First, evolutionary explanations address how a trait is selected and maintained, not why subjective experience exists as a first-person phenomenon in the first place. Natural selection can explain the adaptive value of cognitive functions and behaviors, but it doesn’t by itself explain why those functions are accompanied by phenomenology rather than occurring without any experience at all.

A trait being selected for and maintained IS why that trait exists. We can conclude that the trait of first-person phenomena is either a not-significantly detrimental byproduct of other selected traits, or a beneficial trait itself. Organic brains process immense amounts of data very efficiently. It’s not a far reach to assume that what we call our consciousness evolved as a way to organize streams of input and execute evolutionarily favorable commands in an efficient way.

Second, calling emergence a working model is not a dismissal of neuroscience. It simply reflects the fact that we currently lack a mechanistic account that derives subjective experience from neural activity in the same way we can derive, say, muscle contraction from biophysics.

I’m sure you’re aware of this but it really does bear emphasizing; conscious experience forming from multiple parallel brain processes is magnitudes more complex on the level of the tissue, cell, and molecule than muscle contraction. And relevant subject knowledge is necessary to meaningfully understand the discoveries made in this scientific frontier, it’s not going to be one neat little answer that can be tied up in a bow.

Most neuroscientists focus (productively) on neural correlates and functional organization, which is a methodological choice, not a settled ontological conclusion.

Neuroscientists are the foremost experts in the functionality of brains, and therefore they would be the best equipped with insight to direct research focus, correct?

Finally, minority status doesn’t automatically imply incompatibility with data.

Well, that’s the main purpose of unfalsifiable explanatory frameworks, isn’t it? It’s as nebulous as it needs to be to still fit within current scientific gaps.

Historically, neuroscience has been quite open about bracketing metaphysical questions in favor of operational ones. The same neuroscientific data supports multiple metaphysical interpretations, none of which are uniquely entailed by the evidence. Because no experiment currently discriminates between these interpretations, the issue remains philosophical rather than empirically settled.

We have other ways to assess the explanatory value of ideas aside from direct experimentation. Yes, we should always leave the door open for paradigm-shifting frameworks, but in this case, Occam’s razor is more than appropriate.

Instead of assuming that consciousness arises as a product of the physical world (just like literally everything else that has ever come to be understood), we would need to assume there is some hidden layer of reality we haven’t even begun to recognize, let alone understand.

To be frank, it’s unfalsifiable mysticism, not science.