> This is a great question, and one that will never be answered by scientific naturalism.
Why not? This is a very strong claim.
> It's clearly powered by a physical entity (the brain), but the "self" is also clearly not a physical entity.
A word is not a physical entity. Does that mean that we can't learn anything about words through science?
> and it will never be explained unless we manage to re-create a conscious entity ourselves.
Well, I can agree that this is probably the easiest way to explain it. Create a consciousness that you can pause and non-destructively examine (assuming that's possible).
Actually, if words are encoded similarly in different brains, then there is a physical manifestation of words (other than typography) that we can study.
I suspect you would argue that "this isn't really a word," just some physical shadow of the true word.
Why not? This is a very strong claim.
> It's clearly powered by a physical entity (the brain), but the "self" is also clearly not a physical entity.
A word is not a physical entity. Does that mean that we can't learn anything about words through science?
> and it will never be explained unless we manage to re-create a conscious entity ourselves.
Well, I can agree that this is probably the easiest way to explain it. Create a consciousness that you can pause and non-destructively examine (assuming that's possible).