[Dent]

I don't think this has anything to do with science, science is silent when it comes to discussing the "intrinsic nature of the physical" as far as physics is concerned there is no such thing as consciousness/qualia, can it be superseded with a THEORY OF EVERYTHING?

If the quantum fields of physics are qualia/experiential fields (and it's a whooper of a task to understand "our" relationship with these qualia fields, as if we were observing from afar) then there should be way of converting between the structural properties and experiential properties. It would be nice to be able to look at something and know what it was like to be it without mind-melding. Quantum fields need to be mapped from the inside.

If consciousness is the "fire" then it could be the only thing that has causal efficacy, I find this concept novel and exciting.

Originally Posted by physicalism

According to idealistic physicalism, a sentient agent really does remove its hand from the flame because the burning sensation feels agonisingly hot. Consciousness has causal efficacy....Without such causal power, not merely would intelligent agents be unable to investigate consciousness: we wouldn't have grounds for alluding to the existence of consciousness in the first instance.

Originally Posted by Repugnant Abomination

That's a fair point, but I would like to point out the following, from our friend Hawking in A Brief History of Time

"Even if there is only one possible unified theory (here he's talking about the unification of quantum mechanics with an understanding of gravity), it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"

Now obviously science may some day be able to answer that question, but I think it's a very important and profound one to keep in mind, as philosophers, scientists and theologians have because it may point to something outside of nature. Just food for thought.

Originally Posted by Galen Strawson

But this now raises a further point about ignorance, a point still insufficiently
appreciated by some within the philosophy of mind. For all these truths about the
physical, outright or approximate, are expressed by statements of number or equations:
mathematical equations featuring various constants in addition to various numbers
and mathematical functions. They are, as such, truths about quantities and relational
structures instantiated in concrete reality.
I like Eddington’s description of the achievements of physical theory, which is as
apposite today as it was in 1928:

Something unknown is doing we don’t know what—that is what our theory [physics]
amounts to. It does not sound a particularly illuminating theory. I have read
something like it elsewhere...
...the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
There is the same suggestion of activity. There is the same indefiniteness as to the
nature of the activity and of what it is that it is doing. And yet from so unpromising
a beginning we really do get somewhere. We bring into order a host of apparently
unrelated phenomena; we make predictions, and our predictions come off. The
reason—the sole reason—for this progress is that our description is not limited to
unknown agents, executing unknown activities, but numbers are scattered freely
in the description. To contemplate electrons circulating in the atom carries us no
further; but by contemplating eight circulating electrons in one atom and seven
circulating atoms in another we begin to realise the difference between oxygen
and nitrogen. Eight slithy toves gyre and gimble in the oxygen wabe; seven in
nitrogen...

^ I love the slithy toves analogy, and as you can see i'm also way out of depth on this stuff.