Just a moment...

I think that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain ways.

It’s absurd! Scientists have yet to explain the nature of consciousness. They have no means of objectively detecting it. They have not identified its necessary and sufficient causes. And yet, they ask us to wager everything on their belief that consciousness is solely a product of the brain.4 —B. Allan Wallace, Buddhist philosopher

Emergentists, in contrast, believe that complex, dynamic systems cannot always be explained in terms of their constituent parts. It’s not simply a matter of peering into the brain with MRIs and discovering a particular area or system that is responsible for consciousness. The mind is instead a kind of structural pattern that emerges from the comple

The collective data suggested that consciousness is not localized to, or dependent upon, the brain. And further, it suggested that consciousness is primary in the universe—it is more fundamental than physical matter and exists beyond space and time.

Some prominent theories in the science of consciousness continue to emphasize function and behavior over phenomenology. Foremost among these is the “global workspace” theory,

five important traits fundamental to consciousness; these are the ‘axioms’ on which IIT is built. The first axiom is the basic fact that consciousness exists. Others include the observation that a conscious experience is composed of multiple distinct sensations, the experience is specific, it appears to us as an integrated whole and it is uniquely