Are you saying you are not aware of your own consciousness? If you are aware, you have observed.
I am aware that I am aware. And I can observe my own mental phenomena. As to whether I can observe my own subjectivity (awareness itself) is the question I posed in the OP of this thread. But whether I can or cannot, the point is that you can
not observe my subjectivity or mental phenomena no more that I can observe yours.
Yes Plato used a cave analogy. I like to think we can adapt and build on the past.
To reiterate: Pato employed the "cave" analogy to argue for the existence of a transcendental, nonphyiscal, realm of Ideal forms and a divine mind. It's basically a theistic argument!
Indirect observation of a phenomena, is the observation of effects of that phenomena without observing the phenomena itself.
The point is that it does not qualify as an observation of the phenomenon itself. I can classify creation (the universe) as an effect and infer a creator must be the cause. But I haven't actually observe the creator.
But this is all beside the point. If you lack the ability to observe consciousness directly or indirectly, as you seem to believe, then how does that lead you to reject a naturalistic cause?
Because we are clearly conscious. And yet consciousness is not amenable to the
natural sciences. (The natural sciences require that phenomena be observable from the third-person perspective (an objective perspective). Only physical phenomena are observable from the third-person perspective because they are objective. Mental phenomena are not. Mental phenomena are only observable from the first-person perspective (a subjective perspective) because they are inherently subjective, not objective. But whether subjectivity (the first-person perspective) itself is even observable from the first-person perspective is the topic of this thread.
In fact we can indirectly observe consciousness. All that is required is to attach wires to magnets and stick them on the head. All we have to do is look at the activity in the brain as one thinks, dreams, etc.
Wrong. We are observing neural activity, not consciousness. It is no difference than observing a facial expression and inferring the presence of consciousness. But observing a facial expression is not actually observing consciousness itself.
The fact is that there is no scientific evidence for the presence of consciousness.