How can we be conscious?

Question asked by: knowitall

The problem is how can physics and chemistry alone account for this phenomenon of being aware of oneself and one's surroundings, and of course certainly in humans' case, our own thoughts, feelings, memories and emotions.

It is thought that there is a strong linkage between our capacity for language and our being conscious in this latter sense, but this doesn't explain how the phenomenon is actually possible.

Some scientists say that we will eventually be able to realise the physical interpretation of our thoughts, just like we can now isolate the genes that cause certain characteristics in us, which itself would have been quite bizarre a century ago.

And presumably this is the answer - somehow a complex enough arrangement of physical matter, whether in cells, great strands of cells or matter within cells can create the epiphenomenon of consciousness. But to explain the whole process purely in terms of a physical context seems difficult - hence the classic division between the physical and the mental that has been much debated. However, such dualism is now generally discarded, so we will have to wait on science advancing to give us the answer to this mystery!

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