Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

How does the water of the brain turn into the wine of consciousness?

Things are still in early stages, but one can imagine that as we build up and systematize our theories of these associations, and try to boil them down to their core, the result might point us toward the sort of fundamental principles I advocate.

Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain.

Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists' language.

Sense data are much more controversial than qualia, because they are associated with a controversial theory of perception - that one perceives the world by perceiving one's sense-data, or something like that.