It is a requirement if you want hard-evidence - IMO.
No sound argument exists for ruling out psycho-physical causation on a priori grounds. Any contingent phenomenon can be the cause of any other contingent phenomenon. The error in the a priori arguments has been understood since at least the time of Hume, and modern sciences does not depend on the older, early modern “metaphysical” concepts of causation that were used to turn interaction into a pseudo-problem.
So then the task for science is only to confirm or deny whether some conjectured causal relationship actually obtains, mainly through data collection and statistical analysis, and to develop more comprehensive models that unify those causal phenomena with our understanding of other phenomena, and then use the models to explain and predict additional observations.
Terms like “physical” and “mental” do not denote fixed metaphysical categories, but are open-textured designators for classes of entities and phenomena whose contents evolve over time as scientific knowledge progresses. Nobody 200 years ago would have imagined an entity like the wave function of a boson, and if you tried to describe it for them, they would have suspect you were engaging in occult ravings. But now such mathematical models are well-understood, and well-integrated with the rest of physical science, and so the wave function is an accepted part of the expanded fundamental theoretical apparatus of physical science.
Rethinks of fundamental physics are exciting, and have happened more or less routinely throughout the history of modern science. Recalcitrant phenomena that no one yet knows how to explain or integrate into the body of existing science are what drives science forward. It is overwhelmingly evident that conscious events are caused by physical events that are already understood. No one can seriously doubt this, and they take this for granted in all of their everyday thinking about their own conscious lives during their daily interactions with the world. And so the task now is just to understand how. Whether it turns out that these phenomena are classified as a new type of physical event that we so far don’t know how to include in the inventory of the physical, or are instead classified as a second class of phenomena - the “schmental”, or whatever - that nevertheless causally interact with the physical is a question about the semantic evolution of scientific terminology that cannot be predicted until we see how the models are developed, and which ones work best.
I hope Buddhists don’t let themselves get involved with the kind of obstreperous and indulgent obscurantism that always dogs the heels of science. There are always people desperately grasping at straws to build support for their pre-established dogmas. (Ahh … lodestones! This proves the Resurrection!)
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This is a false equivalence! A flying spaghetti monster is pure-fiction whereas the postulate: rebirth, is an open-question. You and I know there is no flying spaghetti monster and, you and I don’t know if rebirth takes place? Its best not to pretend that pure-fiction is the same as a working hypothesis - that would be unhelpful - don’t you think?
Regarding your next point: just like it would be difficult for a 4 year old child to understand how a rocket-ships propulsion system worked it may be difficult to understand rebirth. A child may ask for an explanation - and evidence - with regard to rocket-propulsion. However, they may need to go to school for a few years and learn a few things before they get a handle on it! Likewise, we can ask for evidence for things, how they work and so on but, we might need to do a lot of preliminary research before we can begin to understand a process, do experiments and, find the explanations and evidence we require to truly understand. This might be what its like with regard to rebirth? The evidence may well be there but we need to move a bit further along the path before we have the tranquility and insight to perceive it - this all seems quite reasonable - IMO.
To be fair, the belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the nervous system is also different from pure-fiction. It is a postulate awaiting final confirmation through a growing body of evidence. If I was to lay a bet on who will confirm their findings first i.e. the materialists or the transpersonal meditators, I would put my money on the latter. 
I don’t think so. Acquiring evidence only depends on the ability to observe the phenomena in question. It doesn’t depend on assigning metaphysical categories to those phenomena. Scientists are empirically-minded, and don’t care much about metaphysics. Metaphysics is just something my dogmatic philosopher friends get all worked up about. 
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The metaphysical assumptions are related to the science in the minds of many true believers. They believe that cognitive science and neuro-science has ‘somehow’ validated their belief that the mind is an emergent property of the nervous system - it is an epiphenomena. Many people believe this is established - but when we look at the actual evidence we don’t find anything conclusive. We do find correlations between nervous activity and mental events but that does not prove causation. The brain may be causing mental events and the mind may produce changes in brain-states - or both???
For me, physicalism and metaphysics are two-sides of the same coin. They try to answer riddles that don’t have immediate and apparent solutions. Occasionally, we jump off these hampster-wheels and come to our senses. As a Buddhist, I believe the answers to these riddles - that physicalism and metaphysics try to answer - are found in profound silence, in relinquishing, in letting go.
This is another specious argument - it may be the case that flying about in a mind-made body is not possible - complete nonsense. It may be the case that rebirth actually takes place. There is no necessary connection between the two. This goes to the point I made earlier: we all know that there are myths and fables in the EBT’s. However, we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with bath water! We need to discriminate between pure-fiction and the unknown. We need to explain the presence of the former and we need to realise the latter. Until we do we will be lost in speculation and conjecture.
In order to confirm or refute the existence of rebirth we are advised by the Buddha to do the necessary ground-work. If, after attaining jhanas and the clarity that comes in their wake, you turn your attention to your earliest memories and find nothing of any consequence - suggestive of past lives - then that would be the first evidence that the process of inquiry does not work. If, after attaining jhanas and experiencing the super-mindfulness that follows in their wake, you have past life memories that are confirmed by looking at official records etc. then you would have good grounds for accepting the existence of rebirth.
Nobody has suggested we require out of body experiences to understand dependent origination and rebirth. I hope you have not succumbed to the ideology of the militant atheists? When a fanatical ideology is adopted it makes it very difficult to open the mind to unexpected surprise. Without this capacity liberating insight is unlikely.
Overwhelmingly evident to whom? Just yourself perhaps? This is precisely the ‘hard problem’ writ large but it seems you have solved it already!
And this is also a (your) metaphysical statement concerning the “overwhelmingly evident” causal priority of the “physical” over the “mental”. No wonder you feel that given time the sciences will eventually overcome the ‘hard problem’ and bring “mental phenomena” wholly within your scientific purview.
Can you not see your physicalist bias? You are literally talking about something that we have no idea what, how or why it is what it self-evidently is … it’s not physical, you can’t show it to your friends, you can’t culture it in a petri dish, it gives off no physically detectable signals, and it defines the limits of scientific inquiry.
Yes, it’s non-physical, objectively unobservable phenomenal experience. You can directly observe it through ‘introspection’ of course, or phenomenological method which is also a form of empirical knowledge, and through Buddhist meditation.
For we are it.
No, I believe you have seriously misunderstood the nature of the hard problem. Here is one of several passages in which Chalmers explains what he has called “the hard problem of consciousness”:
If these phenomena were all there was to consciousness, then consciousness would not be much of a problem. Although we do not yet have anything close to a complete explanation of these phenomena, we have a clear idea of how we might go about explaining them. This is why I call these problems the easy problems. Of course, “easy” is a relative term. Getting the details right will probably take a century or two of difficult empirical work. Still, there is every reason to believe that the methods of cognitive science and neuroscience will succeed.
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.
It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.
The problem Chalmers is describing here is clearly the problem of how conscious experience arises. It is not a skeptical problem about whether conscious experience arises, of course. But it is also not a skeptical problem about the very existence of causal interrelationships between conscious experiences and the external physical world. We might indeed be very far away from understanding the details of those causal relationships, and are perhaps nowhere close to modeling the processes involved with a testable deep theory. But there is no reason whatsoever to doubt those causal relationships, or to fail to recognize that we already know a great deal about the causal antecedents and causal consequences of conscious experiences, and that we make use of this causal knowledge every day in ordinary life. In all areas of human empirical knowledge, we acquire knowledge of causal relationships between gross observable phenomena well before we have reached the stage where we can explain those causal relationships at the level of fundamental theory, and well before we know the deep explanation of how and in virtue of what those gross phenomena obtain.
As I said before, I can’t really believe that when you open your eyes and look at a tree, and as a result have a phenomenal conscious experience of a tree, that you are really in any doubt whatsoever that the the tree, the light reflected by the tree, your eyes, the optical neural pathways to your brain, and parts of your brain are all parts of the causal history of your experience of the tree. Nor do I really believe that you are in any doubt about the fact that when you have a conscious experience of a tree, and then move your mouth to tell people about your experience, your conscious experience is generating causal consequences, some of which are physical.
No, again you have misunderstood both me and the issues. I at no place expressed any “priority” claims about either the priority of the physical over the mental or the priority of the mental over the physical. Nor did I express any reductionist claims about the reducibility or lack of reducibility of either realm to the other. Knowledge of the existence of causal relationships between physical phenomena and conscious experiences can be established independently of any answers to those questions. That such relationships exist is a relatively easy to confirm, everyday empirical fact that does not depend on any metaphysics.
I have no idea why you think these are relevant points. I have not offered any “physicalist” reduction or analysis of conscious experiences or phenomenal states. For any observable phenomena X , it is not necessary to know a lot about what X is in order to confirm whether or not X was caused by some other some other observable phenomenon Y.
But on the matter of physically detectable signals, I imagine you could tell me quite a bit about the nature of your own conscious experiences. When you do that you open your mouth and speak. And your speech is physically detectable. Are you trying to tell me that your speech is not a signal of the existence of your conscious experiences, and carries no information about the properties of those experiences? If your speech does carry such information, then it appears that conscious experience, whether or not it is physical itself, does somehow generate physical signals. The hard problem is understanding how that happens.
I don’t think you are in any position to claim that you have already discovered the limits of scientific inquiry
Well which is it? Observable or not? If you observe your phenomenal experience directly, and then report its existence to me, isn’t your report a kind of data that provides me with information about your conscious experiences, and which I can then use to test hypotheses about the relationships between your conscious experience and the rest of the world?
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vs
Now I think you’re either prevaricating or confused or both. Instead of quoting large sections of Chalmers at me you could perhaps read the rest of his article and more where he and many others discuss causal closure, the physicalist problem and zombies etc.
No, it’s just fairly standard and rather uncontroversial philosophy of science 101, it’s why phenomenal experience is relegated to an internal subjective experience, as mere appearances, with the real work to be done by interrogating physical data, which explains why you need to claim that mental events are caused by physical events, or that science can explain everything, and it’s also why the hard problem is so hard and will probably remain beyond your rather physicalist belief system.
Perhaps if you tried a course of Buddhist meditation the phenomenal/physical distinction might become clearer? Seriously, not trying to be trite or anything, but could be worth a go?
I grok the difference being discussed, zeug, but there’s no compelling response (as yet) to the idea that the physical operation of the brain feels like a subjective experience because that’s exactly what an operating brain generates; the assumption that there’s a pre-existing thing ‘for which’ subjective experience appears is wrongheaded.
Subjectivity itself could very well be what it is like when a sufficiently developed neurological system is in operation. (This certainly seems to be the case, doesn’t it?) Very simple, it posits no extra entities, and it seems to conform to current data sets.
There’s no immediately apparent difference; the same evidence underscores each one, as well as astral bodies and all that sort of thing. Psychic powers are pretty cool, I admit it - but that don’t make it so.
I grok the idea that special preparation is in place, but you ignore the fact that this preparation is common across human history, and results in very different conclusions in different times & places. This is evidence that the commonality here is human, with the experiences simply being described in cultural terms (I’ll remind you that Iron Age Indians remember all their past lives in Iron Age India & its cultural cosmologies).
“Psychic powers” are only ever suppositions based on experiences for which one has no other ready explanation - this is not carte blanche for asserting one or another cultural description as the Truth about the mechanism for that sort of human experience.
Again, that’s precisely the question that neuroscientists and philosophers of mind are grappling with in the hard problem of consciousness. Why should a physical process generate anything other than a physical process? There’s absolutely no compelling reason to suppose it should, and yet we have the self-evidence of our own subjective experience associated with electrochemical processes.
Therefore, according to your logic, the most rational response is to suppose that phenomena are the magic dust produced by electrochemical alchemy? This is what I call magical thinking! I’d bet Dennett would even agree with me here.
For me the most rational response is to maintain the hard problem as an open question rather than close it off by starting with what amounts to a physicalist metaphysics that gives priority to physical causality.
Do you grok phenomenology daverupa?
The two statements of mine that you quoted do not entail any priority claims. I have said that it is evident that physical events cause phenomenal conscious experiences. I have also said that it is evident that phenomenal conscious experiences cause physical events. Those two claims do not amount to any kind of assertion of the priority of the physical over the mental or the priority of the mental over the physical. Nor have I defended any kinds of reductionist claims entailing the reducibility of the mental to the physical or the reducibility physical to the mental. Every statement I have made is compatible with a dualist interactionist model. The statements are also compatible with other models.
I have relied on simple example events such as the light reflecting off of a tree, your conscious experience of seeing a tree, and the movements of your mouth when you report your conscious experience to someone else. With the first two events, we have a case of a physical event causing a conscious mental event. With the latter pair, we have a case of a conscious mental event causing a physical event. Neither of these two observations entail any results about the deep ontology of physical phenomena and conscious mental phenomena. Nor do they entail that one kind of event is prior, either metaphysically or causally, to the other.
I have emphasized this point several times now, but you seem to be so eager to grind some axe against physicalism that you continue to overlook it. Please do not accuse me of prevarication when the problem is that you continue to attribute claims to me that my statements do not entail.
The problem of “zombies” in the contemporary philosophy of mind is a problem about the apparent metaphysical or conceptual possibility of entities that are physically identical to conscious beings like human beings, but do not possess any “inner” mental life, i.e. they do not have any conscious, phenomenal experience. If this apparent modal result is correct, and zombies are metaphysically or conceptually possible, then it provides the premise for some arguments against psychophysical reductionism: the thesis that, in some sense, conscious phenomena just are physical phenomena.
One might doubt the epistemic reliability of the thought experiments on which the assertion of the metaphysical possibility of zombies is supposed to be based. But suppose we just accept that result at face value. Nothing of great importance follows for the empirical science of the mind. That’s because metaphysical possibility and conceptual possibility do not entail causal possibility or nomological possibility. Even if it is true that events of type A are not identical to events of type B, it does not follow that events of type A do not causally interact with events of type B. Nor does it follow that there do not exists law-like empirical regularities in which both events of type A and events of type B figure. Science is in the business of investigating contingent phenomena and the empirically detectable causal order of nature.
“The physical” is not a consistently used expression, so expressions like “the causal closure of the physical” also have an imprecise sense. If one means by “the physical” only those fundamental entities and phenomena that have been studied and inventoried, so to speak, by contemporary physics, then there is no basis for asserting the causal closure of the physical, since physics is most likely not a completed science, and we cannot predict what will be added to the inventory of the physical in the future. If “the physical” is being used in such a way that the mere fact that some event causally interacts with what is now understood to comprise the physical is a logically sufficient condition for including that event in the physical as well, then conscious phenomenal experiences are simply being defined into the category of the physical ahead of time. Engaging in this kind of peremptory classification, before the necessary science has been developed, seems unhelpful to me.
Umm… yes, well thank you newcomer, but I have been meditating religiously for many years now. 
Meditation can teach one a great deal about the introspectable details of of one’s experiential life, but it can’t tell one anything much about the ultimate nature of those experiences, and about the way they are, or might be, causally connected with those parts of the larger world that are not accessible to introspection.
It’s hopeless to try to conclude from the evidence of one’s conscious experiences alone that the phenomena one is experiencing are “mere” appearances. These phenomena don’t come labeled with the totality of their contingent causal and nomological connections with the rest of the world.
Apparently you are a composer and musician of electronic music. Do you not believe that when you move the dials on your instruments you are causing your audiences to have various conscious experiences?
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If somebody were to ask me if there is a flying spaghetti monster I would give them a simple, honest and sane answer: NO
If somebody were to ask me if I new if rebirth happens or does not happen? I would give them an simple and honest answer: I DONT KNOW
I would not answer them by pointing out that we cannot disprove the existence of a flying spaghetti monster or rebirth because we don’t have sufficient and conclusive evidence to demonstrate their nonexistence.
I would not answer them by saying we cannot prove the existence of a flying spaghetti monster or rebirth because we don’t have sufficient and conclusive evidence to demonstrate their existence.
Why don’t you try to give a simple, honest and sane answer to the question: is there a spaghetti monster?
Why don’t you try to give a simple and honest answer to the question: do you know if rebirth happens or does not happen?
The thing is, both of us know the answers to these questions. We both know that flying spaghetti monsters do not exist. That is why they were mentioned in the first place. They are an example of a fictional, absurd and fabricated entity. There is no confusion on my part or yours with regard to this obvious fact. Neither of us is confused by the fact that we have no absolute certainty as to the existence or non-existence of rebirth. All of the above is a self-evident statement about the glaringly obvious.
Why is it important to be upfront and honest about what we know, don’t know and, are not sure about? The first thing that comes to mind is that it simplifies matters. We aim for clarity in our communication with regard to the Dhamma. There is no point in simply expressing our opinions about Dhamma based on our preset conclusions. We may feel that others may benefit from our educated opinions and views - what we find credible and foolish. The problem is: most of us on this site are reasonably educated people, we all have educated opinions but they are incommensurate. It is actually unnecessary to talk about what we believe to be true and untrue - we can just talk about what we know, don’t know and are unsure about. We may find a correlation between the amount of personal opinions someone expresses and the degree of genuine understanding they actually possess. Why do you feel that your views and opinions about the credibility of Dhamma teachings has particular interest value? I would prefer it if you gave priority to what you actually know, don’t know and are not sure about.
I can offer the rejoinder: Why not? It’s possible that subjective experience just is the ongoing process of a neurological system.
The hard problem of consciousness is basically the same sort of thing as the ‘hard problem’ of the cosmos: why is there something rather than nothing? In this case: Why is the process of experiencing like this instead of otherwise? Those do indeed remain as open questions - precisely because any answers would be metaphysical claims, and thus illegitimate.
Depends what you’re using the term to mean; but, probably enough for current purposes.
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That’s too bad, because this is basically “a simple, honest and sane answer.”
A more integrous answer in both cases would be: VERY UNLIKELY due to the presence of vast swathes of countervailing hypotheses with equivalent evidence (i.e. none).
It would be absurd for me to answer the question: is there a flying spaghetti monster with the answer: VERY UNLIKELY
You have suggested above that VERY UNLIKELY would be the sanest answer I could provide.
The only sane answer I could provide to that question is: NO
There is no flying spaghetti monster in reality - it is a fictional and absurd entity.
This is self-evident!
Regarding your vast swathes of countervailing evidence that establishes the nonexistence of rebirth - beyond reasonable doubt. I would ask the question: where is this evidence? Where is the conclusive evidence that rebirth does not take place? If you were unable to provide me with this evidence I would probably conclude that you were expressing a strongly held opinion. What other conclusion could I come to?
If there was clear and incontrovertible evidence ‘for or against’ the existence or nonexistence of rebirth, this discussion would have fizzled within the first few comments. I am at a complete loss as to how you could be confused about these matters.
Has this topic been unpacked enough yet?
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This is actually poor reasoning.
If someone suggests the spaghetti monster to you, and another person suggests Indian gods, and another person suggests Amerindian gods, and another suggests Nordic gods (and so on), you are deciding that at least one of these options is “obviously” false. But you are merely asserting it, and have given no reasons.
“It’s just fiction” is a re-assertion, not an explanation. Other than personal incredulity, how is it you’re deciding between these options?
Re-read what was written: “countervailing hypotheses with equivalent evidence (i.e. none)”. The point is that e.g. Indian gods & Nordic gods have the same evidence: none.
Your question doesn’t apply.
So we agree that there is no such clear evidence. That’s good.
I’ve gotten some powerful refinements & summaries put together as a result of these ongoing topics; it helps to be able to quickly zero in on the core disagreements in order to prevent getting lost in fruitless, abrasive minutiae.
For example, “Being an orthodox Buddhist means that you believe in psychic powers.” This is the nub of the matter, and a lot of time can be saved with these sorts of discussions by making clear and simple statements like this. So there’s still some productive stuff here, I think.
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