Making the hard problem of consciousness easier
The problem of consciousness (or the quality of something being able to <i>experience</i> itself and things around it), may never be solved. Even if the reductionist approach reveals some fundamental field or particle that gives rise to consciousness (which is very unlikely), it just shifts the problem from the brain&#x27;s neural network and into that phenomenon.<p>An old Julian Jaynes analogy comes to mind: if you&#x27;re a flashlight, you will never be able to understand light, because wherever you look, light will be there. By definition you&#x27;re unable to look at something that is dark. You perceive the world as being bathed in perpetual light.<p>The closest we might get may be a hand-wavy form of panpsychism, with some probable connection to quantum fluctuations.