A few thoughts on the nature of consciousness, and the mind vs. brain debate. The following are some examples of the properties and qualities of conscious awareness, of mind. They are all completely immaterial:
- intentionality - the quality of directing toward achieving an object
- aboutness: being about something
- this object of aboutness may be totally immaterial as in abstract thought, i.e. a thought about the number pi
- having meaning
- subjectivity
- qualities of subjective awareness - qualia: i.e. blueness, redness, loudness, softness
What are the properties of the physical biological/neurological phenomena (the workings of the neurons of the brain) that materialists try to claim are one and the same as consciousness? These are the parameters of the physical space/time/matter/energy continuum, all those things that are measurable and investigatable by science, including forces, field strengths, masses, charges, velocities, positions etc. All of these amount to "things" of some sort, not thoughts.
The properties of mental phenomena such as the examples given can't be derived from the properties of ultimately physical phenomena. They are in entirely different existential realms, and mental phenomena can't be measured and experimentally investigated by science. All neuroscience can do is measure phenomena that are correlates to consciousness, like brain electrical fields and cerebral blood oxygenation levels (using FMRI techniques). Correlation is not causation.
Materialist neuroscience believes and assumes that consciousness is some sort of epiphenomenal illusion, where what it is that is experiencing this illusion is conveniently undefined. But consciousness can't be a powerless epiphenomenon because consciousness obviously has causative power in the world. To say this is just "emergence" (as they like to do) is just to evoke a buzzword for another mysterious miracle.
I think interactive dualism is the most viable mind-body theory. Two fundamentally different continua in which the properties of conscious awareness are in an entirely different existential realm than the properties of matter, energy, space and time. But interaction is still permitted in certain ways, in particular in the interfacing of mind with the material world via complex brains. The clincher is that interactive dualism is also much more in accordance with the empirical evidence of psychical and paranormal research in areas like NDEs, reincarnation and mediumistic communications.
The best metaphor or simile would be the TV set analogy. The TV set interfaces between the immaterial electromagnetic waves carrying the picture information, and the physical display. The TV is essential for the manifestation of the TV show in the physical world, and disruption of its various component parts will distort or destroy that displayed picture, but the TV set does not actually generate the displayed program. Any more than the brain generates consciousness.