Thanks for the discussion, Mark. Obviously, my model is simple and crude, but it still sums it up well for me. I’m not sure where you and many others, including Chalmers, are getting hung up. The bigger question, it seems to me, is how does the brain create any sensation at all.

If you consider the favored zombie example, no one seems to have any problem imagining that the zombie still has some sensations of hunger or desire. Why else would it even move if not? I personally suspect most, if not all, living things have sensation. Animals aren’t robots acting out programs without sensation. The sea turtle born without parents crawls instinctively toward the water because of some sensations it has, not because of some dispassionate monotone tape loop commanding it to do so.

All consciousness is, then, is the awareness of these sensations, including the awareness of the awareness. It feels like something because everything feels like something. We know our dogs feel things as much as we know other people do. But we can presume that the dog is probably not as aware or reflective of those feelings as we can be. The miracle is that anything feels like anything, and that life exists. Consciousness seems considerably less mysterious than that.

What is your conception of consciousness? Is its origin beyond the brain’s chemistry? Why and how would that be? Or is it entirely from the physical brain, but somehow beyond any conception or explanation by humans? How and why would that be?