Consciousness is a emergent property of the incredible complex organ we call a brain. At first it may seem too odd to think that something as incredibly surreal and deep as consciousness can spring forth some arrangement of atoms, atoms identical to those make up the inanimate objects around us, it because less weird when you think about a car just being made up of nuts, bolts, and a bunch of metal, or a space shuttle out of ceramic, composites and what have you. Computers are just made up of transistors, capacitors and the like, and have tremendous capabilities.
Humans are just the most extreme example we have of this phenomenon of complexity through composition, but that makes a certain kind of sense as humans are the product of billions of years of evolution. We've only been seriously studying consciousness for a good hundred years or so (people have thought about it for quite some time, but I think it's fair to say no clear progress was made on the subject until the 20th century).
It's certainly not easy to explain. I have no idea what that means. You're basically saying that change of physical state causes pain. Why? Is that some physical law I haven't heard of?
> Consciousness is a emergent property of the incredible complex organ we call a brain. At first it may seem too odd to think that something as incredibly surreal and deep as consciousness can spring forth some arrangement of atoms, atoms identical to those make up the inanimate objects around us, it because less weird when you think about a car just being made up of nuts, bolts, and a bunch of metal, or a space shuttle out of ceramic, composites and what have you. Computers are just made up of transistors, capacitors and the like, and have tremendous capabilities.
The big difference here is that computers or cars are physical concepts, the definition of a car could be that it's a certain arangement of atoms.
Well plainly we don't know yet. But just as plainly, the brain implements the mind.
When discussing consciousness I like to focus on the feeling of pain, which is much more clearly understood by people. So the question is, why do I feel pain when my brain is in a certain physical state?