[yongjik]

> we have to explain the mechanism by which permutations of the states of matter can create a new dimension of "feeling" and "awareness" where one did not already exist.

You mean, like a newborn baby? That's not a "tall order," that's an everyday affair.

[bdamm]

The newborn baby is "just" an assembly of atoms and molecules. What is it about this particular assembly that makes it so special? That's the key question. It might very well turn out that there is something very special about animate life forms that can only exist inside animate life forms - particular arrangements of molecules, or perhaps a heritage that encodes some quantum states we don't understand, or some feedback loop inside of the baby's brain, or maybe all of it; and these things don't exist inside of a rock or a star or a galaxy (beyond, of course, all the babies that exist inside the galaxy, and outside of the question, did the galaxy will the babies to exist, and is a baby an expression of the galactic sensory apparatus?)

[odyssey7]

A newborn baby is an example of physics at work, rather than an underlying physical law.