Why is asking 'can machines think?' assuming our thinking could be modeled as a machine? It's raising the possibility that our thinking could be modeled as a machine. Given that, as you acknowledge, we don't have a clue how our mind works, it seems premature to rule out this possibility. Rather, I would say that ruling it out betrays an assumption that we understand how the mind works enough that we can say that it is definitely not replicable by a machine, and that assumption seems unjustified.
loading story #48402055
Indeed, scientific type thinking like that where you ask a question that you can do experiments on to see if machines can pass the test is probably the way to progress. The philosophical waffling mostly just goes in circles.
To investigate consciousness you'll probably get further trying to build conscious machines with agency and comparing them to biological ones than reading Heidegger.