| But the problem is we don't know how it works. It's not about assuming consciousness is outside of physical reality or something like this, it's simply the fact that we don't have an understanding of it. For example if we could see and trace all intentional thoughts/acts before they occurred (in matter), intentionality would cease to be a property, it would be an illusion. All things that we know of in the universe function as physical matter, and we know the brain is a physical thing with 80 billion neurons and trillions of connections. What's the simplest explanation? 1) This is an incredibly complicated physical thing that we don't understand yet (and quite naturally so, with it having an incredible number of "moving parts") or 2) there are qualitative elements in the universe that we don't have the scientific tools to measure or analyze, even in principle I go with #1 because that's what every fiber is telling me (although I admit I don't know, of course). And with #1 also comes reductionism. It is a physical system we just don't have the mental models to understand it. I also want to say there could be another aspect that affects consciousness - namely the appearance of a "present now" that we experience in consciousness. This present moment is not really explained in physics but it could have something to do with how consciousness works. How I don't know but it all relates to how we model physics itself mentally. |