Can anyone please explain how the Hard Problem is not an Argument from Ignorance?
The Hard Problem of Consciousness:
“Proponents of the hard problem hold that it is categorically different from the easy problems since no mechanistic or behavioural explanation could explain the character of an experience, not even in principle. Even after all the relevant functional facts are explicated, they argue, there will still remain a further question: "why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?"”
“an informal fallacy where something is claimed to be true or false because of a lack of evidence to the contrary.”
The hard problem is using solely the fact that no mechanistic explanation of experience currently exists and assuming that no mechanistic explanation could ever possibly exist even in principle. This is inserting some vague non-mechanistic idea into a gap in our current knowledge of physics.
It’s like the popular god of the gaps fallacy where someone says something like “Science can’t even say why the Universe exists, so it must be my idea of a deity.” The god of the gaps fallacy is a specific type of argument from ignorance. The hard problem is apparently another.
In order to not be an argument from ignorance, there must be more evidence for the hard problem than the lack of current evidence. What is that evidence?
I want to give more credit to the hard problem, but I’m having trouble finding any evidence for it other than a gap in our current knowledge. Until we know all of the relevant information, how can we say that it doesn’t offer an explanation?