Comment by donkeybeer
5 hours ago
I looked up physicalism, it sounds perfectly normal? What else exists that isn't physical and why can't we call that a soul or the supernatural? By definition since its supposedly not physical. We haven't yet found anything non physical in the universe, why this strange belief that our brains would be non physical?
Since it's an old debate that a lot of smart people spent a lot of time thinking about, the best short / simple answer you'll see for it is "you might want to read some more about it". A few keywords here are qualia, perception, descartes and the evil deceiver, berkeley and immaterialism, kant and synthetic a-priori, the nature of the reality of mathematical objects and mathematical truth, etc. If you think it's easy, for sure you have not understood the question yet.
I am glad I learned of all this philosophical background. But I am asserting most people who claim "rocks therefore not conscious" haven't thought through this and are doing this based on some unknown supernaturalism.