It might be that science is just not set up to answer questions like "what is it like". Myself, I don't think that question has an answer at all. The only way to know what it is like is to experience it. — Ludwig V

As an idealist, I agree.

The irony is that certainty is never obtained in the hard sciences. No scientific theory can ever be proven to be true. While many people fail to understand this fact, it may be that many, or even most, scientists do not fail to understand it. — Janus

Sure. But we don't say, "Well, we can't prove the combustion engine works the way we think it does for the reasons we think it does, so there's no point in making any. After all, what reason do we have to think the next one we make will work?

On the other hand it is possible, although it can never be proven, that the former exist only because of the latter. — Janus

We certainly are not aware of the existence of the former without the latter.

What the 'explanatory gap' and 'hard problem' arguments are aimed at, is precisely that claim. That everything is reducible to or explainable in terms of the physical. That is the point at issue! — Wayfarer

They make clear that everything is not reducible to or explainable in terms of the physical.

Sure. But we don't say, "Well, we can't prove the combustion engine works the way we think it does for the reasons we think it does, so there's no point in making any. After all, what reason do we have to think the next one we make will work? — Patterner

The internal combustion engine is well understood. The understanding of its workings were not the kind of thing I had in mind when I spoke of scientific theories.

We certainly are not aware of the existence of the former without the latter. — Patterner

We are in vivo, and until modern times always were altogether, unaware of neural activity. We don't directly perceive neural activity giving rise to consciousness, we correlate the two on the basis of neural imaging and first person reportage.

When it comes to your example, the internal combustion engine, we do directly see the combustion of the fuel giving rise to motion.

They make clear that everything is not reducible to or explainable in terms of the physical. — Patterner

I think it is undeniably true that most of human life cannot be explained in terms of physics. On the other hand physics certainly seems to be the basis of chemistry and chemistry the basis of life and life the basis of consciousness, and even if this is so it still doesn't follow that emergent systems can necessarily be understood comprehensively in terms of the systems they emerge from. Try understanding poetry, art or music in terms of physics, or even biology, and see how far you get.