is such, it offers no support to the non-reductionist position.
My position, for the final time, is that Physicalism has no evidence as a solution to the hard problem.
I agree that it is not good reason to claim that Physicalism is false, which is precisely why I
NEVER made that claim.
In that case, why should we believe in dualism as opposed to materialism?
I've been saying we shouldn't believe either until they get evidence.
My position is to acknowledge ignorance where it is due.